Jules Harlow smiled. ‘Not really. It is not because I need the money that I ask you to make Patrick Green give back what he owes me. It’s because of the principle involved. It’s because he is letting you all down.’
Harlow took another deep breath and into a continuing silence said, ‘If I hadn’t been able to afford to lose ten thousand dollars, I wouldn’t have gone to Mrs Nutbridge’s aid. But I would absolutely never have agreed to pay her son’s legal fees. Why should I? I did not at any time discuss fees with anyone, not Patrick Green nor Carl Corunna nor Sandy Nutbridge. I trusted Sandy Nutbridge to surrender to his bail, which he did. I trusted a lawyer to return the money he knew I’d put up in good faith for a bail bond, and he has kept it. I trusted a horse salesman and I trusted a lawyer. Which would you have put your money on, out of those two?’
The grievance committee debated among themselves and the following day announced that they found no ‘probable cause’ and that the subject was closed.
‘I blew it,’ Jules Harlow said gloomily at breakfast later in the week.
‘You certainly did not,’ David Vynn assured him. ‘I’ve been told the committee nearly all believed you, not Patrick Green.’
‘But... then why?’
‘They almost never disbar a fellow lawyer. They may know Green is as guilty as hell, but if there’s the slightest possibility of inserting any doubt into their deliberations, they’ll let him off. All doubt is reasonable, didn’t you know?’
Jules Harlow watched David T. Vynn begin to demolish a pile of buckwheat pancakes with bananas.
‘All the same,’ Jules Harlow said, ‘Patrick Green has got away with it.’
David Vynn spooned whipped butter onto his pancakes and, enjoying a dramatic moment, extravagantly flourished his fork. ‘Patrick Green,’ he said, ‘has done nothing of the sort.’
‘He still has my money.’
‘I did warn you at the beginning that you were unlikely to get it back.’
‘Then how can you say he hasn’t got away with it?’
David Vynn attended thoughtfully to his pancakes. ‘I have incredibly knowledgeable sources. I’m told things, you know. I’m told you stunned the grievance committee. They say you are I transparently honest witness.’ He paused. ‘They all know it is you who will be believed if Patrick Green is tried in court.’
‘If!’
‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. The path to court leads from accusation to deposition, and after that point there’s an offer of mediation to settle out of court. Only if that fails does the case come to trial. Well, Patrick Green has agreed to mediation.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re so upbeat,’ Harlow said.
‘You will.’
The tortoise wheels rotated slowly along the road to mediation but eventually David Vynn took his client to a meeting with a mediator who proved to be a sophisticated version of grandmotherly Mrs Nutbridge.
‘Our aim,’ she said, ‘is to agree the terms of settlement between Mr Green and Mr Harlow without the time or expense of a trial in court.’ She paused. ‘I’ve spoken to Mr Green.’
Silence.
‘He is willing to negotiate,’ she said.
David Vynn with irony commented, ‘I suppose that means he’s willing to avoid the loss of his house and car and his office equipment and all that he owns. He’s willing to avoid triple penalties, in fines. He’s willing not to have to pay punitive damages. How generous of him!’
‘What can he offer that you will accept?’
Dear Heaven, Jules Harlow thought in a burst of understanding, Patrick Green is admitting his guilt.
Patrick Green, indeed, brought face to face with a stark choice between a sentence for conversion, civil theft and breach of constructive trust, followed by the automatic revocation of his licence to practise law — between that and the repaying of some at least of what he’d embezzled from Jules Harlow and Mrs Nutbridge, had discovered all of a sudden that there were dollars to be earned in the outside world, even if it meant stocking supermarket shelves.
The mediator said, ‘Mr Green offers you five thousand dollars: half of the sum you put up for the bail bond.’
‘Mr Green,’ David Vynn said pleasantly, ‘can multiply that by two. If my client was vengeful, he could multiply by four.’
‘Mr Green spent the bond money paying off debtors who would otherwise have beaten him up.’
‘Let’s all weep,’ David Vynn told her. ‘Mr Green stole Mrs Nutbridge’s pension fund.’
Jules Harlow listened in fascination.
‘Sandy Nutbridge,’ the mediator riposted, ‘is paying to her what she advanced to free him. Mrs Nutbridge’s debts are her son’s affair.’
‘Patrick Green twice betrayed Sandy Nutbridge to the IRS,’ David Vynn drily pointed out. ‘His purpose from the beginning was to steal a fortune in unnecessary legal fees from his so-called friend. Mr Harlow’s ten thousand dollars bond money came along as an unplanned bonus.’
‘Mr Green will repay half of Mr Harlow’s involvement.’
‘No,’ David Vynn said calmly. ‘All of it.’
‘He has no money.’
‘Mr Harlow will wait.’
From old experienced eyes she looked with amusement at bright David T. Vynn; young enough to be her son, too young to feel pity for a crook. She set a future date for a final settlement.
Jules Harlow’s devoted wife decided that as Jules was offering her a new horse for their third wedding anniversary she would go to Ray Wichelsea himself, to the head of the agency, for advice.
Ray Wichelsea, valuing her custom above all others, found her a two-year-old of starry promise for the following year’s Triple Crown.
Mrs Harlow asked if there were any news of Mrs Nutbridge, whom she had immediately liked at the grievance committee meeting. Sandy Nutbridge had eventually saved enough to ask advice from David Vynn, Ray Wichelsea told her, and now Patrick Green had furiously agreed to mediation in her case, too.
Mrs Harlow said to Jules at bedtime, ‘Even if she gets most of her money back, I don’t suppose Mrs Nutbridge will put up bail for anyone ever again.’
Her husband thought of what he’d learned, and of the thousands he had quite gladly paid in attorneys’ fees to defeat Patrick Green. ‘I’m told,’ he said, ‘that there’s a way to bail people out by merely pledging the bail money and paying up in full only if the accused absconds, but it’s expensive. It might be better, might be worse. I’ll have to ask our young marvel, David Vynn.’
They met quietly across yet another boardroom table, paired as before: Patrick Green and Carl Corunna opposite Jules Reginald Harlow and David T. Vynn.
The grandmotherly mediator, dressed in a grey business suit as formal as Jules Harlow’s, as anonymous as the lawyers’, shook hands briefly all round and, sitting at the table’s head, distributed simple documents, asking them all to sign.
Jules Harlow, despite his losses, felt himself strongly filled by a sense of justice. Here they all were, he thought as he signed, fighting a battle to the death with pens, not guns. Patrick Green might rob people, but he didn’t shoot.
Glumly Patrick Green admitted to himself that he’d underestimated both Jules Harlow’s persistence and David Vynn’s skill with the law. The chairman of the grievance committee, furthermore, had uttered fearsome threats: the slightest whisper of misdoing would find the Green licence in the bin. But in time, Patrick Green thought, in time he would rake up another sting; would find another mug...