“And if I refuse?” almost whispered Mrs. Plant, through bloodless lips.
Roger shrugged his shoulders. “You leave me with absolutely no alternative. I shall have to tell the police what I know and leave the rest in their hands.”
“The police?”
“Yes. And I assure you I am not bluffing. As I said, I think I know almost everything already. I know, for instance, that you sat on the couch and begged Mr. Stanworth to let you off; that you cried, in fact, when he refused to do so. Then you said you hadn’t any money, didn’t you? And he offered to take your jewels instead. Then—Oh, but you see. I’m not pretending to know what I don’t.”
Roger’s bow, drawn thus at a venture, had found its target. Mrs. Plant acknowledged the truth of his deductions by crying incredulously, “But how do you know all this, Mr. Sheringham? How can you possibly have found it out?”
“We won’t go into that at the moment, if you don’t mind,” Roger replied complacently. “Let it suffice that I do know. Now I want you to tell me in your own words the whole truth about that night. Please leave out nothing at all; you must understand that I can check you if you do so, and if you deceive me again—!” He paused eloquently.
For a few moments Mrs. Plant sat motionless, gazing into her lap. Then she raised her head and wiped her eyes.
“Very well,” she said in a low voice. “I will tell you. You understand that I am placing not only my happiness, but literally my whole future in your hands by doing so?”
“I do, Mrs. Plant,” Roger said earnestly. “And I assure you I will not abuse your confidence, although I am forcing it in this way.”
Mrs. Plant’s eyes rested on a bed of roses close at hand. “You know that Mr. Stanworth was a blackmailer?” she said.
Roger nodded. “On a very large scale, indeed.”
“Is that so? I did not know it; but it does not surprise me in the least.” Her voice sank. “He found out somehow that before I was married I—I—”
“There’s not the least need to go into that sort of detail, Mrs. Plant,” Roger interposed quickly. “All that concerns me is that he was blackmailing you; I don’t want to know why.”
Mrs. Plant flashed a grateful look at him.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Well, I will just say that it was in connection with an incident which happened before I was married. I have never told my husband about it (it was all past and done with before I ever met him), because I knew that it would break his heart. And we are devotedly in love with each other,” she added simply.
“I understand,” Roger murmured sympathetically.
“Then that devil found out about it! For he was a devil, Mr. Sheringham,” Mrs. Plant said, looking at Roger with wide eyes, in which traces of horror still lingered. “I could never have imagined that anyone could be so absolutely inhuman. Oh! It was hell!” She shuddered involuntarily.
“He demanded money, of course,” she went on after a minute in a calmer voice; “and I paid him every penny I could. You must understand that I was willing to face any sacrifice rather than that my husband should be told. The other night I had to tell him that I had no more money left. I lied when I told you what time I went into the library. He stopped me in the hall to tell me that he wanted to see me there at half-past twelve. That would be when everyone else was in bed, you see. Mr. Stanworth always preserved the greatest secrecy about these meetings.”
“And you went at half-past twelve?” Roger prompted sympathetically.
“Yes, taking my jewels with me. I told him that I had no more money. He wasn’t angry. He never was. Just cold and sneering and horrible. He said he’d take the jewels for that time, but I must bring him the money he wanted—two hundred and fifty pounds—in three months’ time.”
“But how could you, if you hadn’t got it?”
Mrs. Plant was silent. Then gazing unseeingly at the rose bed, as if living over again that tragic interview, she said in a curiously toneless voice, “He said that a pretty woman like me could always obtain money if it was necessary. He said he would introduce me to a man out of whom I—I could get it, if I played my cards properly. He said if I wasn’t ready with the two hundred and fifty pounds within three months he would tell my husband everything.”
“My God!” said Roger softly, appalled.
Mrs. Plant looked him suddenly straight in the face.
“That will show you what sort of a man Mr. Stanworth was, if you didn’t know,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t,” Roger answered. “This explains a good deal,” he added to himself. “And then, I suppose, Jefferson came in?”
“Major Jefferson?” Mrs. Plant repeated, in unmistakable astonishment.
“Yes. Wasn’t that when he came in?”
Mrs. Plant stared at him in amazement.
“But Major Jefferson never came in at all!” she exclaimed. “What ever makes you think that?”
It was Roger’s turn to be astonished.
“Do I understand you to say that Jefferson never came in at all while you were in the library with Stanworth?” he asked.
“Good gracious, no,” Mrs. Plant replied emphatically. “I should hope not! Why ever should he?”
“I—I don’t really know,” Roger said lamely. “I thought he did. I must have been mistaken.” In spite of the unexpectedness of her denial, he was convinced that Mrs. Plant was telling the truth; her surprise was far too genuine to have been assumed. “Well, what happened?”
“Nothing. I—I implored him not to be so hard and to be content with what I had paid him and give me back the evidence he’d got, but—”
“Where did he keep the evidence, by the way? In the safe?”
“Yes. He always carried the safe about with him. It was supposed to be burglarproof.”
“Was it open while you were there?”
“He opened
