“What — what is a cent-per-cent, Sherry?” asked his wife in a small voice.
“Moneylender,” he replied, consigning another bill to the fire, and breaking open a more promising-looking billet.
“Do people lend one money?” she asked anxiously.
“Usurers do — at a devilish rate of interest, too! I know ’em all too well! Used to be for ever at Howard and Gibbs before the Trust was wound up.”
“Howard and Gibbs, did you say, Sherry?”
“Yes, they’re about the best of the bloodsuckers, and that ain’t saying much.” He looked up from his letter. “What the deuce do you want to know about moneylenders for, Kitten?”
“I — only that I did not perfectly understand what a cent-per-cent is!” she said quickly.
“Well, don’t go talking of ’em!” he warned her. “It ain’t a genteel expression!”
That highly successful firm of philanthropists, Messrs Howard and Gibbs, received upon the following morning a visit from a closely-veiled lady, who drove up in a hackney, and was plainly ignorant of the principles which governed the particular form of finance practised by the firm. The respectable gentleman who interviewed this lady seemed at first strangely disinclined to accommodate her. He bewildered her by talking suavely of securities and credentials, but when she disclosed to him her identity his manner underwent a gratifying change, and he not only explained the terms on which the firm would be ready to advance a loan, but expressed his willingness to serve her in any way possible. He seemed to have no difficulty in understanding how it came about that she had lost such a sum in only two nights’ play, and showed himself in general to be so sympathetic that his client presently left the building with a high opinion of the whole race of moneylenders.
But while his wife was happily redeeming vowels with the money so generously advanced to her by Messrs Howard and Gibbs, Sherry had received a billet on gilt-edged, scented notepaper from a lady with whom he had had no dealings since his marriage. He frowned over this missive, for he was not in the mood to embark on the kind of intrigue its mysterious wording seemed to promise. The writer said that she did not like to ask him to visit her, but she had something to say to him which was of vast importance, and which he would regret not hearing. Sherry read this through twice, decided that Nancy had never been one to play tricks on a fellow, and took himself off to the street in which she had her lodging.