Hines, for I
had seen all the pink ebb out of his face, leaving it a dreadful sort of
gray; and I had no desire to be witness of a murder, however much I
might deem it justified.
"I'll handle him," said Mr. Hines steadily. "Now; you! You got my
hundred in your jeans, ain't you!"
"Bribery!" boomed the sexton. He drew out the roll of bills and let it
fall from his contaminated fingers.
"Sure! Bribery," railed the other. "What'd you think? Ain't it enough
for what I'm asking?" The two men glared at each other.
I broke the silence. "Exactly what are you asking, Mr. Hines?"
"File that"--he touched the document--"and forget it. Let Min rest out
there as my wife, like she ought to have been."
"Why didn't you make her your wife?" thundered the accuser.
Some invisible thing gripped the corded throat of Mr. Hines. "Couldn't,"
he gulped. "There was--another. She wouldn't divorce me."
"Your sin has found you out," declared the self-constituted judge of the
dead with a dismal sort of relish.
"Yeh? That's all right. _I'll_ pay for it. But she's paid already."
"As she lived so she has died, in sin," the inexorable voice answered.
"Let her seek burial elsewhere."
Mr. Hines leaned forward. His expression and tone were passionless as
those of a statistician proffering a tabulation: his words were fit to
wring the heart of a stone.
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