“I am dumb to you, and blind to you.  Let me be.”

“Let you be!” he repeated.  “It’s a little late in the day to be scrupulous, after what you have done.  Do you want your Confession back, or not?”

As the reference to the Confession passed his lips, she raised her head.  A faint tinge of color showed itself on her livid cheeks; a momentary spasm of pain stirred her deathlike face.  The one last interest left in the woman’s life was the interest of recovering the manuscript which had been taken from her.  To that appeal the stunned intelligence still faintly answered—­and to no other.

“Remember the bargain on your side,” Geoffrey went on, “and I’ll remember the bargain on mine.  This is how it stands, you know.  I have read your Confession; and I find one thing wanting.  You don’t tell how it was done.  I know you smothered him—­but I don’t know how.  I want to know.  You’re dumb; and you can’t tell me.  You must do to the wall here what you did in the other house.  You run no risks.  There isn’t a soul to see you.  You have got the place to yourself.  When I come back let me find this wall like the other wall—­at that small hour of the morning you know, when you were waiting, with the towel in your hand, for the first stroke of the clock.  Let me find that; and to-morrow you shall have your Confession back again.”

As the reference to the Confession passed his lips for the second time, the sinking energy in the woman leaped up in her once more.  She snatched her slate from her side; and, writing on it rapidly, held it, with both hands, close under his eyes.  He read these words: 

“I won’t wait.  I must have it to-night.”

“Do you think I keep your Confession about me?” said Geoffrey.  “I haven’t even got it in the house.”

She staggered back; and looked up for the first time.

“Don’t alarm yourself,” he went on.  “It’s sealed up with my seal; and it’s safe in my bankers’ keeping.  I posted it to them myself.  You don’t stick at a trifle, Mrs. Dethridge.  If I had kept it locked up in the house, you might have forced the lock when my back was turned.  If I had kept it about me—­I might have had that towel over my face, in the small hours of the morning!  The bankers will give you back your Confession—­just as they have received it from me—­on receipt of an order in my handwriting.  Do what I have told you; and you shall have the order to-night.”

She passed her apron over her face, and drew a long breath of relief.  Geoffrey turned to the door.

“I will be back at six this evening,” he said.  “Shall I find it done?”

She bowed her head.

His first condition accepted, he proceeded to the second.

“When the opportunity offers,” he resumed, “I shall go up to my room.  I shall ring the dining room bell first.  You will go up before me when you hear that—­and you will show me how you did it in the empty house?”