"If you were capable of thinking, you would see that I could not have acted otherwise!" she said.

"You have me there," said Evan coolly. "For I don't see the necessity of being a blackmailer."

Corinna jumped up and stamped her foot. Her face reddened, and two large tears rolled down her cheeks. "Don't you dare to use that word to me again, you fool!"

Evan laughed delightedly. "Why shy at the word and commit the deed?"

"You know nothing of the circ.u.mstances!" she stormed. "You have neither sense nor feeling! You take all your ideas ready made from others. You are as empty as a drum!"

"Bravo!" he cried. "Keep it up if it makes you feel any better!"

"If it is a crime to extort money from a foul old robber and give it to the poor, all right, I'm a criminal! I glory in it! I would do it all over again!"

"I don't deny one has a sneaking sympathy with a life of crime," Evan said, affecting a judicial air. "But after all, law is law. You have to make your choice. I chose to stay inside the law, and naturally I have to uphold it like everybody on my side."

"You're a nice upholder of the law!" she cried. "You're just trying to get back at me!"

Evan grinned. "You're so frank, Corinna. But after all, being on the side of the law gives me an advantage now, doesn't it?"

"Yes, if you want to take the pay of a scoundrel like Deaves."

"Oh, I was fired some days ago. I'm working on my own now."

"You're just angry and jealous!"

"I dare say. I admit I don't mind your blackmailing operations half as much as the other thing."

"What other thing?"

"Those fellows on the _Ernestina_; to take advantage of their wanting you, and use them for your own ends."

"Everything was understood between us. Everything was open and aboveboard."

"Of course. But they were already enslaved, you see. And you forced them to serve your pride and arrogance. You queened it over them.

That makes me more indignant than blackmailing a usurer, for the other thing's a crime against a man's best feelings, and I'm a man myself."

"You're only jealous!"

"Why should I be. _I_ wouldn't stand for the brotherhood. I know you gave me--or I took--more than you ever gave them."

"You're a brute!"

"Why sure!"

There was a silence. Corinna kept her eyes down. It was impossible to say of what she was thinking. But her pa.s.sion of anger visibly subsided. She murmured at last:

"If, as you say, you sympathise with me for getting money out of Simeon Deaves----"

"I didn't quite say that," interrupted Evan. "But it's near enough, go on!"

"Why do you want to hand me over to the police?"

It was fun to torment Corinna, and it satisfied his deep need for vengeance. But the sight of her quiet, with the curved lashes lying on her cheeks, and the soft lips drooping, went to his breast like a knife. Vengeance was suddenly appeased. Such a gallant little crook!

He realised that not for a moment had he really intended to hand her over. He jumped up.

"I'm not going to send you to jail," he said. "You're going to make rest.i.tution."

Corinna stared.

"What do you mean?"

"Give me an order on Dordess for the bonds--if it is Dordess who has them, and give me your word that you will lead an honest life hereafter." He was smiling.

Corinna blazed up afresh. "Never!" she cried. "I'd die rather!"

"You _must_ do it!"

"Why must I?"

"Because you're going to marry me, and naturally I want an honest woman to wife."

Corinna laughed a peal. "I'd die rather! And you know it now!"

Indeed in his heart he was not at all sure but that her Satanic pride might break her before she would give in, but he bluffed it out.

"Come on!" he said. "There's no time to lose. I have sent for the police though you make out not to believe it. I see you've been writing on the table. Sit down and write me an order for the bonds."

"Break up our organisation on your say-so? Never!"

"If you don't the police will. Come now, whatever happens you can't go on using those infatuated boys to further your own ends. That's low, Corinna; that's like offering a starving man husks."

"You have your gun in your pocket," she cried pa.s.sionately. "Use it, for you'll never break my will!"

"It's not a bullet that waits you, but jail," said Evan grimly. "No grand-stand finish, but endless dragging days in a four-by-ten cell!

Come on, give up the loot. You'll have to anyhow, and go to jail in the bargain!"

"It's not loot!" she cried. "It's mine! By every rule of justice and right, it's mine. Simeon Deaves robbed my father. Beggared him and brought him to his grave!"

"Ha!" cried Evan, "I might have guessed there was something personal here! But someone has to lose in the warfare of business."

"This was not the chance of warfare. This was malice, cold and calculated. I'll tell you. It spoiled my childhood. Deaves and my father were workers in the same church. You didn't know, did you, that Deaves was a religious man. Oh, yes, always a pillar of some church until his avarice grew so upon him that he could no longer bring himself to subscribe. My father learned that he was using his position in our church to lend money to other members at usurious interest, and to collect it under threats of exposure. My father showed him up, and Deaves was put out of the church. He set about a cold and patient scheme of revenge, but we didn't learn this until the crash came a couple of years afterwards. He bought up,--what do you call it?--all my father's paper, the notes every merchant has to give to carry on his business. At last he presented all my father's outstanding indebtedness at once with a demand for instant payment, and when my father couldn't meet it, Deaves sold him out, and we were ruined. It killed my father and embittered my mother's few remaining years.

"That was what I grew up with. I don't know when it started, but the determination to punish him grew and grew in my mind until it crowded out every other thought. I planned for years before I did anything. I followed him. I learned all about him. His avarice went to such lengths at last that I began to see my chance to show him up. I met Dordess and the others, and the idea of the Avengers slowly took shape.

There was something fine to us in the idea of making him pay to bring pleasure and health to the poor. None of us would spend a cent of his filthy money on ourselves. What have I done to Deaves to repay the crushing blows he dealt to me and mine?--a few pin-p.r.i.c.ks, that's all.

Well, it is my life. I cannot change it now."

Evan was more softened than he cared to show. "I understand," he said.

"It excuses your heart, but not your head. It was so foolish to try to buck the law!"