“Force awa’ then—naebody’s hinderin’ ye.”
“Come, come now—it is quite evident to me that you have something to conceal,” I said, fairly baffled.
“Everybody has,” she grimly returned.
“Perhaps your son has paid you to be silent?”
A flashing look was the answer; it said scornfully—“As if that would be necessary!”
“Did you forge the certificate?”
“Humph!” The grunt was utterly derisive of me and my powers. After trying her for nearly half an hour I gave the old woman up in despair and left, determined to overhaul the books of the registrar for the district. I did so for a period extending over the two years, but could find no record of such a death. I had not expected to find it. The strange reticence of the mother had convinced me that I had misjudged the broken wife, and that the man was really alive. My visit to the registrar was productive of one discovery, however, which pointed to a solution to one mystery. I found recorded the death of one Richard Hanford, aged 58 years, spouse of the old woman who had proved so intractable under my questioning. By referring to the broken wife I discovered that she had never thought of looking at the age of the deceased as recorded in the certificate; and I had a strong suspicion that it had been the certificate of the father’s death which had been shown her, with a view to severing the connection for ever.
Back I went to the old woman’s home, only to find her flown, and the house shut up and empty. She had taken alarm, then, and deemed flight the most easy way out of her difficulties.
I had now no clue whatever to the discovery of Hanford, and, truth to tell, was not sorry. I heartily hoped that he, too, had taken alarm and left the city, and that I should thus hear no more of the case. But the broken wife, from the hour of the first meeting, had never rested. She was continually on the prowl, never going to her work, seldom eating or sleeping, and almost forgetting to drink. The result was that one night, in watching a quiet hotel or boarding-house at the West End, she saw a man come out and hurry towards a waiting cab, and flew across and pinned him in her arms with his foot on the steps.
“Dick! Dick Hanford! look at me and say why you have tried to make me believe you were dead?” she cried in frenzied tones.