“Oh, I am not going to argue that point with you,” Nick again insisted. “I am going to make you see the matter just as it stands. Your son’s reputation and liberty are at stake. So is my reputation as a detective. Only the truth can save him. Unless you are willing to aid me by disclosing it, I shall have no alternative but to drop the case entirely and let others try to pull him out of the fire. If they fail——”
“Wait! You have said enough, Mr. Carter.”
Nick would not have done what he threatened, but he detected in the changed face of the woman that the threat would prove effective.
For Mrs. Clayton, though ghastly pale and with trembling lips as gray as ashes, took on a look of sudden determination, that of a woman who felt herself driven to the wall.
“I will tell you the truth,” she added, more firmly.
“You may safely do so,” Nick now said kindly. “It will go no further.”
“I shrink from it. Mr. Carter, chiefly for the sake of one man.”
“Your son?”
“Yes. I implore you to keep the truth from him, if that will be possible. I have kept it from him all his life.”
“I will endeavor to do so,” Nick assured her.