"I’ve thought of that, too," came the prompt answer. "He will, of course. But suppose he didn’t. Well, we’re not hagglers, my dear. We’re only simple people trying to do right, just as you’re trying to do right yourself. If Bob is only in a position in which he _can_ undo his wrong, whether he undoes it or not, you shall have your twenty-five thousand just the same." "Could I have it as early as—as next week?" "If the conditions are fulfilled, certainly." Jennie was anxious to free herself from the charge of cupidity. "The reason I say next week is that my father is worried about the interest on the mortgage and the taxes. He didn’t pay the interest last time, and the taxes are two months overdue. If he can’t find the money by next week—" "You yourself can be in a position to take all the worry off his hands—once the conditions are fulfilled." Little more was said after this. There was little more to say. The necessities of the case being once understood, Junia steered her guest back to the car which waited at the door. But into the leave-taking Max threw an odd note of hostility. As if he resented some baseness toward his master, he pressed his flank against Jennie with such force as almost to knock her down, and when she sprang away from him into the car he growled after her. CHAPTER X "So you can do it and get away with it." This was Teddy’s reflection as he left the bank on that Thursday afternoon. He had spent an infernal day, but it was over, and over safely. Of the missing twenty dollars he had neither heard a word nor caught a sign of anxiety. Mr. Brunt had been methodical and taciturn as usual. Always keeping a gulf between Teddy and himself, it was neither more nor less a gulf to-day than it was on other days. As to whether he missed twenty dollars or whether he did not, Teddy could form no idea. In the middle of the morning there had been a terrifying incident. "See that guy over there?" Lobley, one of his colleagues, had asked him. He saw the guy over there—a crafty, clean-shaven Celt—and said so. "That’s Flynn, the detective who copped Nicholson, the teller at the Wyndham National." "O my God! I’m pinched!" Teddy exclaimed to himself. "If I had a gun or a dose of poison, he’d never get me alive." But Flynn only chatted with Jackman, one of the house detectives, laughed, cashed a check at a wicket, and left the bank. Teddy breathed again, wondering if he had given anything away to Lobley. Was it possible that Lobley could have heard of the twenty dollars and been set to try him out? No; he didn’t believe so. Lobley had merely pointed out Flynn as a notable character, and gone about his business. "I shall never forget that mug," Teddy thought, as he summoned his _sang-froid_ to go on with his work. "The mug of a guy without guts," he added, further to define the pitiless set of Flynn’s features. "I sure would kill myself before I let him touch me."