“Well?”
“Nothing!” he laughed.
“Nothing? I don’t understand.”
“I want nothing,” he repeated, rousing himself, and bending forward in the lamplight, his eyes still fixed upon the man he was addressing.
“You refuse?”
“Yes, I refuse,” he said in a deep intense voice. “I have, it is true, bought and sold many things in my brief and not unblameworthy career, but I have never yet sold a pure woman’s life, and by Heaven! I never will!”
Zertho stood in abject dismay. He had been utterly unprepared for this. Anger consumed him when he recognised how completely he had been misled, and how suddenly all his plans were checkmated by this man’s unexpected caprice.
“You’ve suddenly withdrawn into the paths of rectitude,” he observed with a sickly smile when at last he found voice. “It will be a new and interesting experience, no doubt.”
“Possibly.”
“Come, Richards,” Zertho exclaimed, after a brief pause, “it’s useless to prevaricate any longer. Let us settle the business. I intend marrying Liane, but I am ready to admit that this is possible only with your assistance. For the latter I am prepared to continue to pay as I have already done. Name the amount, and the thing can be settled at once.”