"Help Mr. Crosby to a chair, Sayers. Give me that pistol on the table
yonder. Here is the key of the door--catch; shut the window, one of you.
Now go, and wait in the passage until I call you."
"Shall I go?" said Harriet.
"No; stay."
"You may well want to go, girl," said Crosby. "You have betrayed an
innocent woman into the hands of her enemies, and for reward--what has
this man promised you for reward?"
"Will you listen to me a moment, Mr. Crosby?" said Rosmore.
"Your confederates have made it impossible for me to refuse."
"That is unworthy of you," Rosmore answered. "I assure you I had no
knowledge of their presence until I had made up my mind that your point
was in my heart. I am glad they came for my own sake. I should have been
a dead man had they been a moment later. I admit my defeat. Technically
I am in your debt. If these bottles on the table are some excuse for me,
I yet own that to-night the better man won."
"It hardly looks like it, does it?"
"Life is full of queer chances," said Rosmore, smiling. "You could find
only two ways of ending your story. You see there is at least a third."
"It but delays the true ending," Crosby answered.
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