"Then you don't need me, surely."
"We need you to keep your mouth shut, if nothing else."
"You mean not to tell Mr. Payson anything? I would if I thought I could make him listen."
"Tell him? Lord, you can tell him till you're black in the face, and he wouldn't believe it—not till you tell him where we got our information. Why, if he caught me at the keyhole of his room, he wouldn't suspect anything. We've got the goods to deliver this time, don't you fool yourself. Payson's a ten-to-one shot all right. All we want to be sure of now is the girl you're trying to marry."
"I'm not trying to marry her," said Granthope bitterly.
"That's lucky for you!"
"Why?" he demanded suspiciously.
Madam Spoll spoke very slowly and deliberately without asperity, "Because if you should be fool enough to try it on your own hook without helping us out in our game, why, we'd have to show you up to her. I know a little too much about you, Frank Granthope, for you to throw me down as easy as that. You can't exactly set yourself up for a saint, you know; there's the Bennett affair and one or two more like it. Then, again, there's Fancy Gray and several others like that. It'll add up to a pretty tidy scandal, if the Payson girl should happen to hear about it all; and if not her, there's others that it won't do you any good to have know."
Granthope shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, looking calmly at the medium. Her face was as placid and unwrinkled as his. She showed not the slightest trace of vindictiveness, talking as though discussing some impersonal business arrangement.
"Then I am to understand that you threaten me with blackmail?"