When he had finished, Mr. Jobling read his statement over aloud, and chuckled ecstatically. His own eyes were shining.
"That settles it, Lady Josceline," said he triumphantly, turning to Sallie. "I'll stake my professional reputation on your identity now. You need have no further doubt—"
"And just to clinch the matter," growled Captain Dove, "you'd better add this to your affidavy:—The clothes the kid was wearing when I fetched her off that dhow were all marked with the moniker 'J. J.' and some sort of crest. But—they were all lost when the ship I commanded then was—went down at sea."
Mr. Jobling groaned. "How very unfortunate!" he remarked before he resumed his writing. And Slyne stared fixedly at the old man until the lawyer had finished.
"Now," said Mr. Jobling, adjusting his pince-nez and beaming about him again, "we can call in a couple of witnesses and—"
"We'll witness each other's signatures." Slyne disagreed. "Better not bring in any outsiders."
The stout solicitor frowned over that, but finally nodded concurrence. And Captain Dove took the pen from him, only to hand it to Slyne.
"Gimme my thousand dollars and your joint note for the balance first," he requested unamiably.
Slyne signed the new note Mr. Jobling pushed across the table, and Mr. Jobling endorsed it. Captain Dove read it over carefully before he pocketed it, and also counted with great caution the bills Slyne tossed to him. Then he in his turn signed, without reading it, the statement the lawyer had drawn up from his dictation, and the more lengthy agreement between Sallie and Jasper Slyne.
Slyne and Jobling added their names to that, and Slyne attached his careful signature to a promise to pay the solicitor the percentage agreed upon. Captain Dove witnessed it and then called Sallie from her seat in the window-alcove, and she came forward with anxious eyes, to fulfil the undertaking she had finally had to give Jasper Slyne as the price of his help in her most unhappy predicament.