"Have you seen her?"
"Not yet; I preferred coming to an understanding with you first."
"A condition you may not find as easy as you anticipate," I retorted,
angered at his cool insolence. "If you are Philip Henley, then the
lady you are holding prisoner is your wife."
He laughed, leaning back again in his chair.
"Well, hardly. I rather surmised that was the idea from a sentence or
two, in these instructions," and he touched a bundle of papers on the
desk. "Careless way to carry such evidence around--shows the amateur.
Thought it would add to the appeal to justice for Henley to have a
wife, I presume. Why not a child also? Permit me to state, my dear
sir, that I possess no such encumbrance."
"It happens," I contended coldly, "that I have seen the marriage
certificate."
He sat up stiffly, the sarcastic grin leaving his face, and replaced by
an expression of vindictiveness.
"Oh, you have! As much a forgery as some of these other precious
documents. You win certainly grant that I ought to know whether I am
married or not?"
"I made no assertion relative to that."
"What did you assert?"
"That Philip Henley was married, and that his wife--or widow, as the
case may be--is the lady who accompanied me to Carrollton.
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