From the Willetts Building Tommy walked to his father's bank.
At the imposing entrance Tommy halted. He had never been inside. He looked at the huge gray building with an interest that was almost uncomfortable. People were straggling out. Nobody was going in. He saw by the clock on Trinity's steeple that it was after banking hours. He assumed that if he saw his father there would be no trouble in transacting his business, notwithstanding the hour.
He started toward the main entrance and suddenly halted in his tracks. He could not go in. Within that building worked his father, an old and trusted employee of the bank, who had educated his son too expensively for an old and trusted bank employee.
It was the birthplace of the secret!
Suddenly the huge gray building took on an accusing aspect, cold, menacing. The massive granite columns became sentinels on guard. He owed that building seventeen thousand dollars, and the granite columns knew it!
“I'll see him at home to-night!” decided Tommy.
His heart was beating at such a furious rate that he forgot about his success. The check for two hundred thousand dollars was merely a bit of waste paper. The vision of his work vanished utterly into a future that ceased to exist. The present was before him. What would Colonel Willetts say when he learned what his father had done, year after year! And what would the bank say? And what would everybody say to the beneficiary of that deed, innocent but none the less the sole beneficiary?
He thought of Dayton, his only refuge, his goal. He hurried away, his mind bent on reaching Day-ton as quickly as possible. There he would be among friends, among people who knew that he was penniless and willing to work and expiate another's error, among friends who knew only the Tommy Leigh he must be to the end of his life.
He walked on quickly, impelled by an irresistible desire to keep on walking until he arrived at Thompson's private office. Once more that overwhelming sense of solitude came upon him that he had felt when he alighted from the train in Dayton. Again he was alone in a strange and unfriendly place, alone in the world.
There was nobody in New York to whom he could talk. In Dayton there was no reason why he should not tell everything to Mr. Thompson or to Bill Byrnes or even to Mr. Grosvenor. They would stand by him after they knew. They were men who would be loyal to him. Therefore, he must be loyal to them, to the men who would ask him to do his work, knowing he was not to blame. The best men in the world these, his good friends, who alone of all men would understand how a man might do for love what his father had done. And here in New York where his father lived nobody would understand! There were no friends.