J. REDSHAW, alas ‘Flash Jack.’”
“What’s all this?” said Pinnock, when Charlie and Carew brought him the letter. “Who is J. Redshaw, and why does he sign “alas Flash Jack?”
“He means Alias, don’t you see? Alias Flash Jack. He is a man we used to have on the station, and his father used to work for us—I expect he wants to do us a good turn.”
“It will be a good turn in earnest, if he puts you in the way of finding Considine,” said the lawyer. “You will have to send Hugh up. The old man knows you and Carew, and if he saw you coming he would take to the woods, as the Yankees say. Even when you do get him the case isn’t over, because the jury will side with Peggy. They’ll sympathise with her efforts to prove herself an honest woman. It isn’t marrying too much that will get her into trouble—it’s the other thing. But we have the date and place of her alleged marriage with William Grant; and if this old Considine can prove, by documents, mind you, not by his own simple word—because it’s a hundred to one the jury wouldn’t believe him—I say, if he can prove that she married him on that very day and at that very place, then she’s beaten. No one on earth could swallow the story of her marrying two different people on the same day.”
“Hugh can go,” said Charlie. “He’ll have to do his best this time. It all depends on getting hold of this Considine, eh? Well, Hugh ’ll have to get him. If he fails he needn’t show his face amongst us any more.”
Mary Grant was called in and told the great news, and then Pinnock started out to find Hugh. But before the lawyer could see him, Mary met him in the garden.
Hugh did not see that he could be of any use in the case, and wanted to be quit of Kuryong for good. Seeing Mary day after day, he had become more and more miserable as the days went by. He determined at last to go away altogether, and, when once he had made up his mind, only waited for a chance to tell her that he was going. The chance came as she left the office after consulting with Pinnock.
“Miss Grant,” he said, “if you don’t mind, I think I will resign my management of this station. I will make a start for myself or get a job somewhere else. You will easily get someone to take my place.”
She looked at him keenly for a while.
“I didn’t expect this of you,” she said, bitterly. “The rats leave the sinking ship. Is that it?”