"Well then, your wife's son. What is that to me? You needn't look so furious,--I'm not afraid of you. Your cunning has overreached itself, that's all. If you had been honest and open with me you would have had nothing to fear now. I could have settled the boy so that you would never have heard from him again." "Perhaps that would have been best," Herr von Heydeck said humbly; "but I could not make up my mind to it then, nor could I now. I hated the boy whose undeniable resemblance to his father was a constant disgrace to my name. My dearest wish was for his death, but by natural means, not by poisonous drugs. If I had left him to you, as you advised, I should never have had another peaceful moment. Murder!--the very sound of the word freezes the blood in my veins! I should have been frenzied by the thought that I had permitted the deed, even although I had not caused it to be done." "Who talks of murder? I forbid all such expressions as far as I am concerned," the doctor rejoined angrily. "Do you imagine that to make you a rich man I would have stained my soul with blood and put my neck into a noose?" "But you offered the first time I spoke to you of the boy----" "I offered nothing except to relieve you from all anxiety. And that I would have done if, after I had made out the certificate of the child's death, you would have handed him over to me instead of keeping him here in the basement of the tower, in care of Melcher, for a year, and then carrying him off yourself. What is done should be done thoroughly. But you are a coward, too timid to act decidedly. You were afraid of me, and so you cheated me with the story that the boy died a year after you had put him to board in Switzerland. Now, when he suddenly appears here to claim his rights, you are trembling again in terror." "He has really come then to claim his rights? Oh, what do you know about him, doctor?" cried Herr von Heydeck, wringing his hands. The doctor gazed with a scornful smile at the despair of the old man, whom fear seemed to deprive of the capacity for thought. Putzer felt vastly superior,--his blood was quickened by the wine, his pulses throbbed feverishly, but his brain had regained more than its wonted clearness. He had suddenly and advisedly uttered as fact what was only suspicion, and thus won from Herr von Heydeck an indirect confession; but this was not enough,--he must know the whole truth, and he was sure that he could extort it by increasing to the uttermost the coward's terror.