HIS FIRST CLIENT. BY DAVID H. TALMADGE. IN the office of a certain hotel, in a certain county seat, on a certain night in 1898, a number of lawyers, with Judge В , found in reminiscence relaxation from the worries incidental to the Circuit Court, which was then in session. There were several interesting stories told that night, but the one which made the most impression upon myself and, I believe, upon the company, was told by the Judge. I give it, as near as memory will permit, in his own words : Some of you may remember the robbery of Major Close, of Stilsonville, in the early 70*5. There was sufficient of the sensa tional about it to recommend it to our friends, the newspaper men, and they made much of it. Yet they might have made more — had they known. There was no bank in Stilsonville at that time, and the Major, being the business head of the place, occasionally had considerablesums of money in his possession. He had no safe; said he did not want one of the bunglesome things in the house; but he took what he considered, and what any of us would have considered, very great precau tions against robbery. The room in which he slept had brick walls, the original house had been of brick, and the door was a massive oaken affair with triple locks. There was but one win dow, and that was covered by a heavy steel netting, screwed on from the inside. The box in which the valuables were kept—an ordinary metal box with a key lock—occu pied a place upon a bureau, set against the wall at the foot of the bed, where the Major could clap his eyes upon it the instant he awoke. Furthermore, the Major was a cap ital pistol shot, and had a reputation for courage which extended pretty well all over that section of the country. You will read
ily understand that it was not what the professional cracksman would term an "easy lay." Nevertheless, the strong box was opened one night while the Major slept with his finger upon the trigger of his pistol, and something over five thousand dollars were taken from it. The netting at the window remained intact, the locks of the door showed no evidences of having been tampered with. and altogether it was a black mystery from the very beginning. There was but one person suspected, even remotely, of the robbery,—the Major's man servant, Horace Steele by name, and, gentle men, as I have learned since, one of the cleverest rascals ever born. Steele was suspected more because the State's attorney insisted upon it than for any other reason. There was little—absolutely nothing in fact —pointing to him as the perpetrator of the robbery. He had been in the room during the afternoon, and again shortly before the Major retired, but the Major testified that he had looked into the box subsequent to dismissing the man and locking the door, and that the money was then intact. However, Steele was arrested, and he was kind enough to secure me as his counsel. I was young then, and he was virtually my first client. Naturally I took up the case with avidity, and knocked down the flimsy arguments of the prosecution as fast as they were presented, Steele sitting in the prison ers' box, watching me with twinkling eyes. When the trial was over, and the jury had returned a verdict of "not guilty" without leaving their seats, he shook me warmly by the hand, and we walked down the street together to my office, where he astounded me by placing two hundred dollars upon the table. " That is your share of the swag," he
