“Isn’t it? Well, at least, the plan miscarried. Now, give me the button, and I promise, to the best of my power, to hush the matter up.”
“I haven’t got it, indeed; O, you must believe me! He told the policeman himself that he had thrown it away while escaping.”
“Yes, yes. I give him credit for his loyalty to you. But, Emma—you know I never put much faith in your sanctimoniousness. Don’t be a fool, and drive me to extremities.”
“You can’t mean it. I blame my covetous heart. I envied you—I admit it—this dear fetish of our family. But to think me capable of such a wickedness! O, Inez!”
Then Mrs. John Belmont exploded. I muffle the report. It left Miss Belmont flaccid and invertebrate, weakly sobbing that she would see Hurley; would try to get him to identify the exact spot where he had parted with the bauble; would move heaven and earth to make her guiltless restitution. Yet all the time, remembering the scene of last night, she must have known her promise vain. Jim had sought to thrust no shadow of a fact upon her. He had not thrown the button away. He alone knew where it now was; but would he so far play into the hands of her enemy as to tell? She felt faint in the horror of this doubt; and Mrs. John perceived the horror.
As for her, she was utterly hateful and incredulous. She had friends, she screamed—one in particular—who would act, and unmercifully, to see her righted. She hardly refrained from striking her sister-in-law, as she rushed out in a storm of hysterics.
And at this point I was called in—by Miss Belmont, that is to say.
I found her utterly prostrated—within step of the brink of the final collapse.
I coaxed her back, foot by foot; won the whole truth from her; laughed her terrors to scorn, and staked her my professional credit to have the matter put right, or on the way to right, by our next meeting.
And I meant it, and was confident. For that very day—though of this she did not know—I had officially ordered Jim Hurley’s removal from the cell in which he had been lodged to the County Hospital. The man was dying, that was the fact; and a fact which he had known perfectly when he staked at one throw for an easy bed for himself, and a repayment of his debt to his old benefactress.