For a moment he sat speechless, blinking at me with his swollen eyelids, while his lower lip protruded angrily, like the lip of a crying child. Then the old war-horse in him responded gallantly to the scent of battle.
"Damn you, Ben, do you know cash is as tight as wax?" he enquired. "You ain't dozing in the midst of a panic?"
"There's trouble at the bank," I replied. "A run has started, but so far it is almost entirely among the small depositors. We can manage to pay off till three o'clock, and if we open to-morrow with a quarter of a million, we shall probably keep on our feet, unless the excitement spreads."
"By nine o'clock to-morrow morning; and I want it, General," I added, "on my personal credit."
He rose from his chair and stood swaying unsteadily on his gouty foot.
"I'll give you every penny that I've got, Ben," he answered, "but it ain't that much."
"You have access to the cash of both the Tilden Bank and the Bonfield Trust Company. If there's a dollar in the city you can get it."
A hint of his sly humour appeared for an instant in his eyes. "It wasn't any longer ago than breakfast that I remarked I didn't believe there was a blamed dollar in the whole country," he returned. Then his swaying stopped and he became invested suddenly with the dignity of the greatest financier in the state.
"Hand me my stick, Ben, and I'll go and see what I can do about it," he said.
I gave him his stick and my arm, and with my assistance he limped to the offices of the Bonfield Trust Company on the next block. When I returned to the bank the directors were talking excitedly, but at my entrance a hush fell, and they sat looking at me with a row of vacant, expectant faces that waited apparently to be filled with expression.
"By ten o'clock to-morrow morning," I said, "a quarter of a million in cash will be brought in through the door in bags."
"I told you he'd do it," exclaimed Bingley, as he grasped my hand, "and I hope to God it will stay 'em off."
"You need a drink, Ben," observed Judge Kenton, "and so do I. Let's go and get it. A soft-boiled egg was all I had for breakfast, and I've gone faint."
I remember that I went to a restaurant with him, that a few old women sitting on the curbing spoke to us as we passed, that we ate oysters, and returned in half an hour to another meeting, that we discussed ways and means until eight o'clock and decided nothing. I know also that when we came out again several of the old women were still crouching there, and that when they came whining up to me, I turned on them with an oath and ordered them to be off. As clearly as if it were yesterday, I can see still the long, solemn face of the Judge as he glanced up at me, and I see written upon it something of the faint wonder that I had grown to regard as the peculiar look of the Blands.