"There is my bill for one hundred thousand dollars for legal services in the last five years for Hugh Worthington. Upon its approval and payment, I will deliver over all the papers of our long intimacy, and sign clean receipts.
"I will then stipulate not to approach Miss Worthington in any manner. Here are all the valueless papers you demand. Will you give me a receipt for them?"
"You took them surreptitiously! You can well afford to trust our honor," snappishly said Warner. "Very good," added Boardman. "You will hear from us, as to your claim, in due time."
When Arthur Ferris' footfall died out upon the stair, Boardman drily remarked, as he pocketed the bill, "The price of a scoundrel's silence! Well, we will see! But the fellow really knows nothing of the murder! Let us go to work, gentlemen."
When they returned to the conference room, below them, on the street, the deposed favorite of fortune was chatting with a new officer on the beat.
"McNerney? Oh, yes," grinned the strange policeman. "He has taken two-months' leave and goes over to see his ould mother, in Oireland. His home address, sure, I don't know. Mayhap the sergeant can tell ye."
While the bluecoat sauntered away, Ferris mentally recorded another mistake. "I should have thrown the hat-box after the hat," he murmured. "A few hundred dollars would have been well spent. And yet he is probably in their ring now. His 'leave of absence' indicates a very sudden return of affection for the 'ould mother.'"
Ferris now decided upon a policy of open frankness and calm indifference. "There is no one I could have made use of, but that Jew office boy," he mused, as he sauntered up Broadway, "and they have bought him out, over my head. I will let my little bill for "legal services" ripen. I can afford to let my 'legal field' lie fallow for the summer."
And yet he cursed the memory of the innocent victim of the mysterious murder. "But for her sentimental hubbub, I could have easily managed Alice. This fellow's strange death gives him the halo of martyrdom. He is out of my reach now. The old man must have feared the 'Iron Gate' of Death! And, after all, his plans to 'efface' Clayton were only inchoate. I cannot terrify them with any hearsay projects. I must get what I can, cling to Dunham, and keep silence.
"The marriage! That means just the one hundred thousand dollars!
I will save it and my good name by submitting in silence."