"A great many sharp practices are
considered legitimate nowadays."

"I object, also, to the term 'sharp practices'," responded Loring
warmly. "I don't believe there's a man in New York with a straighter
and cleaner record than Gamble's. Every man with whom he has ever done
business, except possibly yourself, speaks highly of him and would
trust him to any extent; and he does not owe a dollar in the world."

"Doesn't he?" snarled Gresham. "There's an unsatisfied attachment for
fifteen thousand dollars resting against him at the Fourth National
Bank at this very moment."

Loring's indignation gave way immediately to grave concern.

"So that's why Close was trying to get him on the 'phone all
afternoon!" he mused.

"Mr. Gresham," called Polly sharply, "how do you come to know about
this so quickly?"

Gresham cursed himself and the blind hatred which had led him into
making this slip; and he was the more uncomfortable because not only
Loring and Polly but Constance had turned upon him gravely questioning
eyes.

"Such things travel very rapidly in commercial circles," he lamely
explained.

"I had no idea that you were a commercial circle," retorted Polly. "I
wonder who's crooked." Gresham laughed shortly. "It isn't Johnny!" she
indignantly asserted. "I know how Johnny's fifteen thousand was saved
from this attachment, but I wouldn't tell where it is--even here."

Polly and Loring looked at each other understandingly.

"I suppose that was an old Gamble-Collaton account," Loring surmised
with another speculative glance at Gresham. "I am quite certain that
Johnny knows nothing whatever of this claim--let alone the attachment.
The operations of his big irrigation failure were so extensive that,
with the books lost, he can never tell when an additional claim may be
filed against him. If suit is made in an obscure court, and Collaton,
who hasn't a visible dollar, answers summons and confesses judgment for
the firm, Johnny has no recourse."

"Except to repudiate payment," suggested Gresham with a shrug of his
shoulders.

"I wish he would," returned Loring impatiently. "I wish he would let me
handle his affairs in my own way."

"He won't," Polly despaired.

"Tell me, Mr. Loring," interposed Constance, who had been silently
thoughtful all this while; "would this unpaid attachment at Mr.
Gamble's bank interfere with his present success if Mr. Courtney--or
any one else whom Mr. Gamble might try to interest--were to