“Do you mean to tell me, then, that Haldane was associated with you in blackmailing? Because, if so, you had better tell it in his presence.”
“No—no—no. Of course, I don’t mean anything of the sort. Haldane is as straight and square a chap as ever walked. This affair was off my own. I couldn’t resist it when I stumbled against Butcher Ned, and he put me up to who he was, and used to talk about his people too. Lord! how he used to hate you—you, especially. I’d have been sorry for you if he’d ever got the chance of squinting at you for a moment from behind the sighting of a rifle or pistol. By the way, you never found him, did you?”
“No. But before we talk further will you make a statement as to this first marriage of yours? Haldane is a magistrate, and you might make it before him.”
“I would willingly, but it isn’t in the least necessary. The whole thing is entirely between ourselves so far, and you can easily verify the facts.”
“I have verified them already. Do you know this?” And he held up the tin case.
“Oh, good Lord! Yes; I ought to. And you have opened it and gone into the contents? Well, then, Wagram, it isn’t like you making an unnecessary fuss. You’ve got all you want in there already.”
“Meaning the certificate. Here it is.”
“That’s right. You can burn the other things. And now, where on earth did you pick up that box?”
Wagram told him, also hurriedly, about his intervening adventures. The dying man’s face underwent some curious changes—not the least curious being that which passed over it on beholding the skeleton pistol.
“Rum thing that you should have stumbled on to that hooker not once but twice,” he said. “But, good Lord! life for me has been made up of even rummier things than that, and now I’ve got to the end of it. Yes; I know that pistol. That bright half-brother of yours plugged a hole into me with it that’ll last till my dying day—which, by the way, has come. And I?—well, I planted a mark on him that’ll last till his.”