"Well," began the manufacturer, "the whole trouble took a start when this woman, who called herself Cora Reesey, and my daughter, wrote her first letter from San Francisco. I was not afraid of the embezzlement matter, for I have paid up every cent I appropriated. I was young and reckless in my California days, but I repented when I grew older. But I did fear an arrest for bigamy, though God knows I thought I was a widower when I married my second wife here in St. Louis." "And you were a widower," said Nick quietly. "I know it. Cora Reesey deceived you." Gabriel Leonard's expression of astonishment at this statement was speedily succeeded by one of anguish. He licked his lips, and looked toward the wall with eyes contracted in pain. "Deceived me, did she?" he muttered brokenly. "What a fool, what a fool I have been!" Nick Carter's cool gaze recalled Leonard to the work of explanation which he had undertaken to do. "Where was I? Oh, yes, I remember." He spoke with his eyes on the floor. The slight buoyancy with which he had begun his story was gone. His words now came slowly and gravely. "I wrote to the woman that it might be well for her to come to St. Louis. She acted upon the suggestion and came. At our first interview she demanded fifteen thousand dollars as the price of her silence. I did not have the money. My affairs, within one week, had become badly involved. Some speculative ventures had proved utter failures. But all attempts to induce the woman to wait were unavailing. She did not believe me when I told her that I was on the brink of ruin, and she threatened that if I did not have the money on a certain night, to go the next day to a newspaper office, tell her story, and produce her vouchers. The night set for the payment of the fifteen thousand dollars was the night of the disappearance of John Dashwood." Leonard ceased speaking, went to the water-cooler in a corner, drew a glass of water, drank it, and then returned to the bed. "I went up-town that night," he continued, "without any definite thought of what I should do. In front of the office the thought struck me that perhaps there might be sufficient money in the safe--receipts after banking-hours--to stop the woman's mouth for a few days. I had promised to meet her at midnight at her rooms in an apartment-house on Manchester Avenue. She had said that she would give me all day for the work of digging up the money, and the day would end at twelve o'clock. I went to the office, and, after opening the door and striking a light, saw by the open desk and the open books that some one, probably Filbon, had been there that evening.