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scarcely heard the bailiff announce “the Honorable Sir William Rayburn. The court will be upstanding.” When the sound of participants being seated wafted up to him, he opened his eyes and watched the Clerk of Court read the action being brought.
    It was then that Cole noticed a curious imbalance in numbers on the two sides of the floor below. On the left side of the courtroom were at least a score of black robes, with senior barristers at the front table and junior members of the defense’s representation filling the long table behind them. On the right was a single barrister, a gnarled old fellow with a wisp of white hair poking out from beneath his periwig, a rumpled robe, and a definite stoop to his shoulders. Stacks of documents and books containing precedents and intended evidence were piled on the tables in the midst of the throng on the left. The old man had but a single slim folder on the table before him. Cole frowned.
    Turning his attention to the defendant’s front table, he was startled by the sight of one of the senior partners of his own legal firm: Sir Harvey Farnsworth, barrister, counselor to the wealthy, and blowhard extraordinaire. He scowled atFarnsworth, then at his meddlesome uncle. An “interesting” case, the old man had said, knowing all the while that Cole’s former firm represented the defendants. He didn’t know whether to be intrigued or outraged at the old man’s attempt to—what? Goad him back to the bar?
    He was surprised again to recognize Farnsworth’s clients as Sir Dennis Ecklesbery, Carter Townshend, and Sir Edward Dunwoody, partners in a firm of solicitors with offices in the East India Building, where his own firm of barristers resided. These were men he knew by both reputation and professional association. Reputable, well-heeled, dependable, and scrupulous to a fault, they were part of the bedrock of the London legal establishment. According to the cause being read by the clerk, they had refused to release funds and properties to one Miss Madeline Duncan.
    Miss Duncan, whoever she was, didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting her money out of Ecklesbery, Townshend, and Dunwoody
, he thought grimly.
Or out of Chancery
.
    Chancery was a veritable tar pit. General wisdom held that heirs who fell into its unplumbed depths could flail and protest and petition all they wanted, but they were stuck there until either fossilization or the Second Coming, whichever claimed them first.
    Sir William hammered down a lengthy recital of “whereases” and “pursuant untos” and peered down over the bench at the venerable counsel for the plaintiff. “Sir Richard Pendergast. Your opening statement.”
    When the old fellow struggled to make it to his feet, Sir William watched for a moment, then waved him back down. “Bother it all, Pendergast, save your breath. From the looks of you, you’ll need it. Suffice it to say, your client wants her money released from trust.” Then he turned to Farnsworth with an impatient glare. “Get on with it, man. State your case.”
    Sir William’s judicial demeanor was frequently characterizedas being in the style of a Socrates—bitten by a rabid mastiff. Cole smiled.
    “Your Honor.” Farnsworth positioned himself before the bench and gripped the folds of his robe in an oratorical pose. “My clients have been given a weighty and most solemn charge. It is their somber and often lamentable duty to act in the guise of a guardian … to see to the best interests of their clients, especially when their clients’ judgments fail them. It is my clients’ sworn duty—as charged by the law, by their profession’s noble ethics, and by the terms of the testaments they execute—to protect their clients’ good names and good fortunes.
    “This action is wholly derived from their solemn and even sacred sense of obligation to their clients, both past and present. For these good gentlemen—Sir Dennis Ecklesbery, Sir Edward Dunwoody, and Mr.