"Yes, it's only money that can talk in a case like this," pointedly concurred The Doc, clearly spurred on to a more open boldness of advance. And there were further parleyings and arguments and lugubrious enumerations of possibilities from the man of medicine. I knew well enough what they were doing. They were conjointly and cunningly brow-beating and intimidating that solitary girl who, even while she must have gathered some inkling of their worldliness, comprehended nothing of the wider plot they were weaving about her. And I further knew that they were winning their point, for I could hear her stifled little gasp of final surrender. "Very well," her strained voice said. "I'll give you the check." This pregnant sentence was followed by an equally pregnant silence. Then came a series of small noises, among which I could distinguish the scrape of a chair-leg and steps crossing the floor. And I surmised that Mary was seating herself at a desk or table, to make out and sign the precious little slip of paper which they were so unctuously conspiring for. So it was at this precise moment that I decided to interfere. I opened the door, as quietly as I could, and stepped into the room. It was Latreille who first saw me. The other two men were too intently watching the girl at the desk. They were still watching her as she slowly rose from her chair, with a blue-tinted oblong of paper between her fingers. And at the same moment that Mary Lockwood stood up Latreille did the same. He rose slowly, with his eyes fixed on my face, backing just as slowly away as he continued to stare at me. But that retreat, I very promptly realized, wasn't prompted by any sense of fear. "Mary," I called out sharply to the girl who still stood staring down at the slip of blue paper. She looked up as she heard that call, peering at me with half incredulous and slightly startled eyes. I don't know whether she was glad or sorry to see me there. Perhaps it was both. But she neither moved nor spoke. "Mary," I cried out to her, "don't give that up!" I moved toward her, but she in turn moved away from me until she stood close beside the ever watchful Latreille. "This is something which you don't understand," she said, much more calmly than I had expected. "But I _do_," I hotly contended. "It's something which you can't possibly understand," she repeated in tones which threw a gulf yawning between us. "But it's _you_ who don't," I still tried to tell her. "These three here are claim fakers; nothing but criminals. They're bleeding you! They're blackmailing you!"