Rosalie shook Blake’s shoulder.

“Doctor!” she cried, “can’t you see what she’s aiming at?  She’s trying to drag us into her blackmailing.  She’s tryin’ to make this look like a plant.”  She whirled on Norcross.

“Listen, Mr. Norcross.  I’ll tell you what this was done for!  Do you know a youngish lookin’ man, smooth-shaven, neat dresser, gray eyes, about forty-five, got something to do with Wall Street, wears one of them little twisted-up red and white society buttons in his buttonhole, has a trick of holding his chin between his fingers—­so—­when he’s thinkin’?  Because he started it.  He’s the nigger in your woodpile.  He came here a week before you ever saw Mrs. Markham, bringin’ the notes about Helen Whitton—­the dope that she’s been feedin’ you.  If you’ll put that together with what the spirit—­she—­Miss Markham, told you tonight about declarin’ dividends—­”

“Mrs. Granger,” interrupted Mrs. Markham, “you are a shrewd woman, but you carry your deductions a little far—­”

“Deductions, your grandmother!” retorted Rosalie Le Grange, “To think how close you come to foolin’ even me that’s played this game, girl and woman, for twenty-five years!  If I hadn’t caught you so anxious to stop that little girl from seein’ that you kept Practical Methods of Hypnotism’ hid behind the bookcase, I’d have gone away from here believin’ that she was deep in the mud as you was in the mire.  You certainly sprung a new one on me!”

The eyes of Norcross lighted, as though with a new idea, and he broke abruptly into this feminine exchange: 

“I do not believe that this is a plant.  Mrs. Markham, shall we bargain?”

“I like the life in London,” said Mrs. Markham.  “I have been waiting to retire.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“Oh dear, no!  Fifty.”

Norcross drew a check book, flipped it on his knee.  Mrs. Markham raised a protesting hand.

“Yes, you will—­you’ll take it in a check or not at all,” he said.  “I want this transaction recorded.  I’ll tell you why.  It is worth just that to keep this story out of the papers.  I was caught, and I pay.  It is worth no more.  I will give you this check to-night.  You will cash it in the morning.  I shall have the cancelled check as a voucher.  If ever you ask me for a dollar more, you go to State’s Prison for extortion—­on the testimony of these three witnesses.  My legal department is the best in the country.  In short, it is worth fifty thousand dollars to me.  It is not worth fifty thousand and one.  Also, you sail to London within a week.  Does that go?”

Mrs. Markham drummed a minute with her fingers, and her face went a shade paler.

“It does,” she said in a low voice.

Blake bent over Annette.

“Do you hear that?” he asked.  “Do you know what it means?  It is called blackmail!”

“Oh, Aunt Paula, Aunt Paula!” whispered Annette.  Her face settled closer on Blake’s shoulder, and she burst into a torrent of weeping.