Spargo shook him off.
“That’s enough!” he snarled. “Now, I am off! What, you’d try to bribe me?”
Mr. Elphick wrung his hands.
“I didn’t mean that—indeed I didn’t!” he almost wailed. “I—I don’t know what I meant. Stay, young gentleman, stay a little, and let us—let us talk. Let me have a word with you—as many words as you please. I implore you!”
Spargo made a fine pretence of hesitation.
“If I stay,” he said, at last, “it will only be on the strict condition that you answer—and answer truly—whatever questions I like to ask you. Otherwise——”
He made another move to the door, and again Mr. Elphick laid beseeching hands on him.
“Stay!” he said. “I’ll answer anything you like!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
OF PROVED IDENTITY
Spargo sat down again in the chair which he had just left, and looked at the two people upon whom his startling announcement had produced such a curious effect. And he recognized as he looked at them that, while they were both frightened, they were frightened in different ways. Miss Baylis had already recovered her composure; she now sat sombre and stern as ever, returning Spargo’s look with something of indifferent defiance; he thought he could see that in her mind a certain fear was battling with a certain amount of wonder that he had discovered the secret. It seemed to him that so far as she was concerned the secret had come to an end; it was as if she said in so many words that now the secret was out he might do his worst.