“For God’s sake, Izzy, tell me or I’ll go mad!  Slow, dearie, so Renie can think and listen and help you.  She’s with you, darling, and nothing can hurt you.  Now begin, Izzy, and go slow.  What did you start to tell me about Uncle Isadore and the books?  Slow, darling.”

Her voice was smooth and flowing, and the hand that stroked his hair was slow and soothing; the great stream of his passion abated and he huddled quietly at her feet.

“Now begin, dearie.  Uncle Isadore—­what?”

“This morning, when I got down to—­to the office, two men had—­my books.”

“Yes.”

“O God!  When I seen ’em, right away my heart just stopped.”

’"Sh-h-h!  Yes—­two men had the books.”

“And Uncle Isadore—­Uncle Isadore—­he was—­he—­”

“Go on!”

“He—­he was in the cage, too; and—­and you know how he looks when his eyes get little.”

“Yes, yes, Izzy.”

“They were—­expert accountants with him.  All day yesterday, Sunday, they were on my books; and—­and they had me, Renie—­they had me like a rat in a trap.”

“Had you, Izzy?”

He drew himself upward, clutching at her arms; and the sobs began to tear him afresh.  “They had me, Renie.”

“Oh, Izzy, why—­”

“I could have paid it back.  I could have put it back if the old skinflint hadn’t got to sniffing round and sicked ’em on my books.  I could have won it all back in time, Renie.  With my own uncle, my own mother’s brother, it—­it wasn’t like I was stealing it, was it, Renie?  Was it?”

“Oh, my God, Izzy!”

“It wasn’t, Renie—­my own uncle!  I could have won it back if—­if—­”

“Won back what, Izzy—­won back what?”

“I—­I started with a hundred, Renie.  I had to have it; I had to, I tell you.  You remember that night I—­I wanted you to go over and ask Aunt Beck for it?  I had to have it.  Pa—.  I—­I couldn’t excite him any more about it; and—­and I had to have it, I tell you, Renie.”

“Yes; then what?”

“And I—­I borrowed it without asking.  I—­I fixed it on my books so—­so Uncle Isadore wouldn’t—­couldn’t—.  I—­I fixed it on my books.”

“Oh-oh, Izzy!  Oh—­oh—­oh!”

“I was trying out a system—­a new one—­and it worked, Renie.  I tried it out on the new wheel down at Sharkey’s and the seventeen system worked like a trick.  I won big the first and second nights, Renie—­you remember the night I brought you and ma the bracelets?  I paid back the hundred the first week, Renie; and no one knew—­no one knew.”

“Oh-h-h-h!”

“The next Friday my luck turned on me—­I never ought to have played on Friday—­turned like a toad one unlucky Friday night.  I got in deep before I knew it, and deeper and deeper; and then—­and then it just seemed there wasn’t no holding me, Renie.  I got wild—­got wild, I tell you; and I—­I wrote ’em checks I didn’t have no right to write.  I—­I went crazy, I tell you.  Next day—­you remember that morning I left the house so early?—­I had to fix it with the books and borrow what—­what I needed before the banks opened.  I—­I had to make good on them checks, Renie.  I fixed it with the books, and from that time on it worked.”