"But your two friends?"
"Sheer bluff."
"Your application to the public prosecutor?"
"A mere threat."
"Then what are you trying to do?"
"To frighten them out of their wits, in the hope of making them drop a remark, a word, which will tell us what we want to know. We've tried every other means. This is the last; and it is a method which, I find, nearly always succeeds. Remember our adventures."
"But if the word which you expect to hear is not spoken?"
"It must be spoken," said Rénine, in a low voice. "We must finish the matter. The hour is at hand."
His eyes met hers; and she blushed crimson at the thought that the hour to which he was alluding was the eighth and that he had no other object than to finish the matter before that eighth hour struck.
"So you see, on the one hand, what you are risking," he said to the Pancaldi pair. "The disappearance of your child ... and prison: prison for certain, since there is the book with its confessions. And now, on the other hand, here's my offer: twenty thousand francs if you hand over the clasp immediately, this minute. Remember, it isn't worth three louis."