"I don't understand on what principle you work," Sylvia said to Tietjens. "There are things you take lying down; this you don't." Tietjens said: "It doesn't matter, really. Except for the child." Sylvia said: "I guaranteed an overdraft for you up to a thousand pounds last Thursday. You can't be overdrawn over a thousand pounds." "I'm not overdrawn at all," Tietjens said. "I was for about fifteen pounds yesterday. I didn't know it." Port Scatho was turning over the pages of the pass-book, his face completely blank. "I simply don't understand," he said. "You appear to be in credit. . . . You appear always to have been in credit except for a small sum now and then. For a day or two." "I was overdrawn," Tietjens said, "for fifteen pounds yesterday. I should say for three or four hours: the course of a post, from my army agent to your head office. During these two or three hours your bank selected two out of six of my cheques to dishonour--both being under two pounds. The other one was sent back to my mess at Ealing, who won't, of course, give it back to me. That also is marked "account overdrawn," and in the same handwriting." "But good God," the banker said. "That means your ruin." "It certainly means my ruin," Tietjens said. "It was meant to." "But," the banker said--a look of relief came into his face which had begun to assume the aspect of a broken man's--"you must have other accounts with the bank . . . a speculative one, perhaps, on which you are heavily down. . . . I don't myself attend to client's accounts, except the very huge ones, which affect the bank's policy." "You ought to," Tietjens said. "It's the very little ones you ought to attend to, as a gentleman making his fortune out of them. I have no other account with you. I have never speculated in anything in my life. I have lost a great deal in Russian securities--a great deal for me. But so, no doubt, have you." "Then . . . betting!" Port Scatho said. "I never put a penny on a horse in my life," Tietjens said. "I know too much about them." Port Scatho looked at the faces first of Sylvia, then of Tietjens. Sylvia, at least, was his very old friend. She said: "Christopher never bets and never speculates. His personal expenses are smaller than those of any man in town. You could say he had no personal expenses." Again the swift look of suspicion came into Port Scatho's open face. "Oh," Sylvia said, "you couldn't suspect Christopher and me of being in a plot to blackmail you." "No; I couldn't suspect that," the banker said. "But the other explanation is just as extraordinary. . . . To suspect the bank . . . the _bank_. . . . How do _you_ account? . . ." He was addressing Tietjens; his round head seemed to become square, below; emotion worked on his jaws.