If it was five hundred instead of ten, why--perhaps I shouldn't say no." Jed was startled.
"Five hundred ?" he repeated.

"Five hundred dollars?
Do you need all that so very bad, Charlie ?" Phillips, his foot upon the threshold of the outer shop, turned and looked at him.
"The way I feel now I'd do almost anything to get it," he said, and went out.
Jed told no one of this conversation, although his friend's parting remark troubled and puzzled him.

In fact it troubled him so much that at a subsequent meeting with Charles he hinted to the latter that he should be glad to lend the five hundred himself.
"I ought to have that and some more in the bank," he said.

"Sam would know whether I had or not.

.