“Now with such men as yourself—mind, I am not speaking so much from knowledge as from an intuition as to what I should do myself were I placed in similar circumstances—it is probable that you have sufficient intelligence, not only to rob your victims, but to rob your friends. “Another piece of life's philosophy that roughing it has taught me is that the robber is always poor. I come, therefore, to the natural deduction that you are hard up.” Westerham's whole expression of face changed suddenly. The coldness left it. The sea-green eyes smiled with a smile that invited confidence from the man before him. “Well?” said Melun. “And what of it?” Westerham knew that the battle was won. “Then,” Westerham continued coolly, “such a sum as a hundred thousand pounds would not come amiss to you. Such a sum I am prepared to pay you—under certain conditions.” He paused suddenly in his speech with the intention of catching the very slightest exclamation on the part of Melun; nor was he disappointed. A quick indrawing of Melun's breath told Westerham that he was hitting him hard. All the pleasantness in Westerham's face vanished again, and he looked at the captain with narrowed eyes. “I realise that in offering you such a sum,” he said, “it will, of course, cost you something to earn it. A man who speculates must spend his own money to gain other people's. A criminal—you must forgive the word, but it is necessary—who seeks to make a great coup at the expense of others must put up a 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. 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. 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.”