With some difficulty the Jew preserved his gravity. “Very well,” he resumed. “I will make it up to sixty pounds (to set you going again) on two conditions.”
She suddenly recovered her power of speech. “Give me the money!” she cried, with greedy impatience of delay.
“First condition,” he continued, without noticing the interruption: “you are not to suffer, either in purse or person, if you give us the information that we want.”
She interrupted him again. “Tell me what it is, and be quick about it.”
“Second condition,” he went on as impenetrably as ever; “you take me to the place where I can find the certificate of your marriage to Septimus Darts.”
Her eyes glared at him like the eyes of a wild animal. Furies, hysterics, faintings, denials, threats—Jackling endured them all by turns. It was enough for him that his desperate guess of the evening before, had hit the mark on the morning after. When she had completely exhausted herself he returned to the experiment which he had already tried with the maid. Well aware of the advantage of exhibiting gold instead of notes, when the object is to tempt poverty, he produced the promised bribe in sovereigns, pouring them playfully backward and forward from one big hand to the other.
The temptation was more than the woman could resist. In another half-hour the two were traveling together to a town in one of the midland counties.
The certificate was found in the church register, and duly copied.
It also appeared that one of the witnesses to the marriage was still living. His name and address were duly noted in the clerk’s pocketbook. Subsequent inquiry, at the office of the Customs Comptroller, discovered the name of Septimus Darts on the captain’s official list of the crew of an outward bound merchant vessel. With this information, and with a photographic portrait to complete it, the man was discovered, alive and hearty, on the return of the ship to her port.
His wife’s explanation of her conduct included the customary excuse that she had every reason to believe her husband to be dead, and was followed by a bold assertion that she had married Mr. Evelin for love. In Moses Jackling’s opinion she lied when she said this, and lied again when she threatened to prosecute Mr. Evelin for bigamy. “Take my word for it,” said this new representative of the unbelieving Jew, “she would have extorted money from him if he had lived.” Delirium tremens left this question unsettled, and closed the cigar shop soon afterward, under the authority of death.