back, and letting me finish scooping the money of your Hebrew
friends Aronson and Rostocker?"

The peer raised his head, and shot a keenly enquiring glance at the
other. "Are they my friends?" he asked, with challenging insolence.

"I'm bound to assume that you have been dealing with them, just as you
are dealing with me." Thorpe explained his meaning dispassionately, as
if the transaction were entirely commonplace. "You tell them that you're
in a position to produce proof against me, and ask them what they'll
give for it. Then naturally enough you come to me, and ask what I'll be
willing to pay to have the proof suppressed. I quite understand that I
must bid against these men--and of course I take it for granted that,
since you know their figure, you've arranged in your mind what mine is
to be. I quite understand, too, that I am to pay more than they have
offered. That is on account of 'friendly interest.'"

"Since you allude to it," Lord Plowden observed, with a certain calm
loftiness of tone, "there is no harm in saying that you WILL pay
something on that old score. Once you thrust the promise of something
like a hundred thousand pounds positively upon me. You insisted on my
believing it, and I did so, like a fool. I came to you to redeem the
promise, and you laughed in my face. Very well. It is my turn now. I
hold the whip-hand, and I should be an ass not to remember things. I
shall want that entire one hundred thousand pounds from you, and fifty
thousand added to it 'on account of the 'friendly interest,' as you so
intelligently expressed it."

Thorpe's chin burrowed still deeper upon his breast. "It's an outrage,"
he said with feeling. Then he added, in tones of dejected resignation:
"When will you want it?"

"At the moment when the payments of Rostocker and Aronson are made to
you, or to your bankers or agents," Lord Plowden replied, with prepared
facility. He had evidently given much thought to this part of the
proceedings. "And of course I shall expect you to draw up now an
agreement to that effect. I happen to have a stamped paper with me this
time. And if you don't mind, we will have it properly witnessed--this
time."

Thorpe looked at him with a disconcertingly leaden stare, the while he
thought over what had been proposed. "That's right enough," he announced
at last, "but I shall expect you to do some writing too. Since we're
dealing on this basis, there must be no doubt about the guarantee that
you