“He was watched, of course; so he couldn’t do the printing; he had to give the plate to others who got better paper but not good enough; and the government got them all. That trial was famous, Stephen; you must have read about it.” I shook my head regretfully; I was interested in football in those days. So Wally told me: “The government could not connect Janvier with the printing of the money but accused him of making the plates. Janvier offered no defence; he knew the secret service had him, but his attorneys put up the claim that the plates hadn’t been counterfeited at all; they claimed that the printers used government plates which had been stolen!” “Wait now!” I asked Wally, an old headline with a picture trickling through my memory along with Brickley’s drop-kick scores. “I did read that. Janvier--if that was his name--jumped up in the witness stand at that and stopped the lawyer; he said he didn’t mind going back to jail but he’d be damned if he’d see his own work classed with government plates. When he engraved a portrait of a president, he made him look as if he had once lived instead of----” my memory gave way just then so Wally finished for me: “Instead of like a death mask with the eyes pried open. That was Janvier; so they sent him back to the Federal prison where they kept him till two years ago, when he went blind; they operated on him but couldn’t help him; and, considering him harmless, released him. But he must have got back his sight; anybody can see that. Why? For nine years what have we had in the way of counterfeiting? Clumsy, photo-engravers’ jobs. Some ordinary, dull dub takes a camera and photographs a government bill, makes a half-tone and smears it with green ink and runs off a batch of bills so coarse and blurred, compared to engraving from a cut-steel plate, that a child can spot it. That’s the modern way; easy enough, but they’re lucky to get a thousand dollars into circulation before the secret service has them behind bars. But here comes back a regular ‘old master,’ I say; looks like he’s a quarter million passed already; and he’s Janvier, if he did lose his sight two years ago. Cantrell doesn’t think so; he thinks it’s a new hand.” “Who’s Cantrell?” I asked. “He’s a secret service expert working here on this particular job.” It was about ten minutes after this, while I was still there, looking and listening, that a girl, who proved to be Wally’s private secretary, broke the monotony of the clerks bringing in bad twenties and fifties. “Hello, Miss Lane,” said Wally. “What have you?” “Doctor Lathrom, sir,” reported Miss Lane, glancing at a card in her hand. “Lathrom, the big eye surgeon, Steve,” whispered Wally to me. “I’ve had Miss Lane calling on the eye people since yesterday noon. Go on, Miss Lane.”