“You can leave that out,” Sperling cut in. “If she wants to consider the cost in money she can, but I’ll not have her saving my life. That’s up to me.”
Wolfe looked at him. “A while ago you told me to go ahead. What about it now? Do you want to pay me off?”
“No. You spoke about your vanity, but I’ve got more up than vanity. I’m not quitting and I don’t intend to.”
“Listen, Jim—” his wife began, but to cut her off he didn’t even have to speak. He only looked at her.
“In that case,” Wolfe told Gwenn, “there are only two alternatives. I won’t drop it, and your father won’t discharge me, so the decision rests with you, as I said it would. You may have proof if you insist on it. Do you?”
“You said,” Madeline exploded at me, “it would be the best you could do for her!”
“I still say it,” I fired back. “You’d better come down and look at the plant rooms too!”
Gwenn sat gazing at Wolfe, not stubbornly — more as if she were trying to see through him to the other side.
“I have spoken,” Wolfe told her, “of what the proof, if you insist on it, will cost me and your father and family. I suppose I should mention what it will cost another person: Mr. Rony. It will get him a long term in jail. Perhaps that would enter into your decision. If you have any suspicion that it would be necessary to contrive a frame-up, reject it. He is pure scoundrel. I wouldn’t go to the extreme of calling him a cheap filthy little worm, but he is in fact a shabby creature. Your sister thinks I’m putting it brutally, but how else can I put it? Should I hint that he may be not quite worthy of you? I don’t know that, for I don’t know you. But I do know that I have told you the truth about him, and I’ll prove it if you say I must.”
Gwenn left her chair. Her eyes left Wolfe for the first time since her unsure glance at me. She looked around at her family.