"I don't know--if he ever got a show at you--Why don't you let me perform the ceremony?" he began persuasively. "She knows I've been a preacher. That will satisfy her scruples, and then, if you ever had to make it known--? But no one would know then."
Wickersham declined this with a show of virtue. He did not mention that he had suggested this to the girl but she had positively refused it. She would be married by a regular preacher or she would go home.
"There must be some one in this big town," suggested Plume, "who will do such a job privately and keep it quiet? Where is that preacher you were talking about once that took flyers with you on the quiet? You can seal his mouth. And if the worst comes to the worst, there is Montana; you can always get out of it in six weeks with an order of publication. _I_ did it," said Mr. Plume, quietly, "and never had any trouble about it."
"You did! Well, that's one part of your rascality I didn't know about."
"I guess there are a good many of us have little bits of history that we don't talk about much," observed Mr. Plume, calmly. "I wouldn't have told you now, but I wanted to help you out of the fix that--"
"That you have helped me get into," said Wickersham, with a sneer.
"There is no trouble about it," Plume went on. "You don't want to marry anybody else--now, and meantime it will give you the chance you want of controlling old Rawson's interest down there. The old fellow can't live long, and Phrony is his only heir. You will have it all your own way. You can keep it quiet if you wish, and if you don't, you can acknowledge it and bounce your friend Keith. If I had your hand I bet I'd know how to play it."
"Well, by ----! I wish you had it," said Wickersham, angrily.
Wickersham had been thinking hard during Plume's statement of the case, and what with his argument and an occasional application to the decanter of whiskey, he was beginning to yield. Just then a sealed note was handed him by a waiter. He tore it open and read:
"I am going home; my heart is broken. Good-by."
With an oath under his breath, he wrote in pencil on a card: "Wait; I will be with you directly."
"Take that to the lady," he said. Scribbling a few lines more on another card, he gave Plume some hasty directions and left him.