"Will you now? An' I'll have plenty of good witnesses to swear he wasn't." Durand bared his teeth in a threat. "That's not all either. I'll tie you up with the rube from the West and send you up to Sing Sing as accessory. How'd you like that?" "If I tell the truth--" "You'll be convicted of murder in place of him and he'll go up as accessory. I don't care two straws how it is. But you'd be a damned fool. I'll say that for you." "I'm not going to let an innocent man suffer in my place. It wouldn't be playing the game." Durand leaned forward and tapped the table with his finger-tips. His voice rasped like a file. "You can't save him. He's goin' to get it right. But you can hurt yourself a hell of a lot. Get out of the country and stay out till it's over with. That's the best thing you can do. Go to the Hawaiian Islands, man. That's a good healthy climate an' the hotel cooking's a lot better than it is at Sing Sing." "I can't do it," moaned the clubman. "My God, man, if it ever came out--that I'd paid you money to--to--ruin his reputation, and that I'd run away when I could have saved an innocent man--I'd be done for. I'd be kicked out of every club I'm in." "It won't ever come out if you're not here. But if you force my hand--well, that's different." Again Jerry's grin slit his colorless face. He had this poor devil where he wanted him, and he was enjoying himself. "What do you want me to do, then?" cried Bromfield, tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead. "You'll do as I say--beat it outa the country till the thing's over with." "But Lindsay will talk." "The boob's padlocked his mouth. For some fool reason he's protectin' you. Get out, an' you're safe." Bromfield sweated blood as he walked up and down the room looking for a way out of his dilemma. He had come to the parting of the road again. If he did this thing he would be a yellow cur. It was one thing to destroy Lindsay's influence with Beatrice by giving her a false impression. From his point of view their friendship was pernicious anyhow and ought to be wiped out. At most the cattleman would have gone back unhurt to the Arizona desert he was always talking about. Nobody there would care about what had happened to him in New York. But to leave him, an innocent man, to go to his death because he was too chivalrous to betray his partner in an adventure--this was something that even Bromfield's atrophied conscience revolted at. Clay was standing by him, according to Durand's story. The news of it lifted a weight from his soul. But it left him too under a stronger moral obligation to step out and face the music. The clubman made the only decision he could, and that was to procrastinate, to put off making any choice for the present. "I'll think it over. Give me a day to make up my mind," he begged.