Also, a good smoke might show him a way out of his difficulty.
It didn't.

At the end of the second cigar the cold fact, imparted by the clerk in the steamship office, that Professor Spence and wife had preceded them upon this very boat, was still a cold fact and nothing more.

The long letter from the bridegroom which would have made things plain had passed him on his trip across the continent and was even now lying, with other unopened mail, in his Bainbridge office.
If Benis were married, then the bride could be no other than the nurse-secretary he had written about in that one inconsequent letter to which he, Rogers, had replied with unmistakable warning.

But the thing seemed scarcely credible.

If it were a fact, then it might very easily be a tragedy also.