"You can guess why I'm here," blurted Sharrock. "I'm going to face the music, that's all. Kill me, if you want. That's better than jail. I've come here to see if Austin is still alive — to make up for the evil that I have done him. It means jail for me. I don't care."
Tremont shook his head sadly.
"While you had the money, you forgot Austin Bellamy," he said. "Now you appear to have a conscience. A very useless possession — a conscience. I wonder what it feels like — a conscience?" He looked at Savette, and the physician laughed. Like Tremont, he was conscienceless.
"Say what you want, you crooks!" said Sharrock hoarsely. "You started the dirty work. You and that renegade, Ivan Orlinov!"
"What of it?" questioned Tremont. "You are only giving us credit for an excellent idea. I happened to be your stepbrother's lawyer. Doctor Savette chanced to be his physician. We saw that you had been wrongfully cut off in his new will. So we quietly arranged his death — with your approval — and kept him alive, with Ivan Orlinov as his capable guardian."
"Yes," retorted Sharrock. "You did it — for half a million. Then you kept Austin Bellamy because he was a threat. You had it framed so I could be the goat. All done with my order.
"You bled me — a hundred thousand dollars at a time — to get the entire two million. I got away, to France, with half a million left. There are crooks there, too. I was in no mood to ward them off.
"I'm back now, broke — all except a few thousands. I'm going to come clean. I've come to tell you that. I wanted to learn if Austin were still alive—"
"He is alive," interposed Tremont. "Alive and well. That means we still have the threat which you have mentioned."
"That is not all," added Savette. "You speak of us killing you, Sharrock. That is a good suggestion — one which we shall use. But we have a few other devices that are better than death. We have progressed since our early days, when we kept your dear stepbrother doped in a cottage on the Jersey coast."