"Witness, witness, my dear Nick. Besides, poor Helene never would have come alone, so there you are." "To hell with all this melodramatic business. It could have been done anywhere--" "Not much. Dark corners for dark doings." "Well, hand it over." Ruyler had given his brain an icy shower bath as soon as he heard his wife's voice, and was now as cool and alert as even the detective could have wished. He did not wait for the promised impulse to his elbow; his hand shot up just ahead of Doremus's and closed over his wife's hand, which, he felt at once, held the ruby. At the same moment Spaulding caught Doremus by his medieval collar and shook him until the man's teeth chattered, then he slapped his face and kicked him. "Now, you," he said standing over the panting man, who was mopping his bleeding nose, and holding the electric torch so that it would shine on his own face. "You get out of California, d'you hear? You're a gambler and a blackmailer and a panderer to old women, and I've got some evidence that would drag you into court however it turned out, so's you'd find this town a live gridiron. So, git, while you can. Go while the going's good." Doremus, too shaken to reply, slunk off, and Spaulding after a glance upward, left as silently. CHAPTER XIII I Aileen had shrieked and fled. Ruyler stood in the room with the ruby in his open hand. He saw that Helene was standing quite erect before him. She had made no attempt to leave the room, nor did she appear to be threatened with hysterics. He groped until he found the electric button. The room, as Ruyler had inferred, was Mrs. Thornton's winter boudoir, a gorgeous room of yellow brocade and oriental stuffs. "Will you sit down?" he asked. Helene shook her head. She was very white and she looked as old as a young actress who has been doing one night stands for three months. Behind the drawn mask of her face there was her indestructible youth, but so faint that it thought itself dead. She looked at her hands, which she twisted together as if they were cold. "Will you tell me the truth now?" asked Price. "Don't you guess it?" "When I came here to-night I believed that you were the victim of blackmail. I was not watching you--I hope you will take my word for that. We--I had a detective on the case--Spaulding merely wanted to nab the man who was blackmailing you--" "Do you still believe that?" "I overheard your conversation with Aileen Lawton. I don't know what to believe." "I am a gambler. My father was a gambler. He kept a notorious place in San Francisco. His name out here was James Garnett. My grandfather was a gambler. He was even more spectacular--" "I know all that. Don't mind." "You knew it?" For the first time she looked at him, but she turned her eyes away at once and stared at the oblong of dark framed by the window. "Why--" "Spaulding told me to-night only."