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J. Bromley Lippincott was a tall, dark cadaverous man who looked about sixty,
as he had probably looked at the age of ten, and gave the impression, not
unusual with attorneys-at-law, of having seen so much of life's murky side
that he now automatically suspected everyone he met of nameless crimes.
Formidable was the word for J. Bromley and sinister the word for the bulging
briefcase which he he bore with him like a warrior's shield. Too small to
contain a corpse, except possibly that of a Singer midget, it was large
enough to hold the guilty secrets of half the population of New York, and the
nervous beholder, eyeing it, had visions of documents suddenly popping out
of its interior which would prove him, the nervous beholder, to be legally
debarred from being a feoffee of any fee, fiduciary, or in fee simple or
something of that nature. It was that sort of briefcase.

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