damn you!" cried Langham, springing to his feet. He made an
ineffectual effort to seize Gilmore by the throat, but the gambler
thrust him aside with apparent ease.

"Don't try that or you'll get the worst of it, Marsh; you've been
soaking up too much whisky to be any good at that game with me!" said
Gilmore.

[Illustration: "She was in North's rooms--"]

His manner was cool and determined. He took Langham roughly by the
shoulders and threw him back in his chair. The lawyer's face was ghastly
in the gray light that streamed in through the windows, but he had
lost his sense of personal fear in another and deeper and less selfish
emotion. Yet he realized the gambler's power over him, the power of a
perfect and absolute knowledge of his most secret and hidden concerns.

Gilmore surveyed him with a glance of quiet scorn.

"It was about half past five when she turned up at North's rooms. He had
just come up the stairs ahead of her; I imagine he knew she was coming.
I guess I could tell you a few things you don't know! All during the
summer and fall they've been meeting on the quiet--" he laughed
insolently. "Oh, you have been all kinds of a fool, Marsh; I guess
you've got on to the fact at last. And I don't wonder you are anxious to
see North hang, and that you won't go near him; I'd kill him if I stood
in your place. But maybe we can fix it so the law will do that job for
you. It seems to have the whip-hand with him just now. Well, he was the
whole thing with your wife when she went away this fall and then he
began to take up with the general's girl--sort of to keep his hand in, I
suppose--the damn fool! For she ain't a patch on your wife. I guess Mrs.
Langham had been tipped off to this new deal--that's what brought her
back to Mount Hope in such a hurry, and she went to his rooms to have it
out with him and learn just where she stood. I was in my bedroom and I
could hear them talking through the partition. It wasn't peaches and
cream, for she was rowing all right!"

"It's a lie!" cried Langham, and he strove to rise to his feet, but
Gilmore's strong hand kept him in his chair.

"No, I don't lie, Marsh, you ought to know that by this time; but
there's just one point you want to get through your head; with your
wife's help North can prove an alibi. He won't want to compromise her,
or himself with the Herbert girl, for that matter; but how long do you
think he's going to keep his mouth shut with the gallows staring hi