"I have made the plunge, gentlemen, and fortune favored me. I--" here his
voice failed him again, but realizing the fact more quickly than before,
he shook off his apathy, and facing the two men, who awaited his slow
words with inconceivable excitement, continued with sudden concentration
upon his subject, "I saw what I went to see--poor Georgian's body. I have
satisfied the coroner of this fact. The little bag I tore from her side
proves her identity beyond a doubt. You saw it, Mr. Harper. They tell me
that you recognized it at once as the same you saw in her hand in the
stage-coach. But if you had not, the initials on it are unmistakable, G.
Q. H., Georgian Quinlan Hazen. Auchincloss will get his money, and soon,
will he not? Answer me plainly, Harper. Such an experience merits some
reward. You will not make difficulties?"
"I?" The lawyer's query had a strange ring to it. He glanced from Hazen
to Ransom, and from Ransom back to Hazen, whose features had now become
more composed, though they still retained their remarkable pallor.
"If the proof is positive," he then went on, "you assuredly can trust
both my client and myself to remember our promise to you."
"The coroner, you say, is satisfied?"
"Yes, with the proof and my sworn statement. He is obliged to be. No one
else, least of all himself, feels any desire to go down to that whirling
eddy for confirmation of my story.
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