"Collins," he said evenly, "you appear to forget at times that you are working for a man who has had some little experience with unwilling witnesses in the courts. You are not telling me the truth; or, at least, you're not telling me all of it. Let's have the part that you are keeping back."
"The—the last time he was in, he—he did talk a little," faltered the young man. "He's got something to sell, and he's f-fighting mad at Mr. Kittredge. He said he was going to throw the gaff into somebody damn' quick if Mr. Kittredge didn't wipe off the slate and c-come across with the price."
"That is better," was the brief comment. "Now, then, why did you lie to me in the first place?"
The stenographer shut his eyes and shrunk lower in his chair, but he made no reply.
"I'll tell you why you lied," Blount went on, less harshly. "It was because you were told to. Isn't that so?"
Collins nodded.
Reaching out quickly, Blount laid a hand on the young man's knee. "Fred, what do you think of a soldier who takes his pay from one side and fights on the other? That is what you've been doing, you know; it is what you did when you put a dozen sheets of blank paper into an envelope the other day—the day I sent you to get a file of letters marked 'private' from the safe."
The culprit drew away from the touch of the hand on his knee, and there was fear, and behind the fear the courage of desperation, in his eyes when he lifted them.
"You can give me the third degree if you want to, Mr. Blount, but as long as I've got the breath to say no, I'll never tell you the next thing you're going to ask me!"
Blount sprang up and went to stand at the window. There was a street arc-lamp swinging in its high sling some distance below the window level, its scintillant spark changing weirdly to blue and green and back to blinding orange, and he stared so steadily at it that his eyes were full of tears when he turned to look down upon the waiting culprit.