"Hello, Johnny!" he said. "You're getting out, eh?"
Jackson nodded. There was no need to pretend anything with one of his own class.
"Couldn't you square the bank?"
Jackson shook his head.
"No, Billy," he said cheerfully, "I couldn't square it. At this identical moment there are several eminent people in the West End of London who are making applications for warrants."
"Dud cheques, eh?" asked the other thoughtfully. "Well, it had to come, Johnny. You've had a lot of bad luck."
"Atrocious," said Mr. Jackson Hyane. "There's plenty of money in Town, but it's absolutely impossible to get at it. I haven't touched a mug for two months, and I've backed more seconds than I care to think about. Still," he mused, "there's a chance."
His friends nodded. In their circle there was always "a chance," but
he could not guess that that chance which the student of men, Mr.
Jackson Hyane, was banking upon answered indifferently to the name of
Tibbetts or Bones.
At half-past eight that night he saw his cousin off from King's Cross. He had engaged a sleeper for her, and acted the part of dutiful relative to the life, supplying her with masses of literature to while away the sleepless hours of the journey.
"I feel awfully uncomfortable about going away," said the girl, in a troubled voice. "Mr. Tibbetts would say that he could spare me even if he were up to his eyes in work. And I have an uncomfortable feeling at the back of my mind that there was something I should have told him—and didn't."