“Which is seven o’clock.”
Mr. Sylvester folded his arms and sternly eyed the man before him. “You still adhere to your intention, then, of forwarding to Mr. Stuyvesant at that hour, the sealed communication now in the hands of your lawyer?”
The smile with which the other responded was like the glint of a partly sheathed dagger. “My lawyer has already received his instructions. Nothing but an immediate countermand on my part, will prevent the communication of which you speak, from going to Mr. Stuyvesant at seven o’clock.”
The sigh which rose in Mr. Sylvester’s breast did not disturb the severe immobility of his lip. “Have you ever considered the possibility,” said he, “of the man whom you overheard talking in the restaurant in Dey Street two years ago, not being Mr. Bertram Sylvester of the Madison Bank?”
“No,” returned the other, with a short, sharp, and wholly undisturbed laugh, “I do not think I ever have.”
“Will you give me credit, then, for speaking with reason, when I declare to you that the man you overheard talking in the manner you profess to describe in your communication, was not Mr. Bertram Sylvester?”
A shrug of the shoulders, highly foreign and suggestive, was the other’s answer. “It was Mr. Sylvester or it was the devil,” proclaimed he—“with all deference to your reason, my good sir; or why are you here?” he keenly added.
Mr. Sylvester did not reply. With a sarcastic twitch of his lips the man took up the nickle with which he had been amusing himself when the former came in, and set it spinning again upon the table. “It is half-past six,” remarked he. “It will take me a good half hour to go to my lawyer.”
Mr. Sylvester made a final effort. “If you could be convinced,” said he, “that you have got your grasp upon the wrong man, would you still persist in the course upon which you seem determined?”
With a dexterous sleight-of-hand movement, the man picked up the whirling nickle and laid it flat on the table before him. “A fellow whose whole fortune is represented by a coin like that”—tapping the piece significantly—“is not as easily convinced as a man of your means, perhaps. But if I should be brought to own that I had made a mistake in my man, I should still feel myself justified in proceeding against him, since my very accusation of him seems to be enough to arouse such interest on the part of his friends.”