"Death! Penal servitude for life!"
"It is exactly as I have said. Death by the hangman's hands or penal servitude for life. All is known. Your theft of the ulster at Prevost's Restaurant, and everything else. Your liberty at this moment rests upon a written document. If it never existed, or if you have destroyed it, you are doomed. If it exists, you are saved."
"You are a madman!" she cried, but her face was blanched, and her figure expressed the most abject terror.
"I am an officer of the law," said Fowler. "Now do you understand? If the confession written by Mrs. Edward Layton, and which, after her death, you took from the table by her bedside, is in existence, you have nothing to fear. If it is not, you are a lost woman. No words, no parleying! It is life or death for you! The moment has come. Decide. Which way?"
Utterly overpowered, Ida White replied, with hands tremblingly raised, as if for mercy,
"I have the paper."
"Where?"
Her hands wandered to her pocket, and she took a purse from it.
"Here!"
"There is something else, lady-bird."