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I was surprised that Wolfe didn’t stop him, and finally decided that he let him ramble on just to get additional support for his long-standing opinion of lawyers. If so he got it.
    Arnold covered everything. He had a lot to say about tort-feasors, going back a couple of centuries, with emphasis on the mental state of a tort-feasor. Another item he covered at length was proximate cause. He got really worked up about proximate cause, but it was so involved that I lost track and passed.
    Here and there, though, he made sense. At one point he said, “The idea of a preliminary payment, as they called it, was clearly inadmissible. It is not reasonable to expect a man, even if he stipulates an obligation, to make a payment thereon until either the total amount of the obligation, or an exact method of computing it, has been agreed upon.”
    At another point he said, “The demand for so large a sum can in fact be properly characterized as blackmail. They knew that if the action went to trial, and if we showed that my client’s deed sprang from his knowledge that his daughter had been wronged, a jury would not be likely to award damages. But they also knew that we would be averse to making that defense.”
    “Not his knowledge,” Wolfe objected. “Merely his belief. His daughter says she had misinformed him.”
    “We could have showed knowledge,” Arnold insisted.
    I looked at Clara with my brows up. She was being contradicted flatly on the chronology of her lie and her truth, but either she and her father didn’t get the implication of it or they didn’t want to get started on that again.
    At another point Arnold said, “Even if my client’s deed was tortious and damages would be collectible, the amount could not be agreed upon until the extent of the injury was known. We offered, without prejudice, twenty thousand dollars in full settlement, for a general release. They refused. They wanted a payment forthwith on account. We refused that on principle. In the end there was agreement on only one thing: that an effort should be made to arrive at the total amount of damage. Of course that was what Dr. Lloyd was there for. He was asked for a prognosis, and he stated that - but you don’t need to take hearsay.
    He’s here, and you can get it direct.”
    Wolfe nodded. “If you please, Doctor?”
    I thought, My God, here we go again with another expert.
    But Lloyd had mercy on us. He kept it down to our level and didn’t take anything like an hour. Before he spoke he took another swallow from his third helping of bourbon and water with mint, which had smoothed out some of the lines on his handsome face and taken some of the worry from his eyes.
    “I’ll try to remember,” he said slowly, “exactly what I told them. First I described the damage the blow had done. The thyroid and arytenoid cartilages on the left side had been severely injured, and to a lesser extent the cricoid.” He smiled - a superior smile, but not supercilious. “I waited two weeks, using indicated treatment, thinking an operation might not be required, but it was.
    When I got inside I confess I was relieved; it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. It was a simple operation, and he healed admirably. I wouldn’t have been risking much that day if I had given assurance that his voice would be as good as ever in two months, three at the most, but the larynx is an extremely delicate instrument, and a tenor like Mion’s is a remarkable phenomenon, so I was cautious enough merely to say that I would be surprised and disappointed if he wasn’t ready, fully ready, for the opening of the next opera season, seven months from then. I added that my hope and expectation were actually more optimistic than that.”
    Lloyd pursed his lips. “That was it, I think. Nevertheless, I welcomed the suggestion that my prognosis should be reinforced by Rentner’s. Apparently it would be a major factor in the decision about the amount to be paid in damages,
    and I didn’t