Hopson Guilty

Fat, flour-faced and fiftyish, the defendant shuffled out of the first-aid room and into the court. While the judge took his place, while the jury filed in, he crossed & uncrossed his legs, scratched his head, moaned. Charged with mulcting the vast, metaphysical Associated Gas & Electric System (now in reorganization) of almost $20,000,000 in the greatest utilities fraud of all time, Howard Hopson was about to hear the verdict.

It had been a bewildering trial. Allegedly ridden with involutional melancholia, depressive psychosis, and heart disease, Hoppy sucked cough drops to stave off a cold. His alternate moans and mumbles...