"That's why I could afford to pay you a million a year."
"You don't mean to say that his fortune is streaked with the stain of fraud?" Stuart asked, in low tones.
"Certainly. Personally, he's a fine fellow. He's a big man and lives in a big world. His fortune is not less than two hundred million, securely salted down in gilt-edged real estate, most of it. But the original fortune was made by fraud and violence in the old days of colonial history. The elder Viking was a furrier. The fur trade was enormously profitable. Why? Because the whole scheme was built on the simple process by which an Indian was made drunk and in one brief hour cheated out of the results of a year's work. His agents never paid money for skins. They first used whiskey to blind their victims and then traded worthless beads and trinkets for priceless treasures of fur. And on such a foundation was the great house founded."
"It's incredible."
"The facts have been published. If they were not true the publisher could be driven out of business. The Vikings maintain a dignified silence. They have to do it, but softly, here is the head of the house of Black Friday. Everybody knows about his father's sins. Yet he was the friend and comrade of the great who were canonized while he was cannonaded. Good fellow, too, all the same breed when you come right down to it, only some of them have the genius for getting away with the goods and saving their reputations at the same time."
"For instance?" Stuart asked.
Bivens craned his neck toward the stairs.
"There's one of them, now, one of the great railroad kings, not one of your Western bounders, but the real Eastern, New York patriotic brand, one of the brave, daring pioneers who risked all to push great transcontinental railroads through the trackless deserts of the West—with millions furnished by the government—which they dumped into their own pockets while the world was shouting their praises for developing the Nation's resources."
"My friend, Mr. James Stuart, Mr. Van Dam."
It was with difficulty that the young lawyer kept his face straight during those introductions.