n the
middle."

Freddie was stirred to his depths. Except for the beggars in the
streets, to whom he gave shillings, he had not met anyone for years
who had not plenty of money. He had friends at his clubs who
frequently claimed to be unable to lay their hands on a bally penny,
but the bally penny they wanted to lay their hands on generally turned
out to be a couple of thousand pounds for a new car.

"Good God!" he said.

There was a pause. Then, with a sudden impulse, he began to fumble in
his breast-pocket. Rummy how things worked out for the best, however
scaly they might seem at the moment. Only an hour or so ago he had
been kicking himself for not having remembered that fifty-pound note,
tacked on to the lining of his coat, when it would have come in handy
at the police-station. He now saw that Providence had had the matter
well in hand. If he had remembered it and coughed it up to the
constabulary then, he wouldn't have had it now. And he needed it now.
A mood of quixotic generosity had surged upon him. With swift fingers
he jerked the note free from its moorings and displayed it like a
conjurer exhibiting a rabbit.

"My dear old thing," he said, "I can't stand it! I absolutely cannot
stick it at any price! I really must insist on your trousering this.
Positively!"

Nelly Bryant gazed at the note with wide eyes. She was stunned. She
took it limply, and looked at it under the dim light of the gas-lamp
over the door.

"I couldn't!" she cried.

"Oh, but really! You must!"

"But this is a fifty-pound!"

"Absolutely! It will take you back to New York, what? you asked which
line was giving free trips. The Freddie Rooke Line, by Jove, sailings
every Wednesday and Saturday! I mean, what?"

"But I can't take two hundred and fifty dollars from you!"

"Oh, rather. Of course you can."

There was another pause.

"You'll think--" Nelly's pale face flushed. "You'll think I told you
all about myself just--just because I wanted to...."

"To make a touch? Absolutely not! Rid yourself of the jolly old
supposition entirely. You see before you, old thing, a chappie who
knows more about borrowing money than any man in London. I mean to
say, I've had my ear bitten more often than anyone, I should think.
There are sixty-four ways of making a touch--I've had them all worked
on me by divers blighters here and there--and I can tell any of them
with my eyes shut. I know you weren't dreaming of any such thing."

The note