At this Jenny changed color. There was a policeman within a few yards, and she saw her great and golden dream dissolving.
“It remains to be seen if I have got any papers. That’s the very question, you see!” she said.
“You might be searched, you know, just to clear the point. Yet you needn’t be afraid of that, for I’m disposed to meet you, and you aren’t going to refuse any reasonable offer, with no trouble from the police to follow. So I offer you now—fifty golden sovereigns for the papers, cash down.”
“You leave me alone,” muttered Jenny, sheepishly, turning her shoulder to him.
“Well, I thought we were going to be friends; but I see that I must act harshly,” David said, making a threatening movement to leave her.
“You can have them for one hundred pounds,” the girl murmured in a frail voice with downcast eyes; to which David, not to drive a hard bargain with her, at once answered: “Well, you shall have your one hundred pounds.”
The next moment, however, he was asking himself: “Who’s to pay? Can I afford these royal extravagances in other people’s affairs? Steady! Not too much Violet!”
He walked a little way from the girl, considering it. He could not afford it. There was no earthly reason why he should. But he might go to Violet, to Mrs. Mordaunt, and obtain the one hundred pounds, or their authorization to spend that sum on their behalf. In that case, however, how make sure of Jenny in the meantime? It would hardly do to leave her there in the station, so near to Strauss. She would be drawn to him as by a magnet, and he thought that if he took her with him to the Mordaunts, she would recover her self-assurance and demand from the women more, perhaps, than they could afford. In the end, he decided to take her to his flat, and leave her there in Mrs. Grover’s charge till he returned from the Mordaunts.
“That’s a bargain, then,” he said to her; “one hundred it is. I take it that you actually have the certificates on you?”
“I may have,” smirked the elusive Jenny.