As he had said to his secretary, the result was that he found himself now ready to abandon his adventurous position upon demand without a sense of overwhelming loss and disaster. He had no more feeling of enmity or of contempt for Lorilla Walters than Hollinger evinced. She was playing her little part in the complex scheme of destiny, playing it vulgarly and crudely, and he suspected improperly. But what occupied his thoughts at this crisis, much more than the possible machinations the actress might be able to set on foot against him or the instability of his own fortunes, was the woman’s situation. What Hollinger had said for her in plea of extenuation had touched him more deeply than he had let the fight-trust man see. It was perfectly true that she should be provided for out of Krutzmacht’s loot in life. He tried to think how this could be brought about without compromising himself or his elusive mistress’s rights. He resolved on the morrow to see not only his lawyers but Hollinger also, and contrive some plan by which the ex-stenographer could obtain justice without gratifying her spite. “But she is not the old man’s heir—of that I am sure!” he said to himself as at last he sought his bed. “And Melody lives—I stick to that! The dream will hold to the end, not go to pieces in any vulgar fashion like this!” XIII The perfectly correct New York lawyers to whom Brainard told his tale later that morning evinced no surprise. There was nothing in the heart or brain of man, they seemed to say, that could flutter a New York lawyer. “It would be advisable to find Miss Melody straightway,” they felt, and inquired what sort of title Brainard held to the Arizona mine. When he confessed that it was only a tax title, they remarked that under the Arizona laws any heirs of the dead German had a year more in which to redeem the property. That did not trouble Brainard. The lawyers very strongly urged their client not to make advances to Miss Walters or to her friend and manager on her behalf. That would be suicidal, they averred, opening the way at once to endless blackmail and even criminal prosecution. “Let the matter rest until the interested parties make some move,” they advised, in a perfectly cautious and obvious way. “I’ve done my best to find the heirs, as you people very well know. I’m convinced there’s only one, and I’m not sure that she has any legal claim. But hers was the only name the old man mentioned the one time I saw him.” “You certainly made a mistake in not getting hold of that trunk!” “After my settlement in Paris with the bankers,” Brainard explained, “I felt that it was of the first importance to go to Monument as soon as possible; and by the time I turned up at the Chicago railroad station, the trunk had disappeared.” “If no heir can be found, there is not much danger of trouble; but if they should happen to get hold of this girl you call Melody, it might be awkward.”