Frank; "and I asked her, among other things, what had
occasioned his death. She said she believed it was distress of
mind in the first instance; and added that this distress was
connected with a shocking secret, which she and her mother had
kept from everybody, but which she could not keep from me,
because she was determined to begin her married life by having no
secrets from her husband." Here Mr. Frank began to get
sentimental again, and I pulled him up short once more with the
paper-knife.
"She told me," Mr. Frank went on, "that the great mistake of her
father's life was his selling out of the army and taking to the
wine trade. He had no talent for business; things went wrong with
him from the first. His clerk, it was strongly suspected, cheated
him--"
"Stop a bit," says I. "What was that suspected clerk's name?"
"Davager," says he.
"Davager," says I, making a note of it. "Go on, Mr. Frank."
"His affairs got more and more entangled," says Mr. Frank; "he
was pressed for money in all directions; bankruptcy, and
consequent dishonor (as he considered it) stared him in the face.
His mind was so affected by his troubles that both his wife and
daughter, toward the last, considered him to be hardly
responsible for his own acts. In this state of desperation and
misery, he--" Here Mr. Frank began to hesitate.
We have two ways in the law of drawing evidence off nice and
clear from an unwilling client or witness.
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