On that day, one William Kitteredge, in roughly the middle of the standard twenty-to-thirty-year apprenticeship as vice president of something, beat the scion of another family rather too easily in their weekly tennis match at the club. This gentleman, whose family maintained reserves of at least two sets of books at the bank, confessed to Bill that the light of his life, his young daughter, had run away with an Italian. This disturbing revelation provoked sympathy in Bill, who thought something should be done-quietly.

That evening, Bill had a word with Jack Quinn, a janitor at the bank, whose son, Jack Junior, was a promising young prizefighter and youth about town. Could young Jack perhaps lend a hand? Jack was delighted and located the couple, had a few friendly words of counsel with the now-less-than-ardent husband, and delivered the girl to Bill at his house in town. Bill, in turn, had a drink with his friend the judge, and the marriage never happened. Bill returned the daughter, received copious thanks, and thought no more about it until he was summoned into the office promptly at seven o’clock Monday morning.

“Hear you’ve been rescuing damsels in distress from the clutches of recent Mediterranean arrivals,” his father said.

“That’s right.”

“Plan to continue this sort of thing?”

“Might.”

“Then you had better get organized.”

Actually, the old man said, it made sense. The world had changed, and could be a more troublesome sort of place than it should. The bank despised a scandal, he said, and more and more of its old customers seemed to be getting in the newspapers these days. “We’re old friends of these families, and moreover, it’s in our interest to keep them safe and happy. Cheaper in the long run to take care of some of these little problems ourselves.”

So Bill got a raise and a budget and orders to put together an agency within the bank to be at the service of old friends whose private problems might not be best ameliorated by the public arm of the law and the grimy hands of the press.