"Then I will tell you," he said picking his words with some deliberation. "It is the man to whom you appealed for aid. It is Larry Hughes himself who has been bleeding you. I want to know who he has been using as a go between?" She stared at him with white face. "Larry? How do you know that? I don't believe you." In point of fact Labar did not know. But he was pretty sure that the assumption was right. "You may take it from me. Now to whom have you been handing over the money?" The woman's mind was clouded by a haze of emotions. She was thunderstruck at the accusation that her sometime lover was the real blackmailer, but beyond that she wondered if this point alone was the real object of the cool nonchalant man who was watching her with serious eyes. She must guard herself. Suppose he was seeking to entrap her. "I shan't tell you," she exclaimed between clenched teeth. "Oh, yes you will," he retorted. "Perhaps you don't understand. Shall I tell you a little story, Mrs. Gertstein? It deals with a woman like you who had the misfortune to be in a similar position. This lady was married to a rich husband. She committed an indiscretion--we will call it that--which gave a blackmailer a hold upon her. His demands grew more and more insatiable, and although she had a comfortable allowance from her husband she felt the strain upon her income. She became involved in other directions, particularly with bookmakers, and it may be that on one pretext and another she got still more money from her husband, until it became difficult to find plausible explanations. But the blackmailer continued to bleed her, and she continued to run into debt in various directions. Certain bills cropped up that had to be paid almost at once. Do you know what that lady did, Mrs. Gertstein?" An incoherent word came from the woman. Labar went on: "She forged her husband's name to a cheque--a silly thing to do because the forgery was bound to become known. I can understand a distracted woman in a moment of folly giving way to an impulse. But she did an even more foolish thing. She found out who was the divisional detective inspector and tried to bribe him with one of the hundred pound notes that were part of the proceeds of her fraud. On that same day an even more serious crime took place at her husband's house. I don't believe that she had any direct concern in that, but as soon as the news reached her by telephone, and she learned that the man she had tried to bribe was there, in charge of the investigation, she lost her head completely. That night she drove secretly to London and tried to murder the detective. Forgery is nasty, madam, but attempted murder is an even uglier thing." The detective flattered himself that he had filled in the gaps in his recital neatly. He had watched every change in the weak pretty face of the woman from anger and astonishment to fear.