His contacts in the underworld of crime and poverty on the borders of the law were of no use to him. Zillah Lambert lived the closed life of girls just turning into women, leaving the schoolroom and preparing for marriage, seeking husbands— and love, if possible. Perhaps they dreamed of glamour, romance, teeming emotions before the steadier years ahead of domesticity and children, of making their mark in society, and eventually of settling with a mature resignation and exercise of power—and, one hoped, serene prosperity. It was a life unimaginable to him, totally feminine, and of a dependency not in the least attractive. But it was apparently what most women wished.

He did not need gossip, but something tangible enough to make Lambert withdraw his case. It was an ugly thing to seek. Monk's sympathies were largely with Zillah Lambert, because however you looked at it, Melville had behaved like a fool. And so had Rathbone for taking the case and allowing it to come to trial. He could not win. He should have settled long before this.

Unless, of course, there really was something about Zillah which Melville had discovered when it was too late, but out of regard for her or for her father, who had been his patron and friend, or even possibly because he could not prove it, he had felt unable to marry her.

Monk owed him at least that possibility.

He stopped pacing the floor, collected his hat and coat and set out to find someone who frequented the same circles as the Lamberts and might give him a word, a remark let slip, anything he could follow which might unravel into whatever it was Melville had learned. He had only a hazy idea who, but certainly they would not come to him while he was sitting in Fitzroy Street.

He was crossing Tottenham Court Road, only half watching the traffic, when a better idea came to him. It should have been obvious from the beginning. If Melville had discovered this blemish, whatever it was, then he should follow Melville's path, not Zillah Lambert's. And that would necessarily be far easier. He changed direction abruptly and strode south towards Oxford Street, passing fashionable ladies, men about business and a steadily thickening stream of traffic. He had a definite goal.

By late afternoon he knew far more of Killian Melville's daily habits, his working hours, which were extraordinarily long, his very restricted social life, and his solitary recreation, which seemed only an extension of his work, by walks taken alone and apparently deep in thought. Melville spent hours in art galleries and museums, but always on his own, except for rare encounters with a dark and slightly eccentric man named Isaac Wolff, who was apparently also an intellectual of some sort, given to study of some artistic work, but of a more literary nature.