nd when he
comes he will kill her! That is certain!"

Hurd shuddered and drank some of his whisky.

"Look here," he said, "we mustn't have that. Revenge, of course, he will
want--but there are other ways."

The little man blinked his eyes.

"You do not know Jean le Roi," he said. "To him it is a pastime to kill!
For myself I do not know the passions as he would know them. Where
there was money I would not kill. It would be as you have said--there
are other ways. But Jean le Roi is different."

"Jean le Roi, as you call him, must be tamed, then," Hurd said. "You
speak of money. I have been her agent, so I can tell you. What do you
think might be the income of this lady?"

Johnson was deeply interested. He leaned across the table. His little
black eyes were alight with cupidity.

"Who can tell?" he murmured. "It might be two, perhaps three, four
thousand English pounds a year. Eh?"

Stephen Hurd laughed scornfully.

"Four thousand a year!" he repeated. "Bah! She fooled you all to some
purpose! Her income is--listen--is forty thousand pounds a year! You
hear that, my friend? Forty thousand pounds a year!"

The little man's face was a study in varying expressions. He leaned back
in his chair, and then crouched forward over the table. His beady eyes
were almost protruding, a spot of deeper colour, an ugly purple patch,
burned upon his cheeks. The words seemed frozen upon his lips. Twice he
opened his mouth to speak and said nothing.

Stephen Hurd took off his hat and placed it upon the table before him.
His listener's emotion was catching.

"Forty thousand pounds," he said softly, "livres you call it! It is a
great fortune. She has deceived you, too! You must make her pay for it."

Johnson was recovering himself slowly. His voice when he spoke shook,
but it was with the dawn of a vicious anger!

"Yes!" he muttered, speaking as though to himself, "she has deceived us!
She must pay! God, how she must pay!"

His fingers twitched upon the table. He was blinking rapidly.

"There is the money," he said softly, "and there is Jean le Roi!"

It was a night of shocks for him. Again his eyes were dilated. He shrank
back in his chair and clutched at Hurd's sleeve.

"It is himself!" he whispered hoarsely. "It is Jean le Roi! God in
Heaven, he will kill us!"

Johnson collapsed for a moment. In his face were all the evidences of an
abject fear, and Stephen Hurd was in very nearly as evil a plight. The
man who was th