What the result would be, I cared not. I should, however, at least be afforded an opportunity to make revelations in the police-court which they would find it somewhat awkward to refute. Surely by doing this I should be performing a work of public benefit? The pair were clever swindlers, reaping the harvest from that secret discovered by the unfortunate man who had been purposely killed. "You appear, Mr. Kirk, to consider me an absolute fool!" I said, interrupting his song. "I do, my dear Holford, I do. You have acted against your own interests, and even now you are spitting against the wind." "You desire my silence, yet you offer me nothing in return!" I said. "Oh, you want payment!" he cried. "My dear sir, you have only to name your own price. We shall not quarrel over it, I can assure you." "No," I said angrily, "I desire no blood-money, even though it is to save Ethelwynn Greer. I have all along suspected her of some complicity in the affair, although on the night you removed her to that house in Foley Street she accused you of the crime!" He started quickly and turned to me, his countenance slightly paler. "Repeat that," he said quietly. I did so. I told him how I had followed him to Foley Street, of the screams and words I had heard while standing in the fog outside the house. "H'm. So you think I'm guilty of the crime, eh?" he said simply. "I repeat the girl's allegation against you," I said. "And yet this same girl now declares that the Professor is not dead!" Then I added: "He was dead when we were together in the laboratory, was he not? Come, speak plainly!" "Certainly he was!" "And men do not come to life again when once dead, do they?" "But this is an unusual case, I tell you. He--" "However unusual, you cannot alter the laws of life and death," I declared. "Well, my dear Holford, how I wish I could reveal to you one simple truth. It would astound you, no doubt, but it would at the same time alter your opinion of me." "Oh, of course," I laughed bitterly. "You're not so black as you're painted--you who have conspired to hold my wife aloof from me--you who for aught I know have told her some infamous tale which has caused her to look upon me with doubt and horror! I have recently learnt that she was acquainted with this man who calls himself Ernest Greer, and that, before she left my roof, she received word in secret from him." "Your wife's affairs are surely of no interest to me, Holford," said the grey-faced old scoundrel. "I am merely putting forward to you a simple matter of business--in a word, making a proposal for your consideration." "A proposal which I will never accept--_never_, you understand!" I added with emphasis. "Not if I appeal to you on behalf of Ethelwynn, on behalf of a girl whose very life is dependent upon your silence?" he asked earnestly. "The punishment for murder is death," was my hard response.