"He has told you them?" she cried. "You are his messenger?"
Miller gave a little bow of acquiescence.
"They are bluntly these," he said. "For you he demands from your father the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds. For your nephew, double that amount. For myself, I must apologize for placing myself next, but the financial sequence necessitates it, ten thousand. For our friend here--nothing, or, to be precise, nothing in cash."
She did not flinch as he mentioned the sums. She merely looked contemptuous.
"Is that all?" she asked. "He is a common blackmailer?"
"No," he said. "Unfortunately that is not all."
"It rests with you," he said suddenly. "He wants from you--silence. What has happened is as if it had never been. You are to allow him to take his place unquestioned in the society which befits his rank. He wishes to turn a new leaf."
Aylmer met the look with blank incredulity, at first. Then his lips tightened with determination.
"And you?" he cried. "You are taking him seriously? You are going to give him this money?"
Miller's out-turned palms expressed a vague pessimism.
"Blank refusal: what is his answer to that?"
The dark eyes searched the two expectant faces meditatively. The thin prehensile fingers picked at a loose splinter in the bulkhead.
"I think he would find a way," he said slowly. "I think--in fact he has threatened it--he would--_hurt_ you!"
Aylmer stared at the gray figure, puzzled, frowning. Miller had used a new voice for the two last syllables, a voice that shook ever so slightly with some concealed emotion. "Hurt you," he reiterated sharply, and then darted a quick, bird-like glance at Aylmer--a look full of interrogation.
Claire Van Arlen moved forward with a sudden startled movement.
"Hurt!" she cried. "You mean that he would use torture?"
"I think," said Miller, very slowly, "that he would use anything."
And then Aylmer began to laugh--loudly, gaily, and quite whole-heartedly. Miller's eyebrows proclaimed their owner's astonishment.
"Melodrama!" explained Aylmer, still chuckling. "I remember Landon as a small boy, even before his Eton days. He bred these leanings then. He wasted his pocket money on 'bloods,' I think they are called--penny exhilarators for youths of tender years, crammed with impossible villainies. And now he is going to tie flaming splinters between my fingers and squeeze my thumbs in the crack of the door! This is the price I am to pay for refusing him social rehabilitation. We cannot congratulate him on his sense of humor, we really cannot."