A few murderers had come before him for their preliminary hearings, but they'd been of no interest; they were the sort of murderer who pulls a knife in the middle of a barroom argument. It was all so dull, so drab, so tediously predictable, that more than once Judge Blick had said to his wife Blanche, in their pleasant airy home in Riverdale, "If I ever get an interesting crook in front of me, I'll let the son of a bitch go." But it had never happened, and of course it never would.

"Thirty dollars or thirty days," he announced to a defendant of such low quality that the fellow actually started adding things up on his fingers. "Next case."

"Bail to be set at five hundred dollars. Remand in the custody of–"

"License suspended for ninety days."

"–to be enjoined from communication of any kind with the said ex-wife–"

"Bail to be set at four thousand dollars. Remand in the custody of–"

"–to be turned over to the military authorities at–"

"Bail to be set at seven hundred fifty dollars. Remand–"

"Bail to be set at forty-seven dollars." (Complaint from the public defender.) "You're quite right, Counselor, I wasn't thinking. Bail to be set at eight hundred dollars. Next case."

The next case, according to the papers on Judge Blick's desk, was a grand larceny. Not very grand; the fellow had been caught stealing television sets from a repair shop. John Archibald Dortmunder, unemployed, forty years of age, two convictions and prison terms for robbery, no other convictions, no known source of income, being represented by an attorney appointed by the court. A loser, obviously. Another dull fellow, another dull crime, another dull two and a half minutes in the judicial career of the Honorable Leonard Blick.