"You don't have to advertise the fact," Gibbons said, still a little irritated. "I can see it."
Bettington felt the protective instinct calling him to defend the small, shy friend of other days.
"It amazes me to think you troubled to give so elaborate a feast for two unsuccessful men. Why?"
"Ask Unwin," the host returned. "He told my secretary he had important business with me, and as I was busy all day and every evening but this I suggested a dinner. Thinking of Tubby brought you to my mind, and I asked you, too. I'm waiting to know just how important this business is."
An Old Contract
Bettington could see that Unwin was flushing with nervousness.
"What is it?" he demanded.
Unwin drew from his pocket a half-sheet of paper and passed it across the table to Gibbons. The dinner was now at the coffee and liqueur stage, and the menservants had withdrawn from earshot. Gibbons took it with a frown and read it through:
We, the undersigned, being about to separate, do hereby swear that if one of us attains fortune and the others do not, the lucky one shall aid the unsuccessful cheerfully and unasked in any way he is called upon to do,
Howard Berrington ("Betty").
Floyd Unwin ("Tubby").
Alfred Gibbons ("3 Brass Balls").
Gibbons handed it back to Unwin.
"It's interesting," he admitted, "but not legal. It contradicts itself. It would have no value in a court of law. I tore my copy up years ago."
Bettington reached for it and scanned the document.
"I'd forgotten all about it," he said.
"Had you?" Gibbons said with a sneer.
"It may not be legal," he heard Unwin saying nervously. "But in a matter of old friendship the spirit counts, not the letter."
"Which shows you to be as foolish at forty as you were at twenty," said the financier.
Bettington was conscious more fully than ever of Unwin's dejection. The hope which had sustained him seemed now to have left him dull, broken and speechless. Bettington put his arm about the bowed shoulders.
"Oh, Tubby," he cried, "are you so poor a judge of human nature as to come to Gibbons for help? If I had known you were in need you might not have had this humiliation. Within this very week I've bought a camp and paid for it. I could have deferred payment easily enough. What do you need it for?"
"Its my children," said Unwin quietly. "They are crying, not for food, but for education. It's another species of starvation. I thought if Gibbons would advance enough money to get them where they want to be, I'd pay it off little by little. I see I was wrong. He is not the man we knew."
"Thank God!" Gibbons ejaculated. But you two seem to know precisely where I stand all the same. How do you know what I might do?"
"I Hope I'm Wrong"
"Tubby isn't a spectacular charity," Bettington told him, "and won't advertise you. Gibbons, I hope I'm wrong about you. I'd like to apologize for hasty judgment. This document may not be legal, but do you remember the day we signed it and how you would have felt if I had suggested you would sneer at it less than a score of years later?"
Gibbons moved a little uneasily. The years he had almost forgotten awoke in his mind with a peculiar distinctness. He did not like to remember that he was the author of the document and executed it with the feeling that he was a beneficiary under its terms.
He had thought nothing could stay Howard Bettington in his fight for fortune. Even Tubby Unwin, distin-
