Uncle Willy got off the bus in Beverly Hills and walked two blocks north of Sunset, up the hill where the big homes and apartment houses towered perchlike against the sky. He entered a small open courtyard. The low one-storied building surrounded it on three sides. There was a great deal of tropical shrubbery and a tiny fountain in a copper bowl. On the left was the door of a dentist’s office, to the right were a couple of doctors. In the rear, beyond a screen of bougainvillea, was a door on which, in gilt letters, was printed R. Mocksly Snope, Attorney At Law. Uncle Willy crossed the courtyard and entered.

An artfully cosmeticked redhead in a tan sleeveless dress was seated in the outer office. The thing she was seated behind might have been a desk or it might have been a slab of metallic substance which had fallen through the roof off an airplane; Uncle Willy couldn’t make up his mind which.

“Yes, sir?” The smile was careful, the eyes amused.

“I’d like to see Mr. Snope.”

“Do you have an appointment, sir?” She clipped legal-sized pages together and stacked them at the edge of the metallic structure before her.

“No. Just tell him it’s Willy Dolman. He knows me.”

“Mr. Snope is very busy today.”

“I’ll wait.” Uncle Willy looked around for a chair and found some contorted steel tubing and black plastic foam. He sat down. The thing fitted you strangely close, he thought, once you got into it.

She lifted a section of the metallic desk and peered into it, as if she might have a cake baking inside; then she spoke, softly inaudible words and afterward she listened. Then she looked in surprise at Willy.

“Mr. Snope will see you now,” she said, as if she could scarcely believe it. She rose and walked to a door and opened it. Uncle Willy, with his hat in his hands, went on in. Snope was grinning at him from the other side of the room. Snope’s carpet was a deep garnet red and his desk had no resemblance to a wing fallen off a plane; it was solid mahogany, six feet across, and shone like a mirror.

“Well, long time no see. Have a chair,” Snope said, and opened a leather box and offered Willy a cigar.

Snope was about sixty, a stout man with a ruddy skin. He wore a gray hard-weave suit which must have cost around three hundred dollars in Willy’s opinion. There was a peculiarity about Snope; in spite of his obvious age he had a certain juvenile softness and cheerfulness, an odd innocence, considering his class of clients and the seamy side of the legal profession he practiced.

“I was glad to hear you were out, Willy. How are things with you?”

“Not too bad.” Willy explained about Mr. Chilworth and his job.