"I felt that I had to come, Mr. Prale, and have this talk with you," Kate Gilbert said, when she was seated near the window. "I wanted to speak to you here instead of in some public place, and so I brought Marie and came to your suite."
"You are welcome, Miss Gilbert, I am sure," Prale said. "If you wish to speak in private, Marie and Murk can step into the adjoining room."
"Please," she said softly.
Murk opened the door, and the maid stepped in. Then he followed and closed the door again. Prale sat down near Kate Gilbert and turned toward her.
"Now, Miss Gilbert," he prompted.
She met his eyes squarely as she spoke, but her lips trembled at times as if she were undergoing an ordeal.
"Mr. Prale," she said, "as you know, I have been associated with others in an attempt to bring retribution home to you. When I became associated with them, it was understood between us that there was to be no violence, nothing outside the law. We were simply to attack you from every angle, cause you trouble and annoyance, take away your money if we could, break you in every way."
"Pardon me, but——"
"Please say nothing until I am finished, Mr. Prale. We began at once to gather all the information we could about you and your affairs. We began to plan for your downfall. We found that we could do nothing that amounted to anything while you were in Honduras, where you were a powerful man. But we were about to try, even there, when we learned that you were selling out your properties and preparing to return to New York.
"You may know how that struck us. You had gone away and made your fortune, and you were coming home, possibly with the hope that the past had been forgotten. We intended showing you that it had not been forgotten, that you could not return and enjoy the fortune whose foundation was——But enough of that!