So Mrs Nutbridge telephoned Jules Reginald Harlow and poured her sensible heart out in sob-laden local-accent English.
‘Sandy said I wasn’t to bother you,’ she finished despairingly. ‘He was adamant, when I talked to him on the telephone. He says Mr Wichelsea should never have suggested I ask you, but the children have come such a long way from home, and they are frightened... and I don’t know what to do...’ Bewilderment and overwhelming distress closed her throat, and it was for her, the beleaguered grandmother, that Jules Harlow felt sympathy, not for her salesman son, who was probably guilty (he thought) of whatever he’d been hauled in for. Jules Harlow still had faith that justice ruled.
He said ‘No promises’ to Mrs Nutbridge, but wrote down the address and phone number of Sandy’s condominium and said he would ring her back.
Harlow sat for a while with the receiver in his hand rehearing the desperation that he could alleviate. Then he phoned Ray Wichelsea and asked for his opinion.
‘If Sandy says he’ll surrender to his bail when the time comes,’ Wichelsea said, ‘then he will. I totally trust him. What’s more, his mother has borrowed money all over the place in England towards that iniquitous hundred thousand dollars, and there’s no way he’s going to default and leave her in bankruptcy and disgrace. If you put up money for his bail, you’ll definitely get it back. I wouldn’t have put up my own personal savings if I hadn’t been certain of it.’
‘But,’ Jules Harlow responded, ‘what has he done?’
‘He says he hasn’t done anything wrong. He says he thinks the tax people believe he’s been laundering drug money, but he hasn’t.’
‘Well...’ Jules Harlow hesitated, ‘has he?’
‘If he says not, then he hasn’t.’
Ray Wichelsea’s certainty didn’t altogether convince Jules Harlow, but as the computer genius realised that the essential question wasn’t guilt or innocence but whether or not Sandy Nutbridge would surrender to his bail, he telephoned his accountant and asked him what he thought.
‘If you want to do it, then do it,’ the accountant said. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.’
It was by then well after going-home time in the city’s Thursday afternoon offices: Jules Harlow’s day-to-day jobbing attorney had left and would be out of town until Monday, unavailable for advice. Jules Reginald Harlow drummed his fingers and looked out of the window and thought of poor Mrs Nutbridge, and finally dialled her number and put her miseries to rest.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, bereft of breath. ‘Oh! Do you mean it? Do you really?’
‘You’ll have to tell me what to do.’
‘Oh. Oh...’ She slowly recovered. ‘Sandy’s lawyer,’ she said. ‘His name is Patrick Green. Well, he’s gone to Texas.’
‘He’s done what?’
‘He had another case there. He said he had to go tonight. But he’s told a sort of colleague of his... well, at any rate, someone who shares office space with him... to deal with Sandy’s bail.’ Her voice wavered with uncertainty and doubt, a mirror reflection of Jules Harlow’s own feelings. He wished bleakly that he’d never bought the filly from Sandy Nutbridge: that he’d never in the first place thought of giving his fiancée a horse.
Mrs Nutbridge said hastily, ‘It’s all right, I’m sure it is. Sandy’s friend says if you get to his office with a cashier’s cheque in time for him to courier it round to the District Clerk by twelve o’clock tomorrow morning Sandy will be freed in the afternoon.’
‘Well, who is this friend?’
‘He’s a lawyer, too. His name is Carl Corunna. He said I should give you his phone number, and ask you to ring him just before nine tomorrow morning when he will be in his office.’
Jules Harlow, frowning, wrote down the number, and felt he couldn’t honourably retreat, much as he would have liked.
‘I’ll see to it, Mrs Nutbridge,’ he assured her. ‘Do you have an\r money for food?’
‘Mr Wichelsea gave us some. Ever so kind, he’s been.’
On Friday morning before nine, Jules Reginald Harlow telephoned the lawyer who shared office space with Patrick Green and asked him how to proceed.
The colleague, Carl Corunna, gave simple instructions without emotion: Jules Harlow should go to his bank and withdraw ten thousand dollars on a cashier’s cheque. Mr Harlow should then motor to his — Carl Corunna’s — office on the outskirts of the financial centre. He, Carl Corunna, would receive the cheque, give Mr Harlow a receipt for it, and courier it round immediately to the courthouse.
Corunna the colleague gave detailed directions to his office and said he was sure all would go well. The collection of bail money was so common as to be routine.
‘Um,’ Jules Harlow said, ‘do I make the cashier’s cheque payable to you?’
‘No, no. I’m only acting for Patrick Green as he’s away. Get your bank to make it out to him. Come as soon as you can. My office is a good hour’s drive from where you are, and time is of the essence, as you know.’
With a sigh of mild reluctance Jules Harlow followed all the instructions and reached a thoroughly conventional suite of attorneys’ offices in a building a mile or so from the city centre. He parked outside at eleven twenty-five.
A bustling receptionist showed him into the book-lined domain of Carl Corunna, who proved to be bulky, bearded and approximately his own age, fifty.
Jules Harlow, reassured, shook his hand. Carl Corunna saw a smallish, slight, unimpressive-looking man whose somewhat fluffy hair was turning grey; and as usual he had no trouble in dominating and conducting the meeting.
‘You brought the cheque?’ he asked, waving Harlow to a chair, and when he held the expensive piece of paper in his big hands he examined it line by line, nodding his assent.
He pushed buttons on his telephone and told Jules Harlow that he was without delay talking to the US District Clerk’s office in the Federal courthouse.
‘Yes,’ he said into the mouthpiece, ‘the last ten thousand for Nutbridge is here. Cashier’s cheque, yes. I’ll courier it round to you at once. And you do confirm that Nutbridge will be freed this afternoon? Great. Thanks very much.’
He put down the receiver, called for his secretary to make a photo-copy of the cheque, and wrote and signed a receipt, giving it to Harlow.
‘What’s next?’ Harlow asked.
‘Nothing,’ Corunna told him. ‘When Sandy Nutbridge gives himself up for trial, you’ll get your money back. Until then, you just wait.’
With a sense of anticlimax after the rush, Jules Harlow drove uneventfully home. Sandy Nutbridge was released at three o’clock from the cells. Mrs Nutbridge wept with relief when he walked in through his front door, and the children demanded and ate endless comfort burgers and fries.
Mrs Nutbridge telephoned Jules Harlow to thank him, and after joyful boat trips on the lake for the rest of their holiday, Sandy’s family flew safely home to England. Sandy sold more horses. The court moved on to other cases, the Nutbridge urgency quietly receding. Jules Harlow, entranced with his fiancée, only thought about his bail adventure when the filly Sandy had sold him kicked up her tough little heels and won repeatedly.
Three months passed.
Towards the end of that time Jules Reginald Harlow married his delicious horse-racing lady and took her on a wedding trip to Paris. While they were away Sandy Nutbridge was summoned for trial.
Sandy Nutbridge, supported by his lawyer-friend Patrick Green (long ago returned from Texas), successfully proved in court that the IRS (Internal Revenue Service — the tax people) had done its sums wrong and was prosecuting him in error. The judge agreed and dismissed the case. As Nutbridge had surrendered to his bail, the District Clerk duly dug out and distributed the one hundred thousand dollars in his care.