Wally Bailey had given me a graphic glimpse of Janvier and his aim which, from one point of view, was actually a pursuit of perfection. What Wally suggested was that Janvier wanted, more than anything else, the satisfaction of doing the thing which had stumped him. That was what he wanted his sight back for,—to have a go at it again. And here he had it.
His daughter was helping him, naturally. She’d been born and bred to his business and surely had caught something of the spirit of her father who wouldn’t give in, in spite of three terms, till he’d shown up the government.
I thought of what Jerry had told me of the Socratic genius of gervers and housemen; undoubtedly counterfeiters had their talent for dialectics too.
It might go something like this: the printing of a little extra money would not directly injure any individual. In fact, there was quite an argument whether it damaged people in general at all.
Many highly approved people were openly in favor of a freer issue of currency without bothering whether a gold or silver dollar was behind every bank note. Mr. Ford and Mr. Edison themselves had spoken for a scheme which, while not similar to Janvier’s system, yet had sent the good bankers into frightful attacks of financial hydrophobia.
Mightn’t Janvier show plenty of authority to suggest that he wasn’t in a bad business at all?
And suppose he compared it with other businesses; mine, for choice. What was the harm in shoving out a little informal currency compared with the damage in passing out drugged and adulterated food, which many a first family has done?
Then compare it with the coal brokerage business, from which many of my firmest friends are fat. What did they do for their profits, during a late, lamented shortage, but hold a few carloads of coal back from the market and away from people freezing for it so they could whoop the price a little more? Wouldn’t everybody be a bit ahead if these people, who haven’t the slightest fear of any “long house,” had stayed out of the coal business and simply printed their own money for their profits and shoved it into circulation without harming anybody?
You see, as I thought it over, it didn’t seem strange to me that Doris Wellington could smile and smile at me and not feel herself a villainess at all.