“Why not?”
“If this money were a trust in my hands, it would not be honest to use it in speculation, would it?”
“No.”
“That is practically what it is, since it was stolen from a trust, and is to be returned to it.”
He smiled rather grimly. “It’s lucky for Wall Street,” he said, “that you literary fellows don’t have the making and enforcing of laws; and it’s luckier still that you don’t have to earn your living down here, for the money you’d make wouldn’t pay your burial insurance.” Yet though he laughed cynically, he shook my hand, I thought, more warmly than usual when we parted, as if he felt at heart that I had done right.
Much easier to resist was an offer of another kind. Very foolishly, I told Mr. Whitely that I had received a letter from the literary editor of the leading American review asking if I would write the criticism of the History of the Turks.
“That is a singular piece of good fortune,” Mr. Whitely said cheerfully, “and guarantees me a complimentary notice in a periodical that rarely praises.”
“That is by no means certain,” I answered. “You know as well as I that it does not gloze a poor book, nor pass over defects in silence.”
“But you can hardly write critically of your own book!” cried Mr. Whitely, for once giving me a share in our literary partnership. “For if there are defects you ought to have corrected them in proof.”
“Of course I do not intend to write the review!” I exclaimed.