CHAPTER I

“She is an orphan,” said Mr. Collings emotionally.

Orphans were Mr. Collings’ weakness.

In ordinary intercourse as between lawyer and client, he was a stern, reserved man with a cold passion for compromise. Litigants entered his office charged with bubbling joy that their enemies had delivered themselves into their hands; they came talking five figure damages and the stark ruin of men and corporations who and which had offended them. They slunk out again into the glare of an Australian sun, their cases demolished, their spirits broken, their futures clouded. Mr. Collings did not believe in litigation. He believed that things could be arranged.

If it was possible for a murdered man to walk into Mr. Collings’ office and say: “I’ve got an excellent case against Binks: he has just shot me dead. Do you think I can get damages?” Mr. Collings would reply: “I very much doubt it. There is a great deal to be said for Binks. And aren’t you in rather an awkward position yourself? You are carrying about a bullet which undoubtedly is the property of Binks. You never know what point of view a jury will take. You had better let me try to settle this.”

But in the matter of orphans Mr. Collings was slightly unbalanced. He was strictly brought up by parents who compelled him to read books on Sunday that were entirely devoted to orphans and good organ-grinders and little girls who quoted extensively from precious books and died surrounded by weeping negroes. In such literature the villains of the piece were young scoundrels who surreptitiously threw away their crusts and only ate the crumbly part of bread; desperadoes who kicked dogs and threw large flies into spiders’ webs and watched the spider at his fell work with glee.

“She is an orphan,” said Mr. Collings again, and blew his nose loudly.

“She has been an orphan for ten years,” said Mr. William Cathcart cynically.

Mr. Collings was stout, bald, given to afternoon naps; Mr. Cathcart was thin, narrow-faced, not so bald, and never slept at all, so far as anybody knew. He hated orphans. They stood for questions of cestui que use, problems of cy-pres, perplexities of donatio mortis causa and the Guardianship of Infa