X.
A DISHONOURED BILL.
The bill itself, considering the prospects of the acceptor, was not for a very alarming amount. He was heir to a baronetcy and £50,000 per annum. The bill was for “a monkey”—or, in more intelligible phraseology than that usually adopted by the acceptor himself, for the sum of five hundred pounds sterling. The extraordinary circumstance about the bill was that the acceptor, Harry Jermyn, paid Abednego, of Throgmorton Street, interest at the rate of sixty per cent. per annum for the accommodation, and that in addition he had to take part of the proceeds in the shape of a park hack, which he found difficulty in selling to a cab proprietor for a five-pound note. The consideration deducted from the bill in respect of this animal was fifty pounds.
Harry Jermyn was a mauvais sujet; that is to say, he was a young gentleman kept by his father on a short allowance. He gambled a little, went to all the races, was a member of the Raleigh and other social centres of a similar kind, and evinced a considerable interest in the drama—that is to say, at theatres where the sacred lamp was kept burning. In fact, he resembled hundreds of other young men of our acquaintance; and probably he would not have been called a mauvais sujet were it not that the old baronet restricted him to means inadequate to supply his simple desires.
Mr. Abednego was not a mauvais sujet. He was a most respectable man; had a house in Mayfair, another in Richmond, and a mansion in Scotland which he modestly called his shooting box. He occasionally entertained live lords, who borrowed his money and sneered at him behind his back. He had contrived to obtain a seat on a county bench, and was a Colonel of Volunteers in the same happy county, by reason of which he was known to society at large as Colonel Abednego.
When Harry Jermyn’s bill fell due he rushed down in a hansom to Abednego’s office in Throgmorton Street, and was—after an ominous delay—admitted to the sanctum of the great Abednego himself. That potentate did not rise, but nodded quickly to his visitor, with a short, and by no means encouraging, “Mornin’.”
Harry was a man with a fine flow of animal spirits, and was not to be dashed by the studied coolness of his reception.
“I say, old chappie,” he replied, with the greatest good humour, “what’s the matter? Feel a little chippy this morning? or lost a point or two at sixpenny whist last night—eh?”
“Mr. Jermyn, this is the City,” said the money-lender. “What is your business?”
“Well, the fact is, old boy,” answered Jermyn, sitting on the edge of the table opposite the financier, “that damn bill of mine falls due to-morrow.”
“Well?”