“What would you do if I declined?”
“I should call upon Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell and give her a quarter of an hour’s entertainment by telling her of the System, and explaining to her, in detail, the exact method of its working and the reason why you set it going. Having amused Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell in this manner, I should make similar revelations to Eva. It would not be pleasant for you subsequently, I suppose, but we all have our troubles. That would be yours.”
He hesitated.
“As if they’d believe it,” he said, weakly.
“I think they would.”
“They’d laugh at you. They’d think you were mad.”
“Not when I produced John Hatton, Sidney Price, and Tom Blake in a solid phalanx, and asked them to corroborate me.”
“They wouldn’t do it,” he said, snatching at a straw. “They wouldn’t give themselves away.”
“Hatton might hesitate to, but Tom Blake would do it like a shot.”
As I did not know Tom Blake, a moment’s reflection might have told James that this was bluff. But I had gathered a certain knowledge of the bargee’s character from James’s conversation, and I knew that he was a drunken, indiscreet sort of person who might be expected to reveal everything in circumstances such as I had described; so I risked the shot, and it went home. James’s opposition collapsed.