human
Hello! Quib! exclaimed my partner.
gpt
I want you to meet my friend, Charlie Billington.
human
Delighted to meet you, Mister Quibble, cried the stranger, grasping my hand.
gpt
Our friend Gottlieb knows me almost better than I know myself--eh, Gottie? Between us we have turned many a trick.
human
You mean that I have pulled you out of many a bad hole,
gpt
As you please, answered Billington good-temperedly.
human
But in any event you are a splendid fellow at all times--and especially in times of need.
gpt
May I inquire your business, Mr. Billington?
human
How would you describe it, Mr. Lawyer?
gpt
Our friend Charlie lives by his brains, he replied.
human
He is an inventor, a promoter, an artist. He has earned many a small fortune by the simple use of a postage stamp. He can extract gold from seawater or silver from pineapples. Incidentally, he is of a scientific turn of mind and can rattle off the Morse alphabet as deftly as any operator in the business. Occasionally he has, in the interest of finance, tapped a wire.
gpt
Tapped a wire!
human
Never again, I fancy! laughed Charlie.
gpt
My friend, you have saved a lot of poor devils a deal of trouble. From this time on none of us will ever need to tap wires. After this we shall only _pretend_ to tap 'em.
human
How so?
gpt
Why, under the new law, responded Billington--
human
Not with my sanction!
gpt
Tut, tut, Quib! said Gottlieb.
human
You have nothing to do with what use our friend here sees fit to put your law to. I have never yet advised any man how to do an illegal thing. The most I have ever done has been to show some of my clients how to do in a perfectly legal manner that which had heretofore been unlawful.
gpt
Yea, Gottlieb, remarked Billington.
human
And many things that before were accounted faults have now, thanks to you, become virtues.
gpt
Quib, the more I think of it, the more astonishing is the result of this new doctrine of yours that has been sanctified by the Court of Appeals. I do not for the life of me see how a seller of 'green goods' can be prosecuted. The countryman comes to the city for the purpose of buying counterfeit money at a ridiculously low figure. He puts up his money and gets a package of blank paper with a genuine one-dollar bill on top of it. What good will it do him to appeal to the police? Has he not parted with his money avowedly for a most wicked purpose--that of uttering counterfeit bills?
human
I quite agree with you, I answered.
gpt
There seems to be no escape from your result; and I, for one, do not see what is to prevent New York from becoming the Mecca of all the thieves and rogues in the country.
human
fake
gpt