“Well, your brother is a fool, as I said before, though in the end he did ‘make his jack’ and win a pot of money. But that was good luck—not good play.”
“Don’t fall into reflections,” interrupted Kilgariff, seeing that Campbell was in a reminiscent mood. “We’ve no time for that sort of thing. Go on with the facts.”
“Well, you see your brother was that sort of man about whom people say that he was ‘more sinned against than sinning.’ He always wanted to do right, and if he could have got a good steady job as a millionaire, I don’t know anybody who would have been more scrupulously upright than he. You see, he really thought he had principles—moral character and that sort of thing—when he hadn’t anything of the kind. Many people deceive themselves in that way. I never did. I was born of as good a family as yours, or any other. I was raised in the most honourable traditions, and as a young man I was reckoned a pattern of high-minded conduct. I knew all the time that I had no moral character, no principles. Or rather, I gradually became conscious of that fact.”
Kilgariff was exceedingly impatient of this autobiography, but he thought the shortest way to the man’s facts was to let him talk on in his own way. So he forebore to interrupt, and Campbell continued:—
“I would have killed any man who called me a liar, but I never hesitated to lie when lying seemed to me of advantage. I was scrupulous in paying my debts and discharging every social duty, but I knew myself well enough to know that if an opportunity came to me to rob any man without being found out, I would do it and not hesitate or repent over it. Like the great majority of men, I was honest only as a matter of policy. I had no moral character. Most people haven’t any, but they go on thinking they have and pretending about it until they completely deceive themselves. They refuse to take the old sage’s advice to ‘know thyself.’ I took it. I early learned to know myself.
“But if I had no principles, I at least had sentiments. One of those sentiments was pride in my family. When I saw clearly that I was going to be an adventurer, a gambler, a swindler, a man living by his wits, I did not shrink from that, but I shuddered at the thought of disgracing the name I bore. So I decided not to bear that name, but to choose another. At first I thought of calling myself ‘George Washington Bib’—just for the humour of the thing. The sudden slump from the resonance of ‘George Washington’ to the monosyllabic inconsequence of ‘Bib’ struck me as funny. But I reflected that while I had never heard of anybody named Bib, there might be people by that name. Still further, it occurred to me that anybody on being introduced to George Washington Bib would be sure to remember the name, and in the career I had marked out for myself that might be inconvenient. So I made up my mind to call myself Campbell. There are so many families of that name, and they are so prolific, that the mere name means nothing—not even a probability of kinship. But you’re not interested in all this. You want to hear about your brother.”
“Yes,” answered Kilgariff.
“Well, your brother was highly respectable, as you know. He was comfortably rich at the first, and after he lost most of his money he struggled hard to keep up the pretence of being still comfortably rich. He did the thing very cleverly, and it let him into several pretty good things in Wall Street. But it let him into a good many very bad things also, and in his over-anxiety to become really rich again, he went into the bad things headforemost and blindfold. I was posing as a lawyer then, you know, and cutting a large swath. I really had no regular practice of any consequence, but I kept two large suites of offices and any number of clerks, as a blind, and I managed every now and then to find out things that I could turn to account—”
“Blackmail, I suppose.”
“Yes, I suppose you’d call it that, but always with a weather eye on the law. You see, when an active lawyer finds out that a big banker has been doing things he oughtn’t, the big banker is apt to conclude that he needs the services of precisely that particular lawyer as private counsel. There are big fees in the business sometimes, but it’s risky and uncertain. So I had my ups and downs. I was in one of the very worst of my downs when this bank affair fell in. I had been a bank examiner at one time, and had twice examined the affairs of this bank. I knew that its deposits were enormous and its assets sufficient, if properly handled, to pay out everything and leave a large surplus, besides something for the receiver. So I decided to become in effect, though not in fact, the receiver. I owned a judge. He owed me money which he couldn’t pay, and that money was owing on account of things which he couldn’t on any consideration allow to be inquired into in ‘proceedings.’ Moreover, I knew a lot of other things which in themselves made me his master. Still again, his term was nearly at an end, and I had the political influence necessary to secure or defeat his renomination and re-election, as I might choose. In short, I owned him body and soul. So, when it fell to him to appoint a receiver for this bank, he naturally sent for me in consultation. His idea was to appoint me to the receivership, but I saw clearly that that would not do. It would raise a row, for I was pretty well known to the big financiers, many of whom had been obliged to employ me by way of silencing me at one time or another. But more important than that was the fact that the plans I had formed for the handling of the bank’s affairs involved a good deal of risk to the receiver. The bank had a great many investments that must be closed out in order to put the institution on its feet again, and there are various ways of closing out such investments. It was my idea that they should be so closed out as to leave the bank just barely solvent and able to pay its depositors, you understand—”