“All talk; all talk,” said the Pater in his obstinacy.
“And for a man to come to Wilcox’s age, which must be five-and-fifty, it is no light blow to lose a life’s savings,” calmly went on old Brandon. “I went to the Bank, and found it besieged by an excited and angry crowd fighting to get in, the door locked, and the porter vainly trying to put up the shutters. That was enough to show me what the matter was, and I left Wilcox to it.”
The Squire stared in perplexity, rubbing up his scanty hair the wrong way while his senses came to him.
“It is all true,” said Mr. Brandon, nodding to him. “Church Dykely is in an uproar this morning already.”
“I’ll go and see for myself,” said the Squire, stripping off his nankeen coat in haste so great that he tore one sleeve nearly out. “I’ll go and see; this is not credible. Clement-Pell would never have swindled me out of two hundred pounds only a day or two before he knew he was going all to smash.”
“The most likely time for him to do it,” persisted Mr. Brandon. “People, as a rule, only do these things when they are desperate.”
But the Squire did not stay to listen. Settling himself into his other coat, he went driving on across the fields as though he were walking for a wager. Mr Brandon mounted his cob, and put up his umbrella against the sun.
“Never embark any money with these beguiling people that promise you undue interest, Johnny Ludlow,” said Mr. Brandon, as I kept by his side, and opened the gates for him. “Where would you have been now, young man—or, worse, where should I have been—had I, the trustee of your property, consented to risk it with Pell? He asked me to do it.”
“Clement-Pell did, sir? When?”