“I guess so; you’re a pretty good customer here. So you may walk right in.” The visitor tip-toed into the private room, closed the door behind him, drew his chair up beside the tall saturnine man who was still busy with his pen, and whispered something in his ear that caused him to sit bolt upright and gaze sharply and with amazement in the face of his visitor. For fully an hour the man with the cast in his eye remained in the inner office and when he finally withdrew, the other accompanied him to the door and stood for a moment talking earnestly to him in a low voice before he permitted him to depart. Then he went back to his desk, and his face as he passed through the room, was so stern and troubled that one or two visitors who were seated awaiting his pleasure viewed him carefully, then shook their heads and departed, preferring to talk to him at some time when they should find him in better humor. As for the visitors they all came with one object in view which was money, for the well dressed man who sat at the desk in the inner office made a business of lending money at exorbitant rates of interest and on all sorts securities.
“But why,” some reader might inquire, “should a man of good connections and education embark in such a business and select as his headquarters a dirty cheap office in a poverty stricken part of the town?”
And the reply is that he selected a neighborhood in which he knew money to be a scarce commodity, and which all his clients, the high as well as the low, could visit without fear of detection. As has been already said he had clients of various classes. There was one man, for example, who could be found almost any evening in some fashionable club or drawing-room up town and who, on the very morning of which we write, had spent nearly half an hour in that little private office. This man had debts amounting to $25,000, and a father whose fortune of a million he had reasonable hopes of acquiring in due course of time. But his father was a man of the strictest honor, and the son well knew that if he were to hear of his losses at cards and horse racing he would cut him off without a dollar, and leave all his money to a distant cousin whom he had always detested. Situated as he was, this man found the money-lender of Eldridge Street a most convenient friend, and it was an easy matter for the latter to persuade him that for the use of ten or fifteen thousand dollars in cash with which to appease the most importunate of his creditors, he could well afford to give a note for five times the amount payable after the death of his parent.
“And even now,” continued the money lender, shaking his head as he handed him a large roll of bills, “I am taking risks that I ought not to take with you or with anybody else. How do I know that you will outlive your father? How do I know that the old man will leave you anything when he dies? How do I know even that he has got anything to leave, or that having it now he will have it a year hence? These are ticklish times, and if I were a prudent business man, without anything of the speculator in me, I would just hang on to what money I’ve got, and let you and the rest of them like you shift for yourselves. I’ve half a mind now,” he added, suddenly, as he tightened his grip on the greenbacks, which had not quite passed out of his hand, “to tear your note up and put the money back in my safe.” But at this threat his visitor snatched the coveted roll from his hand, placed it in his inside pocket, and buttoning his coat up tightly, exclaimed, “Don’t talk to me about the chances you take, Mr. Shylock, when you know perfectly well that I’m good for anything I put my name to, and that it won’t be long before you get your own again with a pound of my flesh into the bargain.”
It will be seen from this conversation that the mysterious bearded man had a keen eye for business, and as his little shop was full of customers from morning till night, one may readily believe that he made a large income with very little mental or physical exertion on his part.
It was just one o’clock when, having disposed of his visiter with the cast in his eye, the money-lender sat behind his desk with his cigar in his mouth, lost in thought. Something must have troubled him for his brow was ruffled and from time to time an angry blush crept into his cheek. One might have noticed too—had there been any one there to notice him—that he started uneasily at every sound that came from the little outer room and finally when he heard a woman’s voice raised in shrill anger he stepped to the door, listened for a moment or so and then come out to see what was the matter. It was an old Irish woman who stood with a package in her hand talking angrily to the bookkeeper.
“An’ sure you’ll not refuse a poor old woman the loan of a ten dollar note on these little bits of things?” she was saying in a voice that betrayed her peevishness and annoyance.
“Can’t give you anything to-day, madam,” returned the bookkeeper speaking very positively and then, noticing his employer he added, “There’s the boss himself, and he’ll tell you the same thing.”
But the “boss” had already caught a glimpse of the old Irish woman’s face, and to the intense surprise of his subordinate he retreated suddenly into his private room, banged the door after him and then thinking better of his act, opened it wide enough to say in a low and guarded whisper, “Give the old woman what she wants and bring the package in to me. Get her address, too, while you’re about it.”
The bookkeeper did as he was ordered. And as the old woman wrote her name on the receipt with trembling fingers she uttered: “Now remember, I’ll be back for this when my allowance comes. But me friends are coming back from Europe soon and they will never let old Ann Crehan go hungry. They’ll all be back, the master and Miss Emma and the two young children and then I’ll have everything I want. An’ it’ll be a sorry day for that hard-hearted spalpeen who forgot the one who took care of him and will let her go to the poorhouse for the want of a few dollars. Sure his fine old uncle would never threat me in that fashion.”