“If you are ashamed to appear under your real name, I don’t care to know you,” answered the young man, with spirit. “So, good-morning to you, Mr. Congreve, or Mr. Baker, or whatever else you call yourself.”
“Good riddance,” said Congreve.
“There’s something wrong about that fellow,” said Tom Norcross to himself, as he looked after Congreve, while the latter was crossing the street. “I don’t believe he came by those bonds honestly. His manner was certainly very suspicious.”
Congreve entered another banking house, and here he had no difficulty in disposing of his bonds. He came out with two hundred and thirty dollars in his pocket, and feeling less irritable than before.
“So that’s done,” he said to himself, “and I am well provided with money for the present. Now I must make up for lost time, and try to enjoy myself a little. I was nearly moped to death in that dull country village, with no better company than a young snob. Now to see life!”
First of all, Congreve installed himself at a fashionable boarding house uptown. Then he purchased a seat for the evening’s performance at Wallack’s Theater, and then sought out some of his old companions in haunts where he knew they were likely to be found. He had a few games of cards, in which his luck varied. He rose from the card table a loser in the sum of twenty-five dollars.
“That is unlucky,” thought Congreve. “However, I’ve got two hundred dollars left. I must be more cautious, or my money won’t last long.”
Still, he felt in tolerably good spirits when he went to the theater, and enjoyed the performance about as much as if his pleasures were bought with money honestly earned.
It so happened that the clerk at the first banking house who had refused to purchase the bonds sat two rows behind him, and easily recognized his customer of the morning.
“I suspect Mr. Baker, alias Congreve, has disposed of his bonds,” he thought to himself. “I am really curious to know whether he had any right to sell them.”