“Not altogether perhaps.  I thought it might interest Dirk van Goorl to learn that it is still ajar.”

“I don’t see why it should.  Fish merchants are not interested in rotten herrings; they write off the loss and send out the smack for a fresh cargo.”

“The first fish we catch is ever the finest, Mynheer, and if we haven’t quite caught it, oh! what a fine fish is that.”

“I have no time to waste in chopping riddles.  What is your errand?  Tell it, or leave it untold, but be quick.”

Black Meg leant forward, and the hoarse voice sank to a cavernous whisper.

“What will you give me,” she asked, “if I prove to you that the Captain Montalvo is not married at all to Lysbeth van Hout?”

“It does not much matter what I would give you, for I saw the thing done in the Groote Kerk yonder.”

“Things are not always done that seem to be done.”

“Look here, woman, I have had enough of this,” and Brant pointed to the door.

Black Meg did not stir, only she produced a packet from the bosom of her dress and laid it on the table.

“A man can’t have two wives living at once, can he?”

“No, I suppose not—­that is, legally.”

“Well, if I show you that Montalvo has two wives, how much?”

Brant became interested.  He hated Montalvo; he guessed, indeed he knew something of the part which the man had played in this infamous affair, and knew also that it would be a true kindness to Lysbeth to rid her of him.

“If you proved it,” he said, “let us say two hundred florins.”

“It is not enough, Mynheer.”

“It is all I have to offer, and, mind you, what I promise to pay.”

“Ah! yes, the other promises and doesn’t pay—­the rogue, the rogue,” she added, striking a bony fist upon the table.  “Well, I agree, and I ask no bond, for you merchant folk are not like cavaliers, your word is as good as your paper.  Now read these,” and she opened the packet and pushed its contents towards him.

With the exception of two miniatures, which he placed upon one side, they were letters written in Spanish and in a very delicate hand.  Brant knew Spanish well, and in twenty minutes he had read them all.  They proved to be epistles from a lady who signed herself Juanita de Montalvo, written to the Count Juan de Montalvo, whom she addressed as her husband.  Very piteous documents they were also, telling a tale that need not be set out here of heartless desertion; pleading for the writer’s sake and for the sake of certain children, that the husband and father would return to them, or at least remit them means to live, for they, his wife and family, were sunk in great poverty.

“All this is sad enough,” said Brant with a gesture of disgust as he glanced at the miniature of the lady and her children, “but it proves nothing.  How are we to know that she is the man’s wife?”