certain amount of money to bring it off.

“I think, however, that I am offering you quite enough to enable you to buy either the silence or the inactivity of your fellow criminals. A hundred thousand pounds is a good deal of money, and your gang cannot be so large that you will not be able to afford a sufficient sum to render them your servants.”

“Exactly,” said Captain Melun.

“Ah!” exclaimed Westerham. “Then you acknowledge what I say to be true?”

“Sir Paul,” answered Melun, “you may take my word at what you judge it is worth, but none the less I, for my part, am prepared to take the word of a gentleman. Do you give me your word of honour that the offer—I take it such is meant—is in all sincerity?”

“It is meant in all sincerity,” said the baronet, “because I am following out my own particular ideas, and I know that you have neither the capacity nor yet the opportunity of saying me nay.”

No man was quicker than Melun to seize an advantage.[Pg 18] He saw that Westerham read him through and through, and that acknowledgment of his own baseness would be the surest way of obtaining some small measure of the baronet's confidence.

[Pg 18]

No man lies to his doctor, and at the moment Melun stood in the presence of a pitiless diagnosis of his soul.

“Yes, Captain Melun,” the baronet proceeded, “I admit that you have had bad luck, but your bad luck places you in my hands. In short, you can be delivered up to the captain of this ship as a common thief, or you can do as I tell you.”

For a moment Melun hesitated, then he laughed.

“I never realised before,” he said steadily, almost with insolence, “that the blackmailer could be blackmailed.”

“Nevertheless,” said Westerham, “such is the case.”

“It is with every confidence,” the baronet continued, “that I make you my present offer. You have divined my secret just as I have divined yours; it would, however, be just as well for both if I explained every motive of my action.”

He paused and looked for a moment almost shyly out of the port-hole, which swung up and down between sea and sky.

 Prev. P 12/238 next