“Then all will be kept quiet?”
“Sir Gordon must be told.”
“No, no; there is no need of that. The affairs will be put straight, and matters can go on as before. It was an accident; I could not help it. Stop, man, what are you going to do?”
“Call in Mr Thickens,” said Bayle.
“To expose and degrade me in his eyes!”
Bayle turned upon him a withering contemptuous look.
“I expose you? Why, man, but for me you would have been in the hands of the officers by now. Mr Thickens!”
Thickens got slowly down from his stool and entered the manager’s room, where Hallam met his eye with a look that made the clerk think of what would have been his chances of life had opportunity served for him to be silenced for ever.
“I have promised Mr Hallam to find twenty-one thousand pounds within a week—to enable him to redeem the securities he has pledged.”
“And under these circumstances, Mr Thickens, there is no need for this trouble to be exposed.”