"In a way, yes; as its legal representative on the ground." "That won't do. If you carry this thing through successfully it must be on your own account, and not as the company's paid servant. You must resign and make terms with Boston beforehand; and that, too, without telling Boston what you propose to do." He haggled a little at that. "The company is entitled to my services," he asserted. "It is entitled to what it pays for--your legal services. But this is entirely different. You will be acting upon your own initiative, and you'll have to spend money like water at your own risk. You must be free to deal with Boston as an outsider." "But I have no money to spend," he objected. Again the brown eyes grew luminous; and again she said: "What would you do without me? Happily, my information came early enough to enable me to get a letter to Mr. Ormsby. He answered promptly by wire this morning. Here is his telegram." She had been winding a tightly folded slip of paper around her fingers, and she smoothed it out and gave it to him. He held it in a patch of the electric light between the dancing leaf shadows and read: "Plot Number Two approved. Have wired one hundred thousand to Kent's order Security Bank. Have him draw as he needs." "So now you see," she went on, "you have the sinews of war. But you must regard it as an advance and name your fee to the Boston folk so you can pay it back." He protested again, rather weakly. "It looks like extortion; like another graft," he said; and now she lost patience with him. "Of all the Puritan fanatics!" she cried. "If it were a simple commercial transaction by which you would save your clients a round seventy million dollars, which would otherwise be lost, would you scruple to take a proportionate fee?" "No; certainly not." "Well, then; you go and tell Mr. Loring to wire his Advisory Board, and to do it to-night." "But I'll have to name a figure," said Kent. "Of course," she replied. Kent thought about it for a long minute. Then he said: "I wonder if ten thousand dollars, and expenses, would paralyze them?" Miss Van Brock's comment was a little shriek of derision. "I knew you'd make difficulties when it came to the paying part of it, and since I didn't know, myself, I wired Mr. Ormsby again. Here is what he says," and she untwisted a second telegram and read it to him. "'Fee should not be less than five per cent. of bonded indebtedness; four-fifths in stock at par; one-fifth cash; no cure, no pay.'" "Three million five hundred thousand dollars!" gasped Kent. "It's only nominally that much," she laughed. "The stock part of it is merely your guaranty of good faith: it is worth next to nothing now, and it will be many a long day before it goes to par, even if you are successful in saving its life. So your magnificent fee shrinks to seven hundred thousand dollars, less your expenses." "But heavens and earth! that's awful!" said Kent.