“I intend,” said the Captain, “to make a job for the crowner’s inquest of you, and those diamonds for myself.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, man; you won’t frighten me, I’m not so easily fooled. Why, if I don’t turn up, a dozen men will know where to look for me; besides that, they will hear you shoot next door. Why, if you shoot, you’d be hung.”
“You’ve no call to bother your head about me. I can play this hand without your advice,” said the Captain. “See here: first I shoot you; then Jen puts the diamonds away; then I give myself up to the police; Jen confesses; I take my trial, like a man, and show that I shot you because I found you here alone with my wife, after you’d got her to drug my liquor. See here: the whiskey-bottle in the next room is drugged. Jen has got the paper you wrote out. The chemist she got the stuff from can be found, and you’ve taken care to let every one know what your game is. What do you think a jury would do to me? You’d have to look a long time before you’d get one who would find me guilty of murder. Hung! why, I shall be looked upon as the vindicator of the sanctity of domestic life. Guess they’d get up a testimonial for me.”
Then Mr Smythe realised the awkward position in which he was placed. The man seemed to be in earnest, and there was a determined look in his cruel hard face which made Smythe believe that he dared do what he said; and if he did, it was true that he would be in very little danger of being punished. Smythe could remember a somewhat similar case, in which a jury had endorsed the popular verdict of “Served him right,” by finding a prisoner, who had killed the man who had wronged him, not guilty.
He could hear the words of the song which were being sung next door, and he knew that if he shouted out murder he could summon help, but he daren’t shout out. Help was near, but the revolver was nearer.
“Stop,” he said, catching at a last straw; “you don’t know that some one can’t prove I had the diamonds with me!”
“I’ll chance that,” said Hamilton. “You see, no one has ever seen the diamonds but us.”
As Hamilton said this Jenny left the room with the diamonds in her hand, and then came back again without them. Smythe felt that he had seen the last of the stones, which were likely to cost him so dear.
“Spare me! for Heaven’s sake, spare me! What have I done that you should kill me? Keep the diamonds, and let me go.”
“That won’t do, I am afraid,” said Hamilton; “you might change your mind, and try and get the diamonds back. Of course I don’t want to shoot you, but it’s the way to play my game.”