Griswold nodded. "Which brought on more talk," he suggested.
"Which brought on a good bit more talk. Really, it didn't make any intrinsic difference. Stock collateral or property collateral, the bank would have us by the throat until the debt should be paid. But you know how women are: my mother would about as soon sign her own death warrant as to put her name on a mortgage; so there we were—blocked. Grierson was as smooth as oil; said he wanted to help me out, and was willing to stretch his authority to do it. Then he sprung the trap."
"Having got you just where he wanted you," put in the listener.
"Yes; having got me down. The new proposition was apparently a mere modification of the first one. I was an accredited customer of the bank, like other business men of the town, and as such I could ask for an extension of credit on accommodation paper, and Grierson, as president, was at liberty to grant it if he saw fit. He offered to take my paper without an endorser if I would cover his personal risk with my stock collateral, assigning it, not to the bank, but to him. I fell for it like a woolly sheep. The stock transfers were made, and I signed a note for one hundred thousand dollars, due in sixty days; Grierson explaining that two months was the bank's usual limit on accommodation paper—which is true enough—but giving me to understand that a renewal and an extension of time would be merely a matter of routine."
Griswold was shaking his head sympathetically. "I can guess the rest," he said. "Grierson is preparing to swallow you whole."
"He has as good as done it," was the dejected reply. "The note falls due to-morrow; and, as I happened to be uptown this afternoon, I thought I would drop in and pay the discount and renew the paper. To tell the truth, I'd been getting more nervous the more I thought of it; and I didn't dare let it go to the final moment. Grierson shot me through the heart. He gave me a cock-and-bull story about some bank examiner's protest, and told me I must be prepared to take up the paper to-morrow. He knew perfectly well that he had me by the throat. I had checked out every dollar of the loan, and a good bit of our own balance in addition, paying the building and material bills."
"Of course you reminded him of his agreement?"
"Sure; and he sawed me off short: said that any business man borrowing money on accommodation paper knew that it was likely to be called in on the expiration date; that an extension is really a new transaction, which the bank is at liberty to refuse to enter. Oh, he gave it to me cold and clammy, sitting back in his big chair and staring up at me through the smoke of a fat black cigar while he did it!"
"And then?" prompted Griswold.
"Then I remembered the mother and sister, Kenneth, and did what I would have died rather than do for myself—I begged like a dog. But I might as well have gone outside and butted my head against the brick wall of the bank."