"Blackmail."
"Blackmail! What do you mean?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean. You have just been trying to blackmail that girl to the tune of a thousand pounds. No offence more severely punished. I'll have you jugged on one charge, and the blackguard you call your husband on another."
"I wasn't trying to do anything of the sort; don't fancy you can bluff me! I was only telling the truth."
"Makes it worse. Suppose you believed her to have committed murder, and said you'd out with what you knew if she didn't give you a thousand pounds--that would be blackmail in its most heinous form; you'd get a lifer as sure as you're alive. My time's valuable. Which is it going to be--the policeman or what you call the truth?"
"If I do tell you what use will you make of it?"
"No questions answered. Which is it going to be?"
"If I tell you, will you let me go right straight off? No shadowing or anything of that kind?"
"The only promise I'll make is that I won't let you go if you don't. Out with it!"
"You're very hard on a girl! I don't know what I've done to you!"