Miss Keating's anxiety was aroused. After a very long silence, she took the reins into her own hands. "Is Mr. Briggs in trouble?" she asked at a venture. Mr. Briggs was the only client she could think of, whose name began with a B. "Briggs? What Briggs?" asked Bobby, relighting his pipe for the fourth time. "Why, our Mr. Briggs," answered Miss Keating, curtly. "I'm sure I don't know, Miss Keating. Has he been around lately?" "I thought you were referring to him in that letter," she said succinctly. "Oh, dear me, no. Another party altogether, Miss Keating. Isn't the typewriter in working order this morning?" he asked, eyeing her machine innocently. She miffed and started to reply, but thought better of it. Then she began pounding the keys briskly. "It works like a charm," she shot back, genially. The letter that caused Bobby such perturbation came in the morning mail. His friend had laid bare some of the old stories concerning James Bansemer, and cautioned him not to become involved in transactions with the former New Yorker. Harbert's statements were positive in character, and he seemed to know his case thoroughly well. While the charges as they came to Rigby were general, Harbert had said that he was quite ready to be specific. All day long, the letter hung like a cloud over young Mr. Rigby. He was to have lunched with Graydon, and was much relieved when young Bansemer telephoned that he could not join him. Rigby found himself in a very uncomfortable position. If the stories from New York were true, even though he knew none of the inside facts, Graydon's father was pretty much of a scalawag, to say the least. He was not well acquainted with the lawyer, but he now recalled that he never had liked the man. Bansemer had impressed him from the beginning as heartless, designing, utterly unlike his clean-hearted son. Bobby loved Graydon Bansemer in the way that one man loves a true friend. He was certain that the son knew nothing of those shady transactions--if they really existed as Harbert painted them--but an exposure of the father would be a blow from which he could not recover. It came at last to Rigby that he was not the only one in Chicago who held the secret. Other members of the bar had been warned long before the news came to him, and it was morally certain that if the facts were as bad as intimated, the police also were in possession of them. At the same time, Rigby felt a certain moral responsibility involving himself. Bansemer, at any time, might apply his methods to people who were near and dear to him. The new intimacy with the Cables came to Bobby's mind. And then, there were Clegg, Groll, the Semesons and others who might easily fall into the snare if James Bansemer set it for them.