Clyde nodded. "What is the best way of dealing with a blackmailer?" he asked, looking at me steadily.
"That may depend on circumstances," I said evasively. I felt that, as he had suggested, he was trying to appeal to my sympathies as a man rather than to my judgment as a lawyer.
"I heard of one case," he said casually, "where a prominent man was approached by a blackmailer who had discovered some compromising secret, and he simply told the fellow that if he gave the story to the papers, as he threatened to do, he would shoot him and take the consequences, since life wouldn't be worth living in any event, if that story came out. I confess that course appeals to my common-sense. It is so conclusive."
"I infer, however, that you didn't take that tone with this fellow when he first approached you," I said, touching the paper on my desk. "This is not his first demand."
"No. The first time that it came, I was paralyzed, in a manner. I had been dreading something of that sort,--discovery, I mean,--for years. I had gone softly, to avoid notice, I had only half lived my life, I had felt each day to be a reprieve. Then he came,--and asked money for keeping my secret. It seemed a very easy way of escape. In a way, it made me feel safer than before. I knew now where the danger was, and how to keep it down. It was only a matter of money. I paid, and felt almost cheerful. But he came again, and again. He has grown insolent." He drew his brows together sternly as he looked at the written threat which lay before us. He did not look like a man afraid.
"Can you tell me the whole situation?" I asked. "If I know all the facts, I can judge better,--and you know that you speak in professional confidence."
"I want to tell you," he said. "I--he knew--the fact is, I was sentenced to be hanged for a murder some fifteen years ago in Texas. The sentence is still suspended over me. I escaped before it was executed."
A lawyer learns not to be surprised at any confession, for the depths of human nature which are opened to his professional eye are so amazing that he becomes accustomed to strange things, but I admit that I was staggered at my client's confidence. I picked up and folded and refolded the paper before I could speak quite casually.
"And no one knows that fact? Your name--?"
"I was known by another name at the time,--an assumed name. I'll tell you the whole story. But one word first,--I was and am innocent."