“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” flared Klutchem. “He came down with a cock-and-bull story and wanted me to take——”
“I know the whole story, every word of it. He came down to offer you every dollar of his interest in a scheme that is as real to him as if the bonds were selling on the Exchange at par. They are all he has in the world, and if some miracle should occur and they should be worth their face value he would never touch a penny of the proceeds if he was starving to death, because of the promise he made you. And in my interest, too, not his own, and all for love of me, his friend.”
“But it was only a letter from a concern offering to print——”
“Certainly. And across it he had written his name—both, I grant you, not worth the paper they were written on. But why didn’t you have the decency to humor the dear old fellow as we all do, and treat him with the same courtesy with which he treated you, instead of insulting him by throwing the letter in his face. You’ll excuse me, Mr. Klutchem, when I say it gets me pretty hot when I think of it. I don’t blame him for cracking you over the head, and neither would you, if you understood him as I do.”
Klutchem looked out of the window and twisted his thumbs for an instant as if in deep thought. The outcome of the interview was of the utmost importance to him, and he did not want anything to occur which would prejudice his case with the broker. Fitz sat in front of him, bent forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes boring into Klutchem’s.
Then a puzzled, and strange to say what appeared to be a more kindly expression broke over Klutchem’s face.
“I guess I was rough, but I didn’t mean it, really. You know how it was yesterday—regular circus all day. I wouldn’t have made the charge at the police-station—for he didn’t hurt me much—if the policeman hadn’t compelled me. And then don’t forget, this isn’t the first time I’ve come across him. He came to my house once when I was laid up with the gout, and——”
“Yes,” interrupted Fitz, “I haven’t forgotten it, and what did he come for? To apologize, didn’t he? I should have thought you’d have seen enough of him at that time to know what kind of a man he was. Down here in the Street we’ve got to put things down on paper and we don’t trust anybody. We don’t understand the kind of a man whose word is literally as good as his bond, and who, to help any man he calls his friend, would spend his last cent and go hungry the balance of his life. I’ve lived round here a good deal in my time and I’ve seen all kinds of men, but the greatest compliment I ever had paid me in my life was when the Colonel offered you yesterday the scrap of paper that you threw back in his face.”
As Fitz talked on Klutchem’s tightly knit brows began to loosen. He hadn’t heard such things for a good many years. Life was a scramble and devil take the hindermost with him. If anybody but Fitz—one of the level-headed men in the Street—had talked to him thus, he might not have paid attention, but he knew Fitz was sincere and that he spoke from his heart. The still water at the bottom of the banker’s well—the water that was frozen over or sealed up, or so deep that few buckets ever reached it—began to be stirred. His anxiety over Consolidated only added another length to the bucket’s chain.