Sloane looked at him with widening eyes, his lips trembling.
"Come, Mr. Sloane! Let's play fair, didn't he?"
"We-ell, yes."
"And," Hastings continued, thumping the table with a heavy hand to drive home the points of his statement, "he persuaded you to offer that money to Mrs. Brace—last Tuesday night.—Didn't he?—And that matches his slippery cunning in pretending he was saving Webster by hiding the fact that Webster's hand had gagged him when they found the body. He figured his willingness to help somebody else would keep suspicion away from him. I——"
"Rot! All rot!" Wilton broke in. "Where do you think you are, Arthur, on the witness stand? He'll have you saying white's black in a minute."
"Mr. Sloane," the detective said, getting to his feet, "he induced you to pay money to Mrs. Brace—while it's the colour of blackmail, it won't be a matter for prosecution; you gave it to her, in a sense, unsolicited—but he induced you to do that because he knew she was out for blackmail. He hoped that, if you bought her off, she wouldn't pursue him farther."
"Farther!" echoed Sloane. "What do you mean by that?"
"Why, man! Don't you see? Money was back of all that tragedy. He murdered the girl because she had come here to renew her mother's attempts at blackmail on him! Not content with duping you, with handling you as if you'd been a baby, he put you up to buying off the woman who was after him—and he did it by fooling you into thinking that you were saving the name, if not the very life, of your daughter's fiancé! He——"
"Lies! Wild lie!" thundered Wilton, pushing back from the table. "I'm through with——"
"No! No!" shrilled Sloane. "Wait! Prove that, Hastings! Prove it—if you can! Shuddering saints! Have I——?"