“The trouble is I didn’t stop there,” I confessed. “I told you I liked to scheme. I don’t figure knowledge is any good unless you can apply it. I’d studied out a lot of legal tricks. I knew how to apply them.”

“Go on from there,” she said, her eyes showing interest. “What happened?”

“I told this man it would be possible to commit a murder so there was nothing anyone could do about it. He said I was wrong. I got mad and offered to bet him five hundred dollars I was right, and could prove it. He said he was ready to put up the money any time I’d put up my five hundred bucks. I told him to come back the next day. That night he was arrested. He turned out to be a small-time gangster. He babbled everything he knew to the police. Among other things, he told them that I had agreed to tell him how he could commit a murder and get off scot-free. That he was to pay me five hundred dollars for the information, and then if it looked good to him, he had planned to bump off a rival gangster.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“The grievance committee went after me hammer and tongs. They revoked my license for a year. They thought I was some sort of a shyster. I told them it was an argument and a bet. Under the circumstances, they didn’t believe me. And, naturally, they took the other side of the question—that a man couldn’t commit deliberate murder and go unpunished.”

“Could he, Donald?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“And you know how?”

“Yes. I told you that was my weakness. I like to figure things out.”

“And locked inside that head of yours is a plan by which I could kill someone and the law couldn’t do a damn thing about it?”

“Yes.”

“You mean if I was smart enough so I didn’t get caught.”

“I don’t mean anything of the sort. You’d have to put yourself in my hands and do just as I told you.”

“You don’t mean that old gag about fixing it so they couldn’t find the body?”

“That,” I said, “is the bunk. I’m talking about a loophole in the law itself, something a man could take advantage of to commit a murder.”

“Tell me, Donald.”

I laughed and said, “Remember, I’ve been through that once.”

“When’s your year up?”

“It’s up. It was up two months ago.”

“Why aren’t you back practicing law?”

“It takes money to fit up an office with furniture, law books, and wait for clients,” I said.

“Won’t the law-book companies trust you?”

“Not after you’ve been suspended.”

“And you couldn’t get a job in a law office?”

“Not a chance.”

“What do you intend to do with your legal education, Donald?”