“And bank on it good and strong, too,” put in Plugger Flynn, pounding the desk top with his fingers.
“You fellows are a fine gang with which to do business,” said Madison, with manifest contempt in his deep voice. “Either one of you would double cross his own mother. I ought to have known it in the beginning, but I was caught by the bait you threw me. The only other course is for me to settle, you say?”
“You heard what I said,” snapped Deland.
“I’ll have my say, now, for a moment,” Madison returned. “You approached me a week ago, Deland, with a proposition that in a way appealed to me. You said you could get from Tilly Lancey a number of letters with which she has threatened me, and also that you could do it in such a way as to have it publicly appear that my political opponent, Arthur Gordon, had been trying to buy them and was secretly an intimate friend of that woman.”
“Well, come to the point,” said Deland. “We admit all that.”
“Good enough,” thought Nick, calmly taking it all in. “That admission will cost you something, Deland, and may save him. I’ll wait and see which way the cat jumps.”
“I apprehended defeat in the coming election,” Madison went on deliberately. “For that reason, only, your proposition appealed to me. I foresaw that I could, with those letters restored to me and Gordon in a measure defamed, easily carry the election. I asked you what you would accept for doing the job?
“And you agreed to pay it, ten thousand dollars, and told us to go ahead,” said Deland.
“True,” Madison darkly nodded. “But I did not agree to bloodshed. You did not tell me that a murder was to be committed. You did not even hint that Tilly Lancey’s life was to be taken. Not for a moment, you double-dyed knave, would I have considered that hideous proposition. You said——”
“Never mind what we said,” Deland cut in sharply. “We know what we said and to what you agreed. We have our own way of doing things, and we have delivered the goods. It now is up to you to settle. We have put Gordon in wrong. I have your letters in my pocket. You’re going to settle, too, or——”