Free Ways and Means by Henry Cecil

would.’
    ‘I see light,’ said Nicholas. ‘Who’s to seduce whom?’
    ‘The word is “entice”, not “seduce”. Now, enticement actions are not looked on with favour by the Courts because in the ordinary husband and wife case the Divorce Court is available, and judges and juries no doubt think that the only reason for bringing an enticement action instead of a divorce case is to get publicity. In other words, legal blackmail. But if someone takes away someone else’s wife without seducing her, then there’d be no ground for a divorce case — not for three years, anyway — but there would be ground for an enticement action.’
    ‘So you mean,’ said Nicholas, who was never very far behind once the seed was sown — ‘that one of us takes away the other’s wife, that we have an enticement action, full of fruity incidents and that then our wives sell their life stories to the papers.’
    ‘And we too, I dare say,’ said Basil. ‘We can’t make a fortune, but, if we play our cards well, we should do quite decently out of it. Of course, we’ll have to find the legal expenses, which’ll be quite a bit, and we’ll have to live until the case is over, but I reckon we can just about do that on what we’ve got. We’ll have to go carefully, though. Now, what d’you all say?’ They talked it over at length and the more they did so the better it seemed.
    We’ve got to make it really alive,’ said Basil. ‘When we give evidence we’ve got to know our facts, and we’ll have to have some genuine independent evidence as well.’
    ‘So we’ll have to go through all the motions, you mean,’ said Nicholas.
    ‘Exactly. My case will be that you, my oldest friend, have deliberately set out to steal my wife from me, with the result that eventually she leaves me and goes to live with you and Petula. Your case will be that I’m a brute of a husband who’s driven my wife away. Petula will stand up for you. We must act all the scenes, even the ones between ourselves.’
    ‘How lucky,’ said Nicholas, ‘that you’re not going to allege misconduct between me and Elizabeth.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Basil. ‘And don’t either of you forget it.’
    Elizabeth looked, how could you? And Petula said: ‘You can rely on me.’
    So they voted for the plan and went into it in great detail. It was like making the scenario for a play. Basil and Nicholas were both quite right in insisting that they should play their parts in full throughout. Giving evidence of things which haven’t happened is a very difficult task indeed. If, however, you actually have done the things of which you are speaking, it is comparatively easy, even if, as in the present case, it was all (as between the main actors) only part of a play.
    A week later Mr Brian Mallet, a young solicitor who had not long been admitted, received a new client, Mr Basil Merridew. Clients were so scarce for Mr Mallet that he did not even dare to keep Mr Merridew waiting in case he went away. It was not due to any lack of ability that Mr Mallet had few clients, but simply to inexperience and the lack of enough influential friends. He would have been wiser to have taken a position as managing clerk for a year or two, but he was of a very independent mind, he hated receiving orders, and he liked to be on his own. Basil had chosen him out of the Law List , as one of the most recently admitted solicitors practising by himself.
    ‘Mr Basil Merridew, sir,’ announced the shorthand-typist-cashier-managing-clerk-and-office-boy.
    ‘Please come in and sit down, sir,’ said Mr Mallet. ‘What can I do for you?’
    ‘Thank you. I’m in a bad way. May I smoke, please?’
    ‘Of course. Please have one of mine. What is the trouble?’
    ‘Terrible. I don’t find it easy to talk about.’
    ‘I quite understand. Please take your time.’
    ‘Are you a married man, if you’ll forgive me asking?’ said Basil.
    ‘Not yet.’
    ‘Then you won’t be able to understand. I hope you