"Lose time and you lose everything!"
"What do you know?"
"Know! Know! Of course I know! But do you think you can make me tell? Try that game! Try it! Try! You know damned well you can't! So what'll you give for what I know?"
"You mean—?"
"Come back to me when you've found Nancy Cornish and you shall have your murderer fast enough! Every detail, every fact, every clue! Till then I don't trust you! Bring her here, bring her!" He leaned forward, beside himself; shaken and exhausted, burning with fever, weak with loss of blood, he reached toward Kane and beat the table with his wounded hands. "That's my bargain! That's my price! I'm not going to give up for nothing! You don't get my life unless you give me hers—"
"What?"
The great gasp broke into a buzz. Denny came slowly to himself and read what he had uttered in their looks. His face went dead, a cold sweat stood out upon it. "O!" he breathed. And once more he covered his face with his hands.
It didn't take many questions to get his story from him after that.
"Yes, I killed him. Yes, I'm confessing. I've got to. All right,—take it down. I killed James Ingham. I went to his apartment after my dress-rehearsal on the night of the fourth of August. I had been told that he had injured Nancy Cornish. I shot him dead. I've regretted it every moment of my life since then. That's all. What are you waiting for now?"
"Then, Miss Hope—was not in Ingham's rooms that night?"