"And when Lady Corsoon died you guessed that your wife--which she never will be, you can rest assured--would inherit the whole Dimsdale fortune?"
"Quite so. I thought of everything. I suppose Lady Corsoon showed you the second letter as well as the first in your character of Nemo?"
"You are correct," replied Vernon with great composure, "and I noted that the second letter, like the first, was signed with the ideograph of The Spider."
"Naturally, it would be," said Maunders with a shrug. "I easily had an india-rubber stamp made. The thing, if done, had to be well done."
"You are a blackguard," said Colonel Towton, much disgusted. "And may I ask," requested Vernon with irony, "how many other people you have blackmailed by using this stamp?"
"None; nor did I blackmail Lady Corsoon. I simply made a suggestion."
"On the threat of telling her husband about her gambling and sale of the family jewels."
"The Spider used that argument first," said Maunders sullenly; "I simply endorsed it."
"I heartily believe that you are the scoundrel himself," snapped Towton.
"I swear I am not. Why, even my mother was blackmailed--my adopted mother, that is--on the plea that she is my _real_ mother. Would I have done such a thing as that?