"You can't keep people from knowing, Jerry," I said. "Your picture will be on every sporting page in the United States."
"Oh, we've fixed that with a photographer. Flynn had a picture of a cousin of his who is dead—young chap—looked something like me. They're faking the thing."
The boy was getting a new code of morals as well as a new vocabulary.
"You can't hide a lie, Jerry."
"I'm not harming anybody," he muttered.
"Nobody but yourself," I said sternly.
"I don't see that," he growled, clasping his great fists over his knees.
"It's the truth. You'll harm yourself irrevocably. The thing will come out somehow. Jim Robinson isn't Jerry Benham. He's the New York and South Western Railroad Company, the Seaboard Transportation Line, the United Oil Company—"
"I'd get Clancy's goat in the first round if he thought I was all that, wouldn't I?" Jerry grinned sheepishly, while Jack Ballard fought back a smile.
"If you won't consider your own interests, what you must consider is that you've no right to jeopardize the property interests of those who have put their money and their faith behind these enterprises which you control. You're already in a responsible position. You're making yourself a mountebank, a laughing-stock. No one will ever trust you in a position of responsibility again."