“‘It’s a delicate piece of business,’ he went on. ‘In fact, the fewer questions you ask the better. All I can say is there’s a chap in Wall Street got his eye on you. Your old dad once helped him over a much worse place than this. Anyhow, I’ve a check here for sixty thousand dollars, and no conditions, only that you don’t talk.’
“‘But when am I to pay it back?’ I gasped.
“‘If my client ever needs it, and you can afford it, he will ask for it.’ Phillson answered. ‘That’s all.’
“And before I could say another darned word, he was gone, and the check was there on my desk.”
Aynesworth sipped his whisky and Apollinaris, and lit a cigarette.
“And they say,” he murmured, “that romance does not exist in Wall Street. You’re a lucky chap, Nesbitt.”
“Lucky! Do you think I don’t realize it? Of course, I know the old governor had lots of friends on the Street, but he was never in a big way, and he got hit awfully hard himself before he died. I can’t understand it anyway.”
“I wouldn’t try,” Aynesworth remarked, laughing. “By the bye, your friend, whoever he was, must have got to know pretty quickly.”
Nesbitt nodded.
“I thought of that,” he said. “Of course, Phillsons are lawyers for Malcolmson, Wingrave’s broker, so I daresay it came from him. Say, Aynesworth, you don’t mind if I ask you something?”