Mr. Hunter had very expensive tastes which his salary was not always sufficient to cover.  Wherefore, like many another, he speculated.  When he was lucky, it was easy money; but it was never enough.  Of late he had not been fortunate, and he found himself confronted by the high cost of living as he chose to live.  This annoyed him.  So when there came his way what appeared to be an absolute certainty of not only recouping all his losses but of making some real money as well, Hunter plunged, with every dollar he could manage to get hold of.  But Wall Street is a lane that has many crooked and devious turnings, and Mr. Hunter’s investments took a very wrong turn.  And this time it was not only all his own money that had been lost.  The bottom might have dropped out of things then, except for Inglesby.

When Hunter had to tell him the truth the financier listened with an unmoved face.  Then he swung around in his chair, lifted an eyebrow, grunted, and remarked briefly:  “Very unsafe thing to do, Hunter.  Very.”  And shoved his personal check across the desk.  Nobody knew anything about it, except the head bookkeeper of the bank.

Inglesby had no illusions, however.  He understood that to have in his power an immensely clever man who knew as much about his private affairs as Hunter did, was good business, to say the least.  He simply invested in Mr. Hunter’s brains and personality for his own immediate ends, and he expected his brilliant and expensive secretary to prove the worth of the investment.

Inglesby had not risen to his present heights by beating about the bush in his dealings with others.  He had seized Success by the windpipe and throttled it into obedience, and he ruthlessly bent everything and everybody to his own purposes.  The task he set before Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind.  Let Hunter do that—­no matter how—­and the pilot’s future was assured.  Inglesby would be no niggardly rewarder.  But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter must go down with it.  Hunter was not left in any doubt upon that score.

Brought face to face with the situation as it affected his fortune and misfortune, Hunter must have had a very bad half an hour.  I am sure he had not dreamed of such a contretemps, and he must have been startled and amazed by the cold calculation and the raw fury of passion he had to deal with.  I do not think he relished his task.  His was the sort of conscience that would dislike such a course, not because it was dishonorable or immoral in itself, but because its details offended his fastidiousness.  I think he would have extricated himself honorably if he could.  It just happened that he couldn’t.

Give a sufficient shock to a man’s pocket-nerve and you electrify his brain-cells, which automatically receive orders to work overtime.  Hunter’s brain worked then because it had to, self-preservation being the first law of nature.  And this service for Inglesby not only spelt safety; it meant the golden key to the heights, the power to gratify those fine tastes which only a rich and able man can afford.  Inglesby had promised that, and he had just had a fair example of what Inglesby’s support meant.