“None the less, it is so,” said Westerham. “You know who I am; you know therefore what my resources are. Such a sum is nothing to me.
“Now,” and he raised his voice so that it became loud and very clear, “I will double that sum if you will tell me what the secret is.”
Lying back on her cushions, Madame stared at him with open mouth; then she sat forward and spoke slowly.
“Will you allow me to speak,” she said, “as it were, man to man? Two hundred thousand pounds cannot buy for me that which I desire.”
She laughed harshly.
Mme. Estelle, as though she were far away, said dreamily, and a little wistfully. “Still, I will try.”
She roused herself from her momentary abstraction and shook her head almost fiercely. “I cannot help you because I do not know what the secret is,” she cried.
Westerham looked at her with his cold, bright eyes, and saw that she spoke the truth, and he was amazed.
If she did not know what the secret was, then she could not know the price of it.
Should he tell her the price?