RUTH. He's a fiend! A fiend!
PLIM. He smiled as he shook my hand... and he knows that if coal stocks go down another ten points I'll be utterly ruined!
IS. Terrible! Terrible!
PLIM. [To RUTHERFORD.] Rutherford, have you learned any more about where his money comes from?
RUTH. I meant to tell you... I've had another report. The mystery deepens every hour. It's always the same thing... the man takes a train and goes out into the country; he gathers all the wagons for miles around, and goes to some place in the woods... and there is a pile of gold, fifty tons of it, maybe, covered over with brush. Nobody knows how it got there, nobody has time to ask. He loads it into the wagons, takes it aboard the train, and brings it to the Sub-treasury.
IS. The man's an alchemist! He's been manufacturing it and getting ready.
RUTH. Perhaps. Who can tell? All I know is the Sub-treasury has bought over two billion dollars' worth of gold bullion in the last four months... and what can we do in the face of that?
PLIM. No wonder that prices went up to the skies!
RUTH. I had the White House on the 'phone this afternoon. We can demonetize gold... the government can refuse to buy any more.
IS. But then what would become of credit?