There was a man in our town who had always interested me to an unusual degree, though my personal acquaintance with him was of the slightest. He was an architect, Kenneth Clyde by name, and he had done some of the best public buildings in the State. He had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and was related to half a dozen of the "Old families" of the town. (I am comparatively new myself. But I soon saw that Clyde belonged to the inner circle Of Saintsbury.) And yet, with all his professional success and his social privileges, there was something about the man that expressed an excessive humility. It was not diffidence or shyness,--he had all the self-possession that goes with good breeding. But he held himself back from claiming public credit or accepting any public place, though I knew that more than once it had been pressed upon him in a way that made it difficult for him to evade it. He persistently kept himself in the background, until his desire to remain inconspicuous almost became conspicuous in turn. He was the man, for instance, who did all the work connected with the organization of our Boat Club, but he refused to accept any Office. He was always ready to lend a hand with any public enterprise that needed pushing, but his name never figured on the committees that appeared in the newspapers. And yet, if physiognomy counts for anything, he was not born to take a back seat. He was approaching forty at this time, and in spite of his consistent modesty, he was one of the best known men in Saintsbury.
As I say, he had always interested me as a man out of the ordinary, and when he walked into my law office a few days before that telephone call from Mrs. Whyte, I was uncommonly pleased at the idea that he should have come to me for legal advice when he might have had anything he wanted from the older lawyers in town whom he had known all his life. I guessed at a glance that it was professional advice he wanted, from the curiously tense look that underlay his surface coolness.
"I have come to you, Mr. Hilton," he said directly, "partly because you are enough of a stranger here to regard me and my perplexities in an impersonal manner, and so make it easier for me to discuss them."
"Yes," I said encouragingly. He had hesitated after his last words as though he found it hard to really open up the subject matter.
"But that is only a part of my reason for asking you to consider my case," he went on with a certain repressed intensity. "I believe, from what I have seen of you, that you have both physical and moral courage, and that you will look at the matter as a man, as well as a lawyer."
I nodded, not caring to commit myself until I understood better what he meant.
"First, read this letter," he said, and laid before me a crumpled sheet which he had evidently been clutching in his hand inside of his coat pocket.
It was a half sheet of ruled legal cap, and in the center was written, in a bold, well-formed hand,----
"I need $500. You may bring it to my office Monday night at ten. No fooling on either side, you understand."
"Blackmail!" I said.