“So that’s the reason you’re butting in here amongst gentlemen whom you’ve lost the right to associate with!” he exclaimed. “You think because you’re whitewashed by the courts you can count yourself an honest man again, eh? You think that because—”
“Wrong—all wrong,” Jacob interrupted once more, with ever-increasing geniality. “You’ll have to guess again.”
Mr. Groome—the very superior Mr. Groome, who had married a relative of Mr. Bultiwell’s, and who occasionally wore an eyeglass and was seen in the West End—intervened with gentle sarcasm.
“Mr. Pratt has perhaps come to tell us that it is his intention to celebrate the granting of his discharge by paying his debts in full.”
Jacob glanced at the speaker with the air of one moved to admiration.
“Mr. Groome, sir,” he pronounced, “you are a wizard! You must have seen right through into the breast pocket of my coat. Allow me to read you a couple of letters.”
He produced these amazing documents, leisurely unfolding the first. There was no question of newspapers now.
“You will remember,” he said, “that I came to grief because I stood bondsman to my brother, who was out prospecting for oil lands in America. ‘Disgraceful speculation’ Mr. Bultiwell called it, I think. Well, this letter is from Sam:”
Ritz-Carlton Hotel,
New York.
My dear Jacob,