“Enough of that. What I want to say to you—you alone—is about—your father. You have heard me say I knew him.”
“Yes.”
“I did; though he didn’t know me, since he supposed me to be an honest man and in business down-town. I was pretty well acquainted with all the circumstances of that robbery of the bank which cost him his character. I was making my living even then, you see, in what seemed the easiest way. He died of a broken heart, I heard.”
“He did,” Touchtone responded, inwardly more and more agitated. “What is that to you?”
“Nothing; but I might be something to it, or to his name, to-day. Stop! Don’t interrupt. I knew Dan Laverack and his crowd well; and as I hadn’t lost my own position in the upper world yet, and was a gentleman by education (as the other men knew), I was useful to them and I made a good thing out of them myself.”
“Yes,” Philip said, staring hard at the man in the flickering light and curbing his impatience.
“I sounded your father as agent for them, Touchtone—for Laverack and the others. We thought we could bribe your father. I lived in the place months—for it. But I found before I’d gone far enough to make him suspect my game that he couldn’t be bought in. So I gave it up. Do you know I’ve seen you plenty of times, when you were a little fellow? I’d never have recognized you, of course. I remember your mother pretty well, too.”
“Don’t talk of her,” said Philip, sharply; “my time is short, and yours, too, if you leave here to-night.”
“Quite true,” replied Jennison, coolly. “I must get along in what I have to say. Touchtone, your father was innocent as a child of any share in that bank business—”
“Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think any body who really knew him could believe any thing else?”