f his innermost thoughts were in this man's
knowledge. The quicksands all but engulfed him. With unblinking eyes
he regarded Northrup as though hypnotized.

"I took it to her," he gasped.

"Your wife?"

"Yes."

"She does not suspect?"

"No."

"What did your wife say when she read the letter?"

"She's going to help me out."

"I see. All right, you're going to tell her that you want the Point
and then you're going to sell it to me. Heathcote can fix this up in a
few days--the money I pay you will get you out of Maclin's reach. If
he makes a break for you, I'll grab him. I guess he's susceptible to
scare, too, if the truth were known."

"My God! I want a drink." Larry looked as if he did; he rose and
reeled over to the closet.

Northrup regarded his man closely and his fingers reached out and drew
the scattered papers nearer.

"Take only enough to stiffen you up, a swallow or two, Rivers."

Larry obeyed mechanically and when he returned to his chair he was
firmer.

"Rivers, I'm going to give you a chance by way of the only decent
course open to you--or to me. God knows, it's smudgy enough at the
best and crooked, but it's all I can muster. I don't expect you to
understand me, or my motives--I'm going to talk as man to man,
stripped bare. In the future you can work it out any way you're able
to. What I want at the present is to clear the rubbish away that's
cluttering the soul of a woman. That's enough and you can draw what
damned conclusions you want to."

There was an ugly gleam in Larry's eyes. Men stripped bare show
brutish traits, but he felt the straps that were binding him close.

"Go on!" he growled.

"You are to get your wife to give you this Point, Rivers. She may not
want to, but you must force her a bit there by confessing to her the
whole damned truth from start to finish about--these!"

Both men looked at the mass of papers.

"What all these things represent, you know." Larry did not move; he
believed that Northrup knew, too. Knew of that year back in the past
when his trick had been his ruin. "And your simply getting out of
sight won't do. Your wife has got to be free--free, do you understand?
So long as she doesn't know the truth she'd have pity for you--women
are like that--she's going to know all there is to know, and then
she'll fling you off!"

In the hidden depths of Rivers's nature there heaved and roared
something that, had Northrup not held the reins, would have meant
batt