The man looked over at his wife.
“You want to know if my wife is worth a hundred dollars?” the man gasped. “I tell you I would not sell my wife for ten thousand dollars. You don’t get my wife!”
Another client, an old woman named Mrs. Glover, had no money but said she would pay with something else. Grace agreed. Once the case was over, Mrs. Glover patted Grace on the shoulder.
“Dearie,” she said. “I’m going to make you something loverly.”
“What are you going to make me?” Grace smiled.
“I’m going to make you a hat. A lovely hat with two white wings, so you won’t have to wear that awful one you have on now.”
As Grace’s reputation began to grow, greater New York began to hear whispers of the indomitable woman in black. Soon, people in the nicer neighborhoods began paging through the city directory and asked to be connected to number 2659 Gramercy. Soon, Grace was representing New Yorkers in insurance trustbuster cases. One such suit lasted three years and was finally ruled in Grace’s favor; she was able to return seventeen thousand dollars to twenty-three widows in Bath Beach. Regardless of her clients’ income base, Grace’s opponents remained similar: they were often the rich or the desirous to be, driven by that merciless presence that stood behind all the great possessions, carrying its own kind of curse.
One afternoon, a man with dark features and fashionable clothing made the trip to Bible House. His watch and cufflinks gleamed in the otherwise dreary line. When it was finally his turn, he walked in, sat in Grace’s office, and announced that his name was Manuel Walls, the second secretary of the Spanish delegation to Washington. Grace closed the door. Mr. Walls, who was young and handsome, told Grace that on returning from a trip to New Brighton in August, he entered his Fifth Avenue bachelor apartment to find that his door had been forced open, his armoire broken into, and the dress suitcase in which he kept his jewels and coins missing. The total loss amounted to three thousand dollars in personal property, which Mr. Walls immediately reported to the police. After a few days, the police told him they had no leads.
Grace took his case and, after questioning Walls, escorted him out and got to work. She quickly identified a suspect: Mr. Lane, a tall New York acquaintance of Walls who had been to his apartment and had seen his coins and jewels. Grace’s detective work painted Lane as a cosmopolitan young man of “good address and Tenderloin tastes.” Grace even found a witness putting him in the apartment house on the day of the robbery. With plenty of circumstantial evidence on her side, Grace went before the grand jury and got Lane indicted. Now, she just had to find him.
Grace put fliers around the area of Walls’s apartment asking for information. Within hours, James Matthews, a Pullman car porter, offered up Lane in exchange for twenty-five dollars. He wanted the money in advance. Grace declined but offered Mr. Matthews double the sum if he helped bring about Lane’s capture. Matthews refused, so Grace had him subpoenaed to appear before the judge. But when Grace showed Matthews a photo of Lane in court, he calmly stated that he had never seen him before. They had to let him go.
As Grace boiled in frustration, District Attorney Nott told her to report to Dooling so that a detective could be placed at her disposal. That Saturday afternoon, Grace asked Detective Cooney to go to Grand Central Station to meet Matthews when he came in off his car. Grace asked Cooney, very politely, if he might get Matthews to understand how utterly complicated she might make his life if he did not tell her Lane’s whereabouts.
Within hours, Matthews said he would be very happy to help.
The next day, Grace and the police detective found Lane posing as the keeper of a chop suey restaurant. The police raided the place and arrested Lane. He confessed that he had planned the heist of Walls’s jewels (just as Grace thought) and that a man named Demarco had assisted him. Within twelve hours, Lane pleaded guilty before the judge. He then gave up Demarco, who led Grace to the shops where the jewelry and coins were pawned, and they were confiscated from under dirty glass. Manuel Walls kissed Grace on the cheek when she returned to his apartment with his missing riches.
“Of course, we do not bar clients with money,” Grace said to the reporters who then began to call her office. “Mr. Walls is a man of means, but my idea in establishing the firm was to demonstrate that a legal bureau for the aid of the poor could be operated at a scale of prices within their reach and to their great benefit, and I think this has been done. Starting out alone, I now have four lawyers working with me, and I will have to increase the force soon on account of the press of business.” She paused, wanting to get this next part right.
“We offer St. Regis law at Mills Hotel prices,” said Grace, firmly, “and such other assistance as they may need in the redressing of wrongs at a cost within their means.” When a reporter asked about how she had solved the case so quickly after the police had given up, Grace did not couch her words.
“To begin with, the police are no good,” Grace told the reporter. “They had all the facts to start on that I had and did nothing. Even after I had made out the case against Lane it was necessary for me to find him. The police wouldn’t help.” The coverage of the case of Manuel Walls, sophisticated young diplomat, opened up new opportunities for the People’s Law Firm. But even as more calls began to come in, it was still the “little cases” that remained the firm’s bread and butter.