"No; I do nothing of the sort, Mr. Carroll, and Mr. Smith knows it quite as well as you do. He still has it in his power to set the tongues to wagging. We can't get around that, gentlemen. I want to pay him to drop the case entirely. The reward has been withdrawn. Will it satisfy your cupidity, Mr. Smith, if I agree to pay to you a like amount?"
"Good Lord!" gasped Smith, staggered.
"I cannot permit—" began Mr. Wrandall.
She looked him squarely in the eye and the words died on his lips.
"I prefer to have it my way," she said. "I will not accept favours from Mr. Smith—nor any other man." Wrandall alone caught the significance of the last four words. She would not accept the favour of a lie from him! And yet she would not humiliate by denying him in the presence of others. "Mr. Carroll will attend to this matter for me, Mr. Smith, if you will call at his office at your convenience. I shall make but a single stipulation in addition to the one involved: you are to drop the case altogether. Mr. Wrandall has already dismissed you. You are under no further obligations to him or his family. I respectfully submit to all of you, gentlemen, that when the investigations go so far astray as they have gone in this instance, it isn't safe to let them continue with the possible chance of proving unwholesome to other innocent persons, toward whom, in some justice, attention might be drawn. The young woman now in the far West is a sickening example. I refer to the Ashtley girl. If, by any chance, the right person should be taken, I will do my part, Mr. Wrandall, with the same purpose if not the same spirit that actuates you, but I am opposed to baring skeletons to gratify the morbid curiosity of a public that despises all of us because, unhappily, we are what we are. I trust I make myself plain to you. I loved my husband. I have no desire to know the names of women who were his—we will say—who were in love with him."
Mr. Wrandall bowed his head and said not a word. His attorney, who had been a silent listener from the beginning, spoke for the first time.
"If Mr. Smith will call at my office to-morrow, I will attend to the closing of this matter to his entire satisfaction. Mr. Wrandall has already authorised me to settle in full for his time and—patience."
"I don't like to take money in this way—"
"We won't discuss ethics, Mr. Smith."
"Just as you like, then. I'm only too happy to be off the job. Good morning, madam. Good morning, gentlemen."