"I tell you once more,
Mr. Rae, and I tell you all, I know nothing about this cheque, and that
is my last word." And from that position nothing could move him.
"Well," said Mr. Rae, closing the interview, "we have done our best. The
law must take its course."
"Great Heavens!" cried the Captain, springing to his feet. "Do you mean
to tell me, Allan, that you persist in this cursed folly and will give
us no further light? Have you no regard for my name, if not for your
own?" He grasped his son fiercely by the arm.
But his son angrily shook off his grasp. "You," he said, looking his
father full in the face, "you condemned me before you heard a word from
me, and now for my name or for yours I care not a tinker's curse." And
with this he flung himself from the room.
"Follow him," said Mr. Rae to Dunn, quietly; "he will need you. And keep
him in sight; it is important."
"All right, Sir!" said Dunn. "I'll stay with him." And he did.
CHAPTER IV
A QUESTION OF HONOUR
Mr. Rae in forty years' experience had never been so seriously
disturbed. To his intense humiliation he found himself abjectly
appealing to the senior member of the firm of Thomlinson & Shields. Not
that Mr. Thomlinson was obdurate; in the presence of mere obduracy Mr.
Rae might have found relief in the conscious possession of more generous
and humane instincts than those supposed to be characteristic of the
members of his profession.
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