“Miss Walters persists in acting all the time,” Brainard replied. “She thinks this is a sequel to the play and wants me to hand over to her a lot of money.”
“Sometimes,” Hollinger observed sententiously, “that’s the easiest way to square things, isn’t it?”
Brainard looked at the fight-trust man in astonishment. Was he an accomplice in a vulgar blackmail game?
“It’s not my way,” he said sharply.
“Half a loaf when no part of the loaf is really yours is always more enjoyable than a legal scrimmage over the whole loaf, it seems to me.”
“What do you mean?”
Hollinger threw himself into an easy-chair, lighted his cigar carefully, and beamed at Brainard.
“Did it ever occur to you, my young friend,” he began, “that we four are, so to speak, all in the same boat? We are all adventurers—of that noble company of gentlemen and lady adventurers in life—to paraphrase the quaint motto of the Hudson Bay Company. Now in the course of the complicated tissue of adventure that happens to have brought us three together from very unlike walks in life, you”—he thrust the glowing point of his cigar towards Brainard,—“have proved to be the Star. You’re It! You hold the bag, so to speak. You seem to have shared some of its golden contents with our young friend here who wants to write plays, as he tells me. I do not happen to want anything for myself. I am perfectly disinterested in this case,—fortunately can afford to be. For I have other and sufficiently fat fish frying in my own little pan. So I can play the gracious rôle of Wisdom. . . . Why not be generous to the lady who lost in this matter of the old Dutchman’s millions—you can afford it—and nothing becomes a young unmarried Idealist more than princely generosity with other people’s dollars.”
“But—” Brainard began.
“Pardon me—one moment—to finish clearing the ground. I don’t know the precise manner in which you came into possession of Herbert Krutzmacht’s money any more than I know exactly how he got it away from those who wanted it. I presume the methods were not essentially unlike. It never interests me, these details of acquisition,—to know just how our plutocratic masters have raked together their pelf. But the method of distribution does interest me tremendously. The rich usually show such little capacity for imagination or daring in the disposal of their wealth! However, that is another theme. . . . Now this lady, whose slender talent as an actress I have had the honor of supporting, thinks she has some cogent claim to the unearned increment of the deceased Dutchman. Her idea is probably fantastic—most of our ideas about ‘rights’ are—but it is a fixed idea with her!” He leaned forward and waved his cigar rhythmically to drive home his words. “Unless her idea is adequately gratified, I am afraid she will be unhappy and make you considerable trouble in the course of her effort to satisfy her quite unreasonable desire. Voilà tout, as the French say. Or if you prefer English, Better pay and forget, rather than save a few dollars and regret, my friend.”