The first letter was merely a request that Drummond meet the writer in the library of the athletic club where Anthony Trent had seen him.
The second was longer and spelled a deeper distress.
“It’s impossible in a case like this,” wrote “N.G.,” “to get any man I know well to endorse my note. If I could afford to let all the world into my secret, I should not have come to you. You know very well that as I am the only son your money is safe enough. I must pay this girl fifty thousand dollars or let my father know all about it. He would be angry enough to send me to some god-forsaken ranch to cut wild oats.”
The third letter was still more insistent. The writer was obviously afraid that he would have to beg the money from his father.
“I have always understood,” he wrote, “that you would lend any amount on reasonable security. I want only fifty thousand dollars but I’ve got to have it at once. It’s quite beyond my mother’s power to get it for me this time. I’ve been to that source too often and the old man is on to it. E.G. insists that the money in cash must be paid to her on the morning of the 18th when she will call at the house with her lawyer. I am to receive my letters back and she will leave New York. Let me know instantly.”
The next letter indicated that William Drummond had decided to lend “N.G.” the amount but that his offer came too late.
“I wish you had made up your mind sooner,” said “N.G.” “It would have saved me the devil of a lot of worry and you could have made money out of it. As it is my father learned of it somehow. He talked about the family honor as usual. But the result is that when she and her lawyer call at ten on Thursday morning the money will be there. No check for her; she’s far too clever, but fifty thousand in crisp new notes. As for me, I’m to reform. That means I have to go down town every morning at nine and work in my father’s brokerage business. Can you imagine me doing that? I blame you for it, Drummond. You are too cautious by a damn sight to please me.”
Anthony Trent was thus put into possession of the following facts. That a rich man’s son, initials only known, had got into some sort of a scrape with a girl, initials were E.G., who demanded fifty thousand dollars in cash which was to be paid at the residence of the young man’s father. The date set was Thursday the eighteenth. It was now the early morning of Tuesday the sixteenth.
Trent had lists of the members of all the best clubs. He went through the one on whose paper N.G. had written. There were several members with those initials. Careful elimination left him with only one likely name, that of Norton Guestwick. Norton Guestwick was the only son and heir of a very rich broker. The elder Guestwick posed as a musical critic, had a box in the Golden Horseshoe and patronized such opera singers as permitted it. Many a time Anthony Trent had gazed on the Guestwick family seated in their compelling box from the modest seat that was his. Guestwick had even written a book, “Operas I Have Seen,” which might be found in most public libraries. It was an elaborately illustrated tome which reflected his shortcomings as a critic no less than his vanity as an author. A collector of musical books, Trent remembered buying it with high hopes and being disgusted at its smug ineffectiveness.
He had seldom seen Norton in the family box but the girls were seldom absent. They, too, upheld the Arts. Long ago he had conceived a dislike for Guestwick. He hated men who beat what they thought was time to music whose composers had other ideas of it.