IN WHICH PHILLIP REDGILL IS FORCED TO RAISE THE WIND TO PAY HIS DEBTS TO CAPT. JACK, AND IN WHICH THE READER BEHOLDS THE PHANTOM LEGS, AND IS INTRODUCED TO THE SKELETON BARBER.
Notwithstanding his robbery of Charley Warbeck, Phillip Redgill had not near enough of money wherewith to pay the heavy debt Capt. Jack had against him.
Which way to turn he knew not.
“I must do ‘something,’ or I shall swing on a gibbet in less than a month’s time.
“Oh, there’s no earthly hope of raising the wind ‘out of him,’” thought Phillip, in regard to his father, “and I know not how to manage the matter. Let me see!” and he went on with his calculations very rapidly. “How strange it is that those who borrow will seldom lend in return! Among all my acquaintance I know of none who at all seem inclined to accommodate me. They entertain no doubt of my honesty, so they say; but as to lending a fellow a thousand or two, that is out of the question. Well, I must either post up the money or swing and lose the four hundred already gained. I have three clear days yet. I’ll have a glass of brandy and think awhile.”
The brandy and a good French dinner wonderfully enlightened Mr. Phillip’s faculties, for he had but just pulled off his coat for a comfortable snooze ere a bright thought flashed across his mind.
“Why didn’t I think of it before? Why, there’s old Sir Andrew, the money-lender and insurance broker! Just the man, by Jupiter! If he fails, why then I’m done. I’ll go to him at once.”
Old Sir Andrew was one of those “very smart” men, an insurance office president, who had sprung from nothing, but had become possessed of very large means, acquired rapidly, and none could imagine how.
A constant church attendant, and economical in his donations to “charities,” he was generally considered to be one of the pillars of his church, and a particular strong man on ’Change, whenever he deigned to visit that extensive gambling salon.
From the number of persons who had constantly visited his offices in times past, it was shrewdly imagined he had done a considerable amount of very close “shaving” in bill discounting, and, perhaps, was not over scrupulous, or troubled with many qualms of conscience in financial transactions.