"Put me in charge of this town for twenty-four hours, and I'd hang every mother's son of those agitators higher than Haman," said the general, when the ready stock of curses ran out. "That's the way to deal with 'em. But cheer up! Kendrick will be all right in a few days."
I felt an inward shrinking from telling General Wilson the rest of the woeful truth. But the truth would be the property of the street within an hour, and it could not be made worse by trusting it to even so garrulous a confidant as he. Perhaps I had a faint hope that the old campaigner might make a suggestion that would help me out of my difficulties; but the overmastering thought in my mind was that I held the position of a conductor of a runaway train that was plunging down a mountain grade to certain wreck, and it did not matter what I did or said. So taking the general into Wharton Kendrick's office, I told him my tale of the dishonored check.
He took it more calmly than I had expected. "How much did you say he's overdrawn?" he asked in businesslike tones.
"Five hundred thousand dollars."
"That was the deuce of a mistake for Kendrick to make. Can't you get him to correct it?"
I groaned out a miserable negative.
"I left there at half-past eight this morning," I returned, "and he hadn't come out of the stupor that I left him in last night."
General Wilson drew a prolonged whistle, and looked grave. Then he said:
"There's just one thing to do. Get some of Kendrick's friends to advance the half-million. Deposit it to his account. Then the bank will pay your check. Then you'll have the money, and can pay back the advance inside of one minute."
"Half a million is a big sum," I said doubtingly. "I don't know anybody who will put that up at short notice."