“Think not?” and again Gilmore laughed, but before his eyes, fierce, compelling, Langham’s glance wavered and fell.

“I got the money from my father,” he muttered huskily.

“You’re a liar!” said the gambler.  “I know where you got that money, and you know I know.”  There was a long pause, and then Gilmore jerked out: 

“But don’t you worry about that.  In your own fashion you have been my friend, and it’s dead against my creed to go back on a friend unless he tries to throw me down; so don’t you make the mistake of doing that, or I’ll spoil your luck!  You think you got North where you want him; don’t you be too sure of that!  There’s one person, just one, who can clear him, at least there’s only one who is likely to try, and I’ll tell you who it is—­it’s your wife—­” For an instant Langham thought Gilmore had taken leave of his senses, but the gambler’s next question filled him with vague terror.

“Where was she late that afternoon, do you know?”

“What afternoon?” asked Langham.

Gilmore gave him a contemptuous glance.

“Thanksgiving afternoon, the afternoon of the murder,” he snapped.

“She was at my father’s, she dined there,” said Langham slowly.

“That may be true enough, but she didn’t get there until after six o’clock—­I’ll bet you what you like on that, and I’ll bet you, too, that I know where she was from five to six.  Do you take me up?  No?  Of course you don’t!  Well, I’ll tell you all the same.  She was in North’s rooms—­”

“You lie, damn you!” cried Langham, springing to his feet.  He made an ineffectual effort to seize Gilmore by the throat, but the gambler thrust him aside with apparent ease.

“Don’t try that or you’ll get the worst of it, Marsh; you’ve been soaking up too much whisky to be any good at that game with me!” said Gilmore.

[Illustration:  “She was in North’s rooms—­“]

His manner was cool and determined.  He took Langham roughly by the shoulders and threw him back in his chair.  The lawyer’s face was ghastly in the gray light that streamed in through the windows, but he had lost his sense of personal fear in another and deeper and less selfish emotion.  Yet he realized the gambler’s power over him, the power of a perfect and absolute knowledge of his most secret and hidden concerns.

Gilmore surveyed him with a glance of quiet scorn.

“It was about half past five when she turned up at North’s rooms.  He had just come up the stairs ahead of her; I imagine he knew she was coming.  I guess I could tell you a few things you don’t know!  All during the summer and fall they’ve been meeting on the quiet—­” he laughed insolently.  “Oh, you have been all kinds of a fool, Marsh; I guess you’ve got on to the fact at last.  And I don’t wonder you are anxious to see North hang, and that you won’t go near him; I’d kill him if I stood in your place.  But maybe we can fix it so the law will