“I wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Ask them.”
“You know I am as ignorant as a child of all matters pertaining to finance, high and low?”
“Yes, I know that.”
“What’s all this fuss about, Corbitt?”
“What fuss?”
“Why, the accounts I read in the evening papers, and the morning papers, too, for that matter. They say there’s a panic in the city. Is there?”
The banker laughed a little; a low, harsh, mirthless laugh.
“Yes, there’s a panic,” he said. “You are not nipped in it, I hope. I was told you were dabbling in the city a while ago. Is that true?”
“Oh, merely a small flutter, Corbitt, on behalf of some friends of mine.”