“Dawson of Mitchell, Dawson, Vance & Bischoffsheimer.  As good lawyers as there are in the country.”

“I ought to tell you,” said Dory, after brief hesitation, “that Judge Torrey calls them a quartette of unscrupulous scoundrels—­says they’re regarded as successful only because success has sunk to mean supremacy in cheating and double-dealing.  Would you mind telling me what terms they gave you—­about fee and expenses?”

“A thousand down, and a note for five thousand,” replied Arthur, compelled to speech by the misgivings Dory was raising within him in spite of himself.

“That is, as the first installment, they take about all the money in sight.  Does that look as if they believed in the contest?”

At this Arthur remembered and understood Dawson’s remark, apparently casual, but really crucial, about the necessity of attaching Dr. Schulze.  Without Schulze, he had no case; and Dawson had told him so!  What kind of a self-hypnotized fool was he, not to hear the plainest warnings?  And without waiting to see Schulze, he had handed over his money!

“I know you think I am not unprejudiced about this will,” Dory went on.  “But I ask you to have a talk with Judge Torrey.  While he made the will, it was at your father’s command, and he didn’t and doesn’t approve it.  He knows all the circumstances.  Before you go any further, wouldn’t it be well to see him?  You know there isn’t an abler lawyer, and you also know he’s honest.  If there’s any way of breaking the will, he’ll tell you about it.”

Hiram Ranger’s son now had the look of his real self emerging from the subsiding fumes of his debauch of folly and fury.  “Thank you, Hargrave,” he said.  “You are right.”

“Go straight off,” advised Dory.  “Go before you’ve said anything to your mother about what you intend to do.  And please let me say one thing more.  Suppose you do finally decide to make this contest.  It means a year, two years, three years, perhaps five or six, perhaps ten or more, of suspense, of degrading litigation, with the best of you shriveling, with your abilities to do for yourself paralyzed.  If you finally lose—­you’ll owe those Chicago sharks an enormous sum of money, and you’ll be embittered and blighted for life.  If you win, they and their pals will have most of the estate; you will have little but the barren victory; and you will have lost your mother.  For, Arthur, if you try to prove that your father was insane, and cut off his family in insane anger, you know it will kill her.”

A long silence; then Arthur moved toward the steps leading down to the drive.  “I’ll think it over,” he said, in a tone very different from any he had used before.

Dory watched him depart with an expression of friendship and admiration.  “He’s going to Judge Torrey,” he said to himself.  “Scratch that veneer of his, and you find his mother and father.”