"I have two men working out yonder," she said coolly. "If I called to them--" She shrugged her shoulders. "I want to tell you all that you are hungering to know even while you are afraid to hear it. Helga Strawn got your check for five thousand dollars. She got, also, a Wells Fargo order from Sacramento for twenty thousand. Sent by a fictitious Arnold Wentworth. Ah!" For he had cried out sharply, his face was dead white, his eyes were filled with horror. His premonition had come. "Who committed the crime you charged Wayne Shandon with?" she demanded fearlessly. "Who killed Arthur Shandon and robbed him of twenty-five thousand dollars? If Helga Strawn came into court and told all that she knows do you realise what a jury would say about it?" "The things you are saying are lies," he cried back at her, driving his hands into his pockets that she might not see that they were shaking. He stared after her in wonder as she went swiftly to the table and unlocked a drawer. He wondered more as she snatched out a folded paper and brought it to him. "Sign that," she said curtly. "Get it witnessed before a notary and send it to me and Helga Strawn will forget what she knows." A glance showed him the significance of the document. It was a deed, properly drawn, needing but his own signature to return to Helga Strawn the lands he had bought from her. "So," he sneered, "you are trying a little blackmail, are you? You are a spy and Helga Strawn's agent, I suppose?" Again she laughed at him. "I attend to my own business, my dear cousin," her voice very like his. "If you hadn't been a fool you'd have known that I was Helga Strawn six months ago. Blackmail? Call it what you like. It is your one chance to save your neck. I know that in one of your mad fits of anger you killed Arthur Shandon. I know that you took his money. And I am not the only one in the country who knows or suspects it. Your chance is slim enough as it is, Mr. Hume. Don't make it worse." Blow after blow until the man set his muscles like iron to keep his body from shaking as his soul shook. This was the greatest shock of all because it struck at the keynote of his nature, this knowledge that a woman had tricked him, that she had played with him, that now she held him as she said so bluntly, in the hollow of her hand. "You traitress!" he cried hoarsely. "You miserable traitress!" And Helga Strawn laughed. "It will take you a couple of hours to ride into El Toyon," she said. "That will give you time to think it over. If you decide to sign the deed and send it to me to-night I'll do my part. If I don't get the deed to-night I'll go into town in the morning for a talk with the district attorney. I think I've got you where I want you, Mr. Hume."