He listened with the closest attention while she read. The question of stealing the diamonds (if they could only be found) did not trouble either of them. It was a settled question, by tacit consent on both sides. But the value in money of the precious stones suggested a doubt that still weighed on his mind.
“How do you know they’re worth five thousand pounds?” he inquired.
“You dear old stupid! Doesn’t Westerfield himself say so in his letter?”
“Read that bit again.”
She read it again: “After the two calamities of the loss of the ship, and the disappearance of the diamonds—these last being valued at five thousand pounds—I returned to England.”
Satisfied so far, he wanted to look at the cipher next. She handed it to him with a stipulation: “Yours, Jemmy, on the day when you marry me.”
He put the slip of paper into his pocket. “Now I’ve got it,” he said, “suppose I keep it?”
A woman who has been barmaid at a public-house is a woman not easily found at the end of her resources.
“In that case,” she curtly remarked, “I should first call in the police, and then telegraph to my husband’s employers in Liverpool.”
He handed the cipher back. “I was joking,” he said.