There was no time for Monk to soften any of what he must say, however harsh it sounded. "Sir Oliver Rathbone can tie every detail of the money all the way from Argyll's bank to you passing it to the man who murdered Havilland."

"If you think I'm going to plead guilty, you are wasting your time," Sixsmith said angrily. "And more to the point, you're wasting mine as well. I never denied that I paid the money! I thought it was to bribe a bunch of ruffians to see off some of the toshers who were giving us a hard time and spreading rumors about uncharted underground rivers and scaring the hell out of some of the navvies."

"Then say so!" Monk challenged him.

Sixsmith's heavy lip curled. "Admit to bribing thugs to knock around a few men who are no more than a nuisance? They'll have me in jail so fast, I'll barely see the ground. Are you a fool?"

"No, but you are!" Monk responded. "Rathbone will prove it anyway. If you want to come out of this alive, you'll admit to the attempt to bribe. It didn't work, so there was no crime actually committed-"

"There was murder!" Sixsmith said savagely, his face dark with emotion. "If that's not a crime, what in God's name is?"

"Did you know it was going to be murder?"

"No, of course I didn't!" Sixsmith's voice was harsh, desperate. "I know beating the toshers was illegal, though. But what the hell do the men in Parliament know about the real world? Would they bend their backs to a day's labor hacking and piling earth and rocks, winching them up to the surface? Or living all the daylight hours in some stinking, dripping, rat-infested hole, burrowing like a damn rat yourself, so the sewers can run clean?" He took a deep breath, his chest heaving. "We've got to get rid of the toshers who are spreading fear just to keep their old beats in the sewers that are left. Do you know what a toshers beat is worth?"

"Yes," Monk said tartly. "And I know they hate change. So tell the court that! Tell them that Argyll knew it, too, and couldn't afford to let it go on."

Sixsmith looked exhausted, as if he had been battling the same arguments in his head for weeks.

Monk felt an intense pity for him. "I'm sorry," he said gently. "To be betrayed by someone you trusted is one of the worst pains a man can know. But you have no time now to dwell on it. You must save yourself by telling not just the truth, but all of it."

Sixsmith raised his head and gave him a smile that was more a baring of the teeth. "Argyll will simply say that he gave me the money to buy off the toshers so they would leave the navvies alone, and I am the one who used it to have Havilland killed."