"Peter V.——?"
A nod was her answer.
Immediately then she went back to first principles.
"What is going to happen to him? Will they put him in jail?"
Wilkinson's confidential man smiled.
"I've often wondered," he mused, "whether it would be good or bad for us if they jailed him. A man in prison is a man very much out of the way. But in this case he would be too much out of the way. Put him in jail and you discourage his defence—you encourage the public, his depositors. They'll do what we should do: infest the wreck and gobble up what is ours by right. No, so long as Peter Wilkinson lives, we must fight his battle for him—pull him through, keep him standing up, only to be able to knock him down later. That, so long as he lives, must be our policy. So long as he lives," he repeated.
"Suppose," she began, and then hazarded: "In case of his death, what would my rights be?"
"In case he dies——" suddenly he stopped. That was a possibility he had not foreseen. He had seen much strife ahead: first, a tremendous fight for Wilkinson, then a tremendous campaign against him. But what if the man should break down, die? There was food for thought, reasoned Flomerfelt.