"I'd like to see him get the chance!" he cried. "Leslie has got to marry well, and she's just the hard-headed little girl who'll do it, too. Beekman marry Leslie! Not if I know it!"
The lawyer sank back wearily.
"The question of who marries your daughter, Wilkinson, is no concern of mine. That Beekman wants to marry her, is enough for me. Let him want to—let him see her all he wants to—you can fix the ultimate proceedings in your own way. But for the present, somebody has got to build up in Beekman a great and immovable faith in you. He must be educated up to the belief that you are as straight as a string. Let his teacher be the girl; she'll make the best one, for she believes in you herself."
Wilkinson pressed his hand against his face.
"And she's always got to believe in me," he groaned. "We must see to that."
The Colonel gripped his arm.
"And whatever happens, Peter," he concluded, "I don't want Beekman ever to meet this man Giles Ilingsworth, for he's another of your honest chaps; and if Beekman before your trial should hear from the lips of Giles Ilingsworth his own story of the case, he's going to believe it. Do you understand?" The lawyer grinned, adding: "For I believe it myself."
Fifteen minutes later a Mastodon turned into Franklin Street from Broadway and rolled easily down the hill toward the Criminal Courts Building, next door to the Tombs. In the car were four men: Peter V. Wilkinson, Colonel Morehead, his counsel; Roy Pallister, Wilkinson's private secretary, and Wilkinson's chauffeur.
"Great guns!" cried Wilkinson when they were half way down the street; "look at the crowds! Why, everybody in New York is here!"
"I heard on the street this morning," said Morehead, who rather enjoyed his client's discomfiture, "that the disgruntled depositors had deserted the front doors of the Interstate and the Tri-State, and had formed here, waiting to see you——"