"By God, you've got to buy me out! I'm ruined, ruined, I tell you, if you and Conway drop me now." "I'll do it." The calm words surprised Hume who had expected a blunt refusal. "Upon one consideration. Namely that you sell to me at the figure which you paid. I am willing to play fair and I think that that is fair. It leaves you where you started. It leaves me where I started except that I shall have been spending a good many thousands for Wanda's wedding present." Hume, his brows knitted, rose to his feet and strode back and forth in the room, trying to look his problem squarely in the face. Failure confronted him, and failure was more hideous to him than the shame, dishonour, disgrace, which would accompany it. In a flash that left his face drawn he saw himself as he had never seen himself before. He went to the window looking out into the fields over which the afternoon sun was dropping low. He wanted to think; and he did not want Martin Leland to see his face. He heard Wanda singing happily. Her voice was not like Helga's, and yet, tinkling through it he seemed to hear Helga's cool laughter. "I'm tired out," he said abruptly, coming back to Leland. "Let me have a bed. We'll settle it in the morning." Leland looked at him curiously. This was unlike Sledge Hume's usual way. But, offering no remark he showed Hume his room. It was far into the night before Hume's tired body found the rest of deep sleep. It was long after sunrise when he awoke. It had been a man's voice that jarred upon his ears even in sleep, that finally brought him to his elbow with a start. Slipping out of bed he stepped quickly to his window. There were three horses in the yard, saddled, sweaty and dusty. MacKelvey's heavy voice came to him again from Leland's study. He dressed swiftly, his eyes glittering. Spinning the cylinder of his revolver, he shoved it into his pocket and into another pocket thrust the thick pad of bank notes which had been under his pillow during the night. Then he went back to the window. He could hear Julia in the kitchen. He could hear Leland's voice now, now MacKelvey's, then another man's. Was it Johnson's? "That cursed woman," he muttered bitterly. "She double crossed me after all. God! I was a fool!" He did not hesitate. Kinsell was a detective, who had been in Shandon's hire for six months. A hundred little things that had been trifles at the time came back to him now to whisper that Kinsell had known a long time. And Helga had given them the rest of the evidence they lacked. Helga, a woman, had tricked him, had deceived him, had made him love her in the only way love was possible to this man, and then had laughed at him and doublecrossed him.