they've got to come to time. If I don't get the money
from you, I'll get it elsewhere--but over the cliff with you and your
bank! The laws you've been violating may be bad for the practical banking
business, but they're mighty good for punishing ingratitude and treachery."

He sat there, yellow and pinched, and shivering every now and then. He
made no reply. He was one of those shells of men that are conspicuous as
figureheads in every department of active life--fellows with well-shaped,
white-haired or prematurely bald heads, and grave, respectable faces;
they look dignified and substantial, and the soul of uprightness; they
coin their looks into good salaries by selling themselves as covers for
operations of the financiers. And how those operations, in the nude, as it
were, would terrify the plodders that save up and deposit or invest the
money the financiers gamble with on the big green tables!

Presently I shook his arm impatiently. His eyes met mine, and I fixed them.

"I'm going to pull through," said I. "But if I weren't, I'd see to it that
you were protected. Come, what's your answer? Friend or traitor?"

"Can't you give me any security--any collateral?"

"No more than I took from you when I saved you as you were going down with
the rest in the Dumont smash. My word--that's all. I borrow on the same
terms you've given me before, the same you're giving four of your heaviest
borrowers right now."

He winced as I thus reminded him how minute my knowledge was of the
workings of his bank.

"I didn't think this of you, Matt," he whined. "I believed you above such
hold-up methods."

"I suit my methods to the men I'm dealing with," was my answer. "These
fellows are trying to push me off the life raft. I fight with every weapon
I can lay hands on. And I know as well as you do that, if you get into
serious trouble through this loan, at least five men we could both name
would have to step in and save the bank and cover up the scandal. You'll
blackmail them, just as you've blackmailed them before, and they you.
Blackmail's a legitimate part of the game. Nobody appreciates that better
than you." It was no time for the smug hypocrisies under which we people
down town usually conduct our business--just as the desperadoes used to
patrol the highways disguised as peaceful merchants.

"Send round in the morning and get the money," said he, putting on a
resigned, hopeless look.

I laughed. "I'll feel easier if I take it