"Now," said Miranda, as she stood before him. "You tell me that my husband is living. I have your bare word for it, and out of your lips you have proved to me that your bare word has very little worth."
"The buttons are off the foils," said he; "very well. In the Cathedral you corroborated my word. You know that he lives; I know it."
"How do you know it?"
"By adding two and two and making five, as any man with any savvy always can," replied Wilbraham. "Indeed, by adding two and two, one can even at times make a decent per annum."
Mrs. Warriner sat down upon the bench, and Wilbraham, standing at her side, presented the following testimonial to his "savvy." First of all, he drew from one pocket four pounds of English gold, and from the other a handful of dollars and pesetas. "This is what is left of two hundred and thirty pounds, which I won at Monte Carlo in the beginning of May. There's a chance for philosophy, Mrs. Warriner. If I hadn't won that money I shouldn't be standing here now with my livelihood assured. For I shouldn't have been able to embark on the P. and O. mail steamer India at Marseilles, and so I shouldn't have fallen in with my dear young friend Charnock."
Miranda fairly started at the mention of Charnock's name in connection with Wilbraham's discovery. Instantly Wilbraham paused. Miranda made an effort to look entirely unconcerned, but Wilbraham's eye was upon her, and she felt the blood colouring her cheeks.
"Oho!" said Wilbraham, cocking his head. Then he whistled softly to himself while he looked her over from head to foot. Miranda kept silence, and he resumed his story, though every time he mentioned Charnock's name he looked to surprise her in some movement.
"Off Ushant we came up with a brigantine, and I couldn't help fancying that her lines were familiar to me. Charnock lent me his binoculars--a dear good fellow, Charnock!--and I made out her name, the Tarifa. I should not have given the boat another thought but for Charnock. Charnock said she had the lines of a Salcombe clipper. Did you happen to know that the Ten Brothers was a Salcombe clipper? I did, and the moment Charnock had spoken I understood why the look of her hull was familiar; I had seen her or her own legitimate sister swinging at Warriner's moorings in Algeciras Bay. I did not set any great store upon that small point, however, until Charnock kindly informed me that her owner could have gained no possible advantage by altering her rig from a schooner's into a brigantine's. Then my interest began to rise, for he had altered the rig. Why, if the change was to his disadvantage? I can't say that I had any answer ready; I can't say that I expected to find an answer. But since I landed at Plymouth, from which Salcombe is a bare twenty miles, I thought that I might as well run over. One never knows--such small accidents mean everything for us--and, as a matter of fact, I spent a very pleasant half-hour in the back parlour of the Commercial Inn, watching the yachts at anchor and the little sailing boats spinning about the river, and listening to an old skipper, who deplored the times when the town rang with the din of hammers in shipbuilding yards, and twelve--observe, Mrs. Warriner, twelve--schooners brought to it the prosperity of their trade. The schooners had been sold off, but the skipper had their destinies at his fingers' ends as a man follows the fortunes of his children. Two had been cast away, three were in the Newfoundland trade, one was now a steam-yacht, and the others still carried fruit from the West Indies. He accounted for eleven of them, and the twelfth, of course, was the Ten Brothers wrecked upon Rosevear. I eliminated the Ten Brothers, the two which had been cast away, and the steam-yacht. Eight were left."
"Yes?" said Mrs. Warriner.
"I went back to Plymouth and verified the skipper's information. He had given me the owners' names and the names of the vessels. I looked them up in the sailing-lists and I proved beyond a shadow of doubt, from their dates of sailing and arrival at various ports, that not one of those eight schooners could have been the brigantine we passed off Ushant. There remained, then, the four which I had eliminated, or rather the three, for the steam-yacht was out of the question. Do you follow?"