"Thank you, sir, but you took me so kindly and so gentleman-like."
"Thank _you_, Joe; but I mustn't compliment you again, or we shall get no farther than compliments to-night. As I was saying, you ask him for no less than a thousand pounds to help you out of the country and into a respectable line of life. Indeed, all my sympathy is with you in your good intention, but then I have to think of myself----"
"But you're a rich man, sir, and to you a thousand pounds isn't much, and it's everything to me. It will make me safe, and help me out of a way of life I never took to until driven to it," pleaded Farleg.
"Well put, very well put. Now, this is my position. This is my plan; let me hear what you think of it: On the night or evening of the 17th you break into my house; on the night or evening of the 27th you visit me for some purpose or other----"
"To give you back your dead wife's ring."
"Quite so. You may be sure I am overlooking no point in the case. Let me proceed with my view. You and I don't get on well together, and you attack me. You are clearly the burglar, and I am attacked by you, and I defend myself with force. You kill me; that is no good to you. You won't make a penny by my death. But suppose it should unhappily occur that the revolver, on the trigger of which, Joe, I now have my finger, and the muzzle of which is about a foot from your heart, suppose it should go off, what then? You can see the accident would be all in my favour."
For a second no word was spoken. No movement was made in that room.
All at once, apparently from the feet of the two men, a wild alarmed scream of a woman shot up through the silence, and shook the silence into echoes of chattering fear.
As though a blast had struck the banker's face, it shrivelled up like a withered leaf. Something heavy fell from his hand in the drawer, and he rose slowly, painfully, to his feet.
Farleg rose also, keeping his face in the same relation, and on the same level as the banker's, until the pinched face of the banker stole slowly above the burglar's.
The hands of Grey rested on the table. His eyes were fixed on vacancy. He seemed to be listening intently, spellbound by some awful vision, some distracting anticipation intimately concerned with appalling voices.