Still untaken are several steps that required goodwill from local bar associations and others who had opposed the combination. "[I am] not a fan of Neal's," admitted John Peck, a former board member of the San Gabriel-Pomona Valley program and a Pasadena Bar Association board member. Peck says bad feelings still linger among Ailies of the old program who feel left out. "They really screwed us. We had a good program," Peck said. An observer familiar with the reconfiguration debate who requested anonymity wondered why Dudovitz had not spent more time mending fences. "He ought to be bending over backwards for reconciliation, but if you want to do impact work and people in the San Gabriel Valley want direct services, you have to accommodate that or change your approach," the observer said. "Neal would never consider doing that." More than a year after he officially incorporated the San Gabriel-Pomona Valley, Dudovitz had not placed a local resident on the board of Neighborhood Legal Services or made the rounds of the private legal community to recruit the volunteer lawyers. "Our emphasis has been on having our potential clients know about us and deliver services to them," Dudovitz said. "We have done that spectacularly." He did not hire any of the old program's nine lawyers and has yet to permanently place any of his 18 new hires in the San Gabriel-Pomona Valley. The lack of a legal aid presence in Pomona prompted the bar association and court officials to start their own once-monthly family law clinic. After learning of the effort, Dudovitz sent personnel to staff the clinic for three hours per week and is helping to write a grant application to fund a self-help kiosk for Pomona patterned on the center he pioneered in Van Nuys. The help, although late, has earned Dudovitz some appreciation. "There has been a transition and [the clinic] has helped to fill some void," said Deni Butler, administrator for the Eastern District Superior Court. "But we are working together quite nicely contrary to what the other side issue is." Scott Wheeler, president of the Eastern Bar Association of Los Angeles and an ally of the old program, said he mobilized his 200 members to staff the clinic after watching the ranks of unserved poor grow over the past year.

What did Dudovitz feel he had done spectacularly?

Rolfe put down the little dog he had been holding, and went out into the hall. The dog accompanied him, frisking about him in friendly fashion. Rolfe first examined the bedroom that he had seen Inspector Chippenfield enter. It was a small room, containing a double bed. It was prettily furnished in white, with white curtains, and toilet-table articles in ivory to match. A glance round the room convinced Rolfe that it was impossible for a man to secrete himself in it. The door of the wardrobe had been flung open by the inspector, and the dresses and other articles of feminine apparel it contained flung out on the floor. There was no other hiding-place possible, except beneath the bed, and the ruthless hand of the inspector had torn off the white muslin bed hangings, revealing emptiness underneath. Rolfe went out into the hall again, and entered the room next the bedroom. This apartment was apparently used as a dining-room, for it contained a large table, a few chairs, a small sideboard, a spirit-stand, a case of books and ornaments, and two small oak presses. Plainly, there was no place in it where a man could hide himself. The next room was the bathroom, which was also empty. Opposite the bathroom was a small bedroom, very barely furnished, offering no possibility of concealment. Then the passage opened into a large roomy kitchen, the full width of the rooms on both sides of the hall, and the kitchen completed the flat.

What did the small room look like?

Allan crouched over his desk once more, pen in hand and mind blank. He contemplated a story, an outline he had laboriously constructed some time ago. He had filled his pen and raised it, the nib descending towards the paper, before the sound came: the gentle, persistent tapping of the gnarled, primeval willow touching the window with long, insistent fingers. His eyes awoke with a passionate, determined flame, though the only light came from the glutted moon. Allan filled page after page, the words escaping from his mind onto the paper. Where before they had marched in regiments, practiced in ranks and followed their leaders' commands, the words now escaped in their true forms, unhindered by any stricture. He continued long into the night, until the eldritch orb had sunk into the waiting hands of the willow, raised perpetually skyward. Arthur looked up from the results of a night's frenzied labors and looked Allan in the eye. "What is this?" he queried, indicating the pages he held in his left hand. "I decided that since I wasn't having much success with more traditional stories, I might see what sort of work I produced if I let my imagination go freely," Allan replied, somewhat less self-assured than he had been the previous night. "What in G-d's name could have possessed you to do such a thing," cried Arthur, nearly raising his voice. "After all I said the day before, why have you abandoned centuries of literary progress for some self-indulgent fantasy?" He shook the papers at Allan, raising them like a belt above the head of a disobedient son. "This is nothing but a glorified Grimm's tale, a miscarried child of Stoker, a creation less fit to be published than to be told around an open fire at the hovel of some peasant!" He spoke the last word with such heavy intonation that Allan shrank back before the physical wave of sound emanating from Arthur's throat. "Do you hate the modern system of literature? Do you personally despise the works the Enlightenment or the progress made since Shakespeare?" For a moment, Allan could hardly do more than shake his head. "No, of course not I " "Then why," Arthur barreled on, "do you disregard them all and return to this superstitious babble, this morbid, paganistic drivel?
What did Arthur ask Allan?