--by taking this extraordinary interest in my
affairs? If you want me to act on your advice, why don't you explain
yourself?"

"I have explained myself. Act on my advice or not, just as you like. It
doesn't matter to me. I have done what I promised, and there's an end of
it."

He turned to the door. The minute-hand of the clock was getting on from
the twenty minutes to the quarter.

"Done what you promised?" I repeated, getting up to stop him.

"Yes," he said, with his hand on the lock. "I have given my message.
Whatever happens, remember that. Good-afternoon."

He was gone before I could speak again.

I tried to call after him, but my speech suddenly failed me. It was very
foolish, it was very unaccountable, but there was something in the man's
last words which had more than half frightened me.

I looked at the clock. The minute-hand was on the quarter.

My office was just far enough from the bank to make it necessary for
me to decide on the instant. If I had had time to think, I am perfectly
certain that I should not have profited by the extraordinary warning
that had just been addressed to me. The suspicious appearance and
manners of the stranger; the outrageous improbability of the inference
against the credit of the bank toward which his words pointed; the
chance that some underhand attempt was being made, by some enemy of
mine, to frighten me into embroiling myself with one of my best friends,
through showing an ignorant distrust of the firm with which he was
associated as partner--all these considerations would unquestionably
have occurred to me if I could have found time for reflection; and, as
a necessary consequence, not one farthing of my balance would have been
taken from the keeping of the bank on that memorable day.

As it was, I had just time enough to act, and not a spare moment for
thinking. Some heavy payments made at the beginning of the week had so
far decreased my balance that the sum to my credit in the banking-book
barely reached fifteen hundred pounds. I snatched up my check-book,
wrote a draft for the whole amount, and ordered one of my clerks to
run to the bank and get it cashed before the doors closed. What impulse
urged me on, except the blind impulse of hurry and bewilderment, I can't
say. I acted mechanically, under the influence of the vague inexplicable
fear which the man's extraordinary parting words had aroused in me,
without stopping to analyze my own sensations--almost witho