“What does she want?”
“She wants two hundred dollars paid into her hand to-day, and says that if the money isn't here by sundown, you'll have a visit from her in less than an hour afterward.”
“Will that be the end of it?”
A sinister smile curved Mrs. Bray's lips slightly.
“More than I can say,” she answered.
“Two hundred dollars?”
“Yes. She put the amount higher, but I told her she'd better not go for too big a slice or she might get nothing—that there was such a thing as setting the police after her. She laughed at this in such a wicked, sneering way that I felt my flesh creep, and said she knew the police, and some of their masters, too, and wasn't afraid of them. She's a dreadful woman;” and Mrs. Bray shivered in a very natural manner.
“If I thought this would be the last of it!” said Mrs. Dinneford as she moved about the room in a disturbed way, and with an anxious look on her face.
“Perhaps,” suggested her companion, “it would be best for you to grapple with this thing at the outset—to take our vampire by the throat and strangle her at once. The knife is the only remedy for some forms of disease. If left to grow and prey upon the body, they gradually suck away its life and destroy it in the end.”
“If I only knew how to do it,” replied Mrs. Dinneford. “If I could only get her in my power, I'd make short works of her.” Her eyes flashed with a cruel light.