“Is that one of your plans?” asked Mr. Dawson very quietly.
“Not at present. I realize that more is required than merely honest motives. I may have the will to do good as the president of such a bank, but I lack the ability and experience to conduct it. I am content to see Mr. Dawson,” with a pleasant smile, “at the head of the richest bank in America.”
“Thank you, Mr. Grinnell,” returned Mr. Dawson, with the cordiality of immense relief. “What are your plans, then?”
“My first plan is to make more—ah—to make arrangements to deposit more gold.”
“You were going to say ‘make more’ something—when you stopped,” said Mel-len, with a sort of nonchalant curiosity. At least, that is what he meant it to look like.
“I was going to say,” answered the young man, very quickly, “make more deposits.”
“I thought,” said Mellen with a smile, though his eyes were serious, “that you were going to say ‘make more gold,’” He was speaking in the quiet, self-possessed way that had so impressed the Congressional Committee which had “investigated” his Syndicate’s business and its violation of the law, because it so resembled the self-possession of an utterly honest man to whom there had never come a thought of the possibility of a doubt of the righteousness of his every action. It made logical the impression that the richest man in the world believed himself the instrument of Providence.
The young man laughed. “That would be dreadful. We’d be in a terrible fix if we had to re-create the science of chemistry. It would mean a scientific panic, a slump in the molecular theory market.” He laughed again as if pleased at the application of Wall Street phraseology to chemical science.
“Don’t you make it?” persisted Mellen; his voice had an insinuating quality, as though he were inviting spiritual confidences. He was not a persuasive man, but he often looked so much as though he had persuaded himself, that it had the effect of persuasion—on stubborn and misguided competitors.
Grinnell looked at the richest man in the world seriously. “It is perfectly astonishing,” he said, musingly, “how many people still believe in alchemy. That comes from the tommy-rot they read in the Sunday newspapers about scientific discoveries.”