"You must be extremely effective, Sir Oliver. What on earth did you say to him that he would even consider settling? He seems to have won outright. What he says is untrue, but there is no way I could prove it."

"No one can ever prove such things," Rathbone agreed, coming a step or two farther into the room and taking the seat Wolff indicated to him. "That is the nature of slander. It works by innuendo, belief and imagination. It plays upon the ugliest sides of human nature, but so subtly there is no armor against it. It is the coward's tool, and like most men, I despise it." He looked at Wolff's dark face with its brilliant eyes and curious, sensitive mouth. "But as I pointed out to Sacheverall, it is a weapon that fits almost any hand, mine as well as his, if need be."

"Yours?" Wolff looked surprised. He remained standing, his back now to the window, silhouetted against it. "Who could you slander, and how would it help? Would it not simply reduce Melville to the appearance of a viciousness born of desperation?"

"Yes, probably. And it is not inconceivable he would refuse to do it anyway," Rathbone conceded. "But Sacheverall does not know that, nor dare he rely upon it. He cannot be certain that if Melville is staring ruin in the face, he may not alter his hitherto honorable character and strike anywhere he can."

"He wouldn't," Wolff said simply. There was no doubt in his eyes, only a kind of bitter, powerful laughter.

"I believe you," Rathbone acknowledged, and he spoke honestly. He surprised himself, but he felt no uncertainty at all that Melville would accept complete destruction before he would sink to saying something of Zillah Lambert he knew to be untrue. He was a man whose behavior in the whole affair was a succession of acts which did not have any apparent logical or emotional line of connection. Rathbone was assailed again with an overwhelming conviction that there was something, one powerful, all-consuming fact, which he did not know but which would explain it all.

Something eased in Wolff's demeanor, something indefinable it was so slight. He was waiting for Rathbone to explain.

"Sacheverall is risking his client's well-being as well as his own, so he has to be certain." Rathbone crossed his legs and smiled up at Wolff, not in humor or even comfort, but in a certain sense of communication that they were in alliance against an attitude, a set of beliefs which they both found repellent but that was too delicate to be given words. "And he may guess or judge that Melville will not react with attack, but he will not judge it of me. He knows better. I too will behave in the interests of my client, not necessarily having sought his permission first."

"Would you?" Wolff said quietly.