“My second demand is to know where you have hidden Doctor Sherman.”
“Doctor Sherman? I have nothing to do with Doctor Sherman!”
“You also have everything to do with Doctor Sherman,” she returned steadily. “He is one of the instruments of your plot. You feared that he would break down and confess, and so you sent him out of the way. Where is he?”
Again his face worked spasmodically. “I tell you once more I have nothing whatever to do with Doctor Sherman! Now I hope that’s all. I am tired of this. I have other matters to consider. Good day.”
“No, it is not all. For there is my third demand. And that is the most important of the three. But perhaps I should not say demand. What I make you is an offer.”
“An offer?” he exclaimed.
She did not reply to him directly. She leaned a little farther across his desk and looked at him with an even greater intentness.
“I do not need to ask you to pause and think upon all the evil you have done the town,” she said slowly. “For you have thought. You were thinking at the moment I came in. I can see that you are shaken with horror at the unforeseen results of your scheme. I have come to you to take sides with your conscience; to join it in asking you, urging you, to draw back and set things as nearly right as you can. That is my demand, my offer, my plea—call it what you will.”
He had been gazing at her with wide fixed eyes. When he spoke, his voice was dry, mechanical.