"I have told you the circumstances as I know them, Mr. Gertstein. Your wife has brought herself within the scope of the criminal law. Whether she has still kept up a liaison with Larry Hughes it is beyond my province to decide. Personally I think her late actions have been caused by pure unreasoning panic." "That side of it is my affair. She is my wife," declared the millionaire sternly. "Now we come to your side." He dragged a cheque-book from his pocket, and seating himself at a writing-table, poised a pen. "How much is it?" "I beg your pardon?" said Labar, with suave interrogation. "How much?" repeated Gertstein, impatiently. The inspector felt his patience oozing away. It was one thing for Larry Hughes to try to buy him off. For Gertstein to assume, in this matter of fact way, that it was only a question of price annoyed him. After he had tried to save the little man's feelings, too. "I am not to be bought," he announced gruffly. The other applied a match to his cigar with cold deliberation. "I have been long enough in this world to know that every man is to be bought if the price can be paid," he said. "You have still something to learn," retorted Labar acidly. "As you like." Gertstein fell again to pacing up and down the room. He had taken two turns when he came again to a halt. "As one gentleman to another," he said, "I want you to give me your advice. I can see that I have done you an injustice, and I apologise." Labar noted the change of tone. "I'm sorry, Mr. Gertstein," he said with sincerity, "but I'm the wrong person to give advice. So much depends upon your own feelings about your wife." "Yes. I see. An old fool and a young woman. Well you can leave my feelings about Adèle out of the question. I've kept my eyes shut--wilfully shut. If she broke her neck to-morrow I wouldn't care. You could shut her up in prison for life and it would not hurt me." He spoke with level and dispassionate evenness. "But my name is my concern, and my wish is that it shall not be dragged in the dirt. I have been a nobody, Mr. Labar. I was born in Petticoat Lane, and my father was an old clothes dealer. What I am now I have made myself. I have friends among the highest in this and other lands. The name of Gertstein might have been among the peers of the realm had I wished. I have built it up. And it is because that woman bears my name that I will not fold my hands and watch it become the sport of every muck rake in the world. I would sooner see her dead at my feet." His bitterness appeared the more strange and deadly to Labar, because he seemed to have complete control of himself. It was as though he was speaking on behalf of some other person. The inspector shook his head slowly. "I can do nothing," he said. "I must do my best to arrest her, and if that happens she must be tried."