It was an interesting scene at which he gazed now. A workmen’s bench was before him, with a powerful lamp, shaded, so that it threw a very strong light upon the workbench.
Two men were seated at it, working on polished plates of copper that Chick recognized at a glance as intended for the printing of bank notes. The workmen were so absorbed in their work, that even if he had made a slight noise—which he didn’t—when he pulled out the plug of crumpled paper, they would not have heard it.
These two busy engravers were not the only persons in the room. There were other men in plain view of Chick.
One was sorting and examining a large pile of bank notes—counterfeits—holding each one against the light, and scrutinizing it narrowly, before he would pronounce it “safe.”
The fourth man—a burly fellow, who must have weighed more than two hundred pounds—was working a roller press at the farther side of the room. Chick could not see the denomination of the bills, of course, but he heard the big man growl that “these centuries don’t look as good as some we’ve done.”
“Hundred-dollar bills, eh?” muttered Chick. “The scoundrels!”
These four were all industriously working. If their occupation had been legitimate, he might have admired them for the way they kept everlastingly at it.
But there was another person, making the fifth, in the place, who did not show even the doubtful virtue of exerting himself like the others. He was the personification of laziness and worthlessness, for he was lolling in a rickety rocking-chair, and yawning as if he were too tired to live.
Chick found himself wondering why some of the others did not lift him out of the rocker and bestow a good, swift kick where it would do the most good.
He was not at all a bad-looking fellow. His features were clean cut and rather aristocratic, and he seemed to be intelligent, so far as Chick could judge. His clothes were of a fashionable cut, and he wore them as if used to expensive raiment. Certainly, there was nothing of the laborer. It would have been difficult to imagine him laboring at anything—except, perhaps, scheming.