“I don’t think you quite realize your position,” he said. “I find you here trying to steal something of mine. If you tell me the name of the man, or men, under whose orders you are acting, I may be able to believe.” “I can’t tell you,” she cried; “I can’t tell you.” “It’s most likely to be Bangs,” he said meditatively, and then turned to her quickly. “It was John H. Bangs of the secret service who sent you.” At all costs she knew she must keep the name of Daniel Taylor from him. To admit that it was a fellow official would do no harm. “Yes,” she said; “it was.” Contempt looked from his face. “You lie, Miss Cartwright, you lie!” “Mr. Denby!” she cried. “I’ve no time for politeness now,” he told her. “There is no Bangs in the secret service.” “But you, how can you know?” she said, fighting for time. “It’s my business to know my opponents,” he observed. “Can’t you tell the truth?” “I can’t tell you who it was,” she persisted, “but if you’ll just give me the necklace--” He laughed scornfully at her childish request. Her manner puzzled him extremely. He had seen her fence and cross-examine, use her tongue with the adroitness of an old hand at intrigue, and yet she was simple, guileless enough to ask him to hand over the necklace. “And if I refuse you’ll call the men in who seized Mr. Vaughan, thinking it was I, and let them get the right man this time?” “I don’t know,” she said despairingly. “What else can I do? I can’t fail.” “Nor can I,” he snapped, “and don’t intend to, either. Do you know what happens to a man who smuggles in the sort of thing I did and resists the officials as I shall do, and is finally caught? I’ve seen it, and I know. It’s prison, Miss Cartwright, and gray walls and iron bars. It means being herded for a term of years with another order of men, the men who are crooked at heart; it means the losing of all one’s hopes in prison gloom and coming out debased and suspected by every man set in authority over you, for evermore. I’ve sometimes gone sick at seeing men who have done as I am doing, but have not escaped. I’m not going to prison, Miss Cartwright, remember that.” “But I don’t want you to,” she cried eagerly, so eagerly, that he groaned to think her magnificent acting should be devoted to such a scene as this. “I don’t want you to.” “Then there’s only one way out of it for both of us,” he said, coming nearer. “What?” she asked fervently. “Tell them you’ve failed, that you couldn’t find it anywhere.” “I couldn’t,” she said vehemently. There was a certain studied contempt in his manner which hurt her badly. And to know that he would always regard her as an adventuress, unprincipled and ready to sell herself for the rewards of espionage, and never have even one pleasant and genuine memory of her, made her desperate. “I didn’t intend you to lose on the transaction,” he said coldly. “I’ll give you ten thousand dollars.” “Oh, no, no!” she cried, “you don’t understand.”