ON THE TRACK.
In answer to Jimmie's question, Bertie gave him a puzzled look; he clearly did not understand. At the same instant the conversation in the next room was brought to a close. Some person said "Good-morning, Benjamin," and there was a sound of a door closing and of retreating footsteps; one of the speakers had gone, probably by another exit. The house, as Jimmie suspected, fronted on Duke street, and it was the rear portion that was connected with the court.
The elderly Jew, who was Mr. Benjamin himself, promptly entered the office, adjusting a black skull-cap to his head. He gave a barely perceptible start of surprise at sight of his visitors; he could not have known that they were there. He apologized extravagantly, and inquired what he could have the pleasure of doing for them. Mr. Grimsby stated their business, and the Jew listened with an inscrutable face; his deep-sunken eyes blinked uneasily.
"Do I understand," he said, addressing himself to the Honorable Bertie, "that you wish to take up not only the bill which is due to-day—"
"No; all of them, Benjamin," Bertie interrupted. "My friend wants to pay you to the last penny."
"I shall be happy to oblige," said the Jew, rubbing his hands. "I always knew that you were an honest young gentleman, Mr. Raven. I am sorry that I had to insist on payment, but my partner—"
"Will you let me have the paper, sir," Jimmie put in, curtly.
The Jew at once bestirred himself. He opened a safe in which little bundles of documents were neatly arranged, and in a couple of minutes he produced the sheaf of bills that had so nearly been the ruin of his aristocratic young client. The first one was among the number; it had been renewed several times, on Nevill's indorsement.
The affair was quickly settled. The solicitor went carefully over Mr. Benjamin's figures, representing principal and interest up to date, and expressed himself as satisfied; it was extortionate but legal, he declared. The sum total was a little over twenty-five hundred pounds—Bertie had received less than two-thirds of it in cash—and Jimmie promptly hauled out a fat roll of Bank of England notes and paid down the amount. He took the canceled paper, nodded coldly to the Jew, and left the money-lender's office with his companions.
Mr. Grimsby, declining an invitation to lunch, hailed a cab and went off to the city to keep an appointment with a client. The other two walked on to Piccadilly, and Bertie remembered that morning, months before, when Victor Nevill had helped him out of his difficulties, only to get him into a tighter hole.