No, Quib; it's bad business and we've got to get Hawkins out of the way at any cost." It was not until nearly three o'clock in the morning that I discovered Dillingham's whereabouts, which happened to be at the Fifth Avenue house of a fashionable friend, where he was playing draw poker.
He greeted me in much the same inhospitable fashion that I had accorded to Gottlieb, but only a few words were needed to convince him of the gravity of the case.

I had never loathed the man more than I did at that instant when, with a cigar stuffed in his fat face, he came out of the card-room, dressed in his white waistcoat and pearl studs, and with a half-drunken leer asked what I wanted.
"I want fifty thousand dollars to keep you and me out of State prison!" I cried.
He turned a sickly yellow and gave a sort of choking gasp.
"Hawkins!" he muttered.

"Damn him!" Then Dillingham had a sort of fit, due no doubt partly to the fact that he had drunk more champagne than was good for him; for he trembled with a kind of ague and then broke out in a sweat and blubbered, and uttered incoherent oaths, until I was half beside myself lest he should keep it up all night and I should not get the money from him.

But at last he regained control of himself and promised to borrow the fifty thousand dollars the first thing in the morning and to have it at my office at ten o'clock.

Yet, as I bade him good night, he had another turn of terror and his teeth chattered in his head as he stammered out that he was a ruined man, that he had cast off a good wife for a deceitful hussy who only wanted his money, that he had lost his child, that now his career was over, and that, unless I stood by him, he would end his days in prison.