"Boodle game! Don’t talk like a grocer or a reporter, Claude. Mr. Armstrong is a lover of fine art who, like all sensible people, thinks it monstrous to tax foreign works of art destined to do an educational service here. By virtue of his influence at Washington, he has been able to use his good offices to our advantage. The result is that the Customs House officials are wise enough not to go behind our list of import declarations." "Does he get much out of it?" inquired Claude. "What a brutal question, Claude! Armstrong is so rich that he has nothing to live for except the luxury of being disinterested." Mr. Fontaine added that there had never been any outright verbal understanding between himself and his protector. Mr. Armstrong might be said to have slid into the protectorate insidiously. He was chiefly interested in the exquisite vases and textiles handled by Fontaine, and he was probably ignorant of the fact that it was not these articles but the precious stones that comprised the larger and more profitable fraction of the smuggled goods. "For the rest," said Mr. Fontaine, "he is, as you know, a steady purchaser here. He buys whatever suits his fancy at cost price. We needn’t begrudge him the bargain." "I wish our relations with the Armstrongs were not complicated in this way," said Claude, with an ominous feeling that he, too, might be knocked down at a bargain if the influential banker should fancy him as a bridegroom for Marjorie. Claude had always taken special pride in the irreproachable origin of the Fontaine riches. He had looked up to his father as a convincing example of the possibility of making trade both clean and aristocratic. Mr. Fontaine’s disclosures now robbed his son of this illusion, besides confronting him with the sordid hazards of reality. One of these sordid hazards was barely a week old. A new customs inspector, in a fit of unsophisticated fervor, had stumbled upon an act of smuggling in which the complicity of the Fontaines appeared in the course of investigation. Only the lucky fact of Mr. Armstrong’s nephew being the Collector of the Port of New York had saved Fontaine & Company from scandal, public exposure and humiliation. "By Heaven!" said Claude. "We’re indebted to Mr. Armstrong for being out of prison!" "Quite so," replied the father. "An American business man who desires to keep out of prison must take one of two hygienic precautions. One is to form a friendship with a leading financier or a political boss; the other is to avoid being caught. I have done both." Mr. Fontaine looked significantly at his son. "Those plans of yours," he said, "about the William Morris art center and all that—there can’t be anything in that line if you marry a poor girl, you know."