The Burden of Proof

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They had been married for thirty-one years, and the following spring, full of resolve and a measure of hope, he would marry again. But that day, on a late afternoon near the end of March, Mr. Alejandro Stern had returned home and, with his attache case and garment bag still in hand, called out somewhat absently from the front entry for Clam, his wife. He was fifty-six years old, stout and' bald, and never particularly good-looking, and he found himself in a mood of intense preoccupation.

For two days he had been in Chicago that city of rough souls on behalf of his most difficult client. Dixon Hartnell was callous, self-centered, and generally full of his lawyers' advice; worst of all, representing him was a permanent engagement. Dixon was Stern's brother-in-law, married to Silvia, his sister, Stern's sole living immediate relation and the enduring object of his affections. For Dixon, of course, his feelings were hardly as pure. In the early years, when Stern's practice mounted to little more than the decorous hustling of clients in the hallways of the misdemeanor courts, serving Dixon's unpredictable needs had paid Stern's rent. Now it was one of those imponderable duties, darkly rooted in the hard soil of Stern's own sense of filial and professional obligation.

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