The look of relief on Williams's face when
Kennedy said he would go immediately showed plainly that the
insurance man considered the cost of the luncheon, which had been
no slight affair, in the light of a good investment in the interest
of his company, which was "in bad" for the largest forgery insurance
loss since they had begun to write that sort of business.
As we hurried down to Wall Street, Kennedy took occasion to remark,
"Science seems to have safe-guarded banks and other institutions
pretty well against outside robbery. But protection against
employees who can manipulate books and records does not seem to
have advanced as rapidly. Sometimes I think it may have lessened.
Greater temptations assail the cashier or clerk with greater
opportunity for speculation, and the banks, as many authorities will
agree, have not made enough use of the machinery available to put a
stop to embezzlement. This case is evidently one of the results.
The careless fellows at the top, like this man Carroll whom we are
going to see, generally put forward as excuse the statement that the
science of banking and of business is so complex that a rascal with
ingenuity enough to falsify the books is almost impossible of
detection. Yet when the cat is out of the bag as in several recent
cases the methods used are often of the baldest and most transparent
sort, fictitious names, dummies, and all sorts of juggling and kiting
of checks.
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