I shall only just catch my train to town." Mills nodded a curt gesture of farewell, and left the room, and when he had gone Mr.Taynton sat down again in the chair by the table, and remained there some half hour.

He knew well the soundness of his partner's reasoning; all he had said was fatally and abominably true.
There was no way out of it.

Yet to pay money to a blackmailer was, to the legal mind, a confession of guilt.

Innocent people, unless they were abject fools, did not pay blackmail.

They prosecuted the blackmailer.