Bitter and
unmeasured were the terms in which City men spoke of that Phil Sheldon
with whom they had eaten the sacred bait and quaffed the social moselle
in the taverns of Greenwich and Blackwall.
There is a saying current on the Stock Exchange to the effect that the
man who fails, and disappears from among his fellows behind a curtain of
commercial cloud, is sure to return sooner or later to his old circle,
with a moustache and a brougham. For Philip Sheldon there was, however,
no coming back. The moustache and the brougham of the chastened and
penitent defaulter were not for him. By his deliberate and notorious
dishonour he had shut the door against the possibility of return. It may
be supposed that the defaulter knew this, for he did not come back; and
since he had no lack of moral courage, he would scarcely have refrained
from showing himself once more in his old haunts, if it had been possible
for him to face the difficulties of his position.
Time passed, and there came no tidings of the missing man, though a
detective was despatched to America in search of him by one vengeful
sufferer among the many victims of the fictitious bills-of-exchange. It
was supposed that he must inevitably go to America, and thither went his
pursuer, but with no result except the expenditure of money and the
further exasperation of the vengeful sufferer.
"What will you do with him, if you get him?" asked a philosophical friend
of the sufferer.
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