The Beneficent Burglar (ePub)

Excerpt: 'The agitated transit of Mr. Lewis Copewell through the anteroom of the Honorable Alexander Hamilton Burrow created a certain stir. With all the lawless magnificence of a comet that runs amuck through the heavens, he burst upon the somewhat promiscuous assemblage already seated there. The assemblage sat in dumb and patient expectancy. Quite obviously it was a waiting-list, already weary with enforced procrastination. Its many eyes were anxiously focussed on the door that sequestered the great man in the aloofness of his sanctum A young woman gazed across her typewriter at the supplicants seeking audience, with a calm hauteur which seemed to say, "Wait, varlets, wait! The great do not hurry. They returned her gaze sullenly but in silence. None ventured to penetrate beyond her desk to the portal forbiddingly placarded, "Private." None, that is, until Mr. Copewell arrived "Where's Aleck?" demanded that gentleman, mopping his perspiring brow with a silk handkerchief. "I want to see him quick! The young woman looked up blankly. She knew that Mr. Copewell and her employer were, in their private capacities, on terms of intimacy, but duty is duty, and law is impartial. Many persons wanted to see him quick. Since the triumph of civic reform had converted the attorney who paid her salary from a mere Aleck, who was even as other Alecks, into Alexander the Great, she felt that his friends in private life must adapt themselves to the altered condition of affairs.'