“Why should I accept it?”
“Because you must take it or leave it and because you will understand what he did not.”
“It’s a compromise, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Money?”
“Yes.”
Bournef shrugged his shoulders:
“A few thousand-franc notes, I expect. And you imagine that Bournef and his friends will be such fools? . . . Come, Essarès, why do you want us to compromise? We know your secret almost entirely. . . .”
“You know what it is, but not how to use it. You don’t know how to get at it; and that’s just the point.”
“We shall discover it.”