“Let me refresh your mind on what happened. You got into the political game in a small way. The North Star backed you with its money, its influence and its strategy. You won out against a stronger man—a victory that surprised no one more than yourself.
“You had the front, were a hail fellow and well met. The North Star needed a man of that very type with the open sesame to inner political circles. In a single day it elevated you from hopeless penury and insignificance to the highest office in its gift as nominal head of the North Star and its coterie of subsidiary companies. You were made the master of millions, with precedence over many of us who had served the company faithfully since its earliest beginnings. What did you promise in return for all these things?
“Come here!”
Acey Smith, a strange, smouldering glow in his coal-black eyes that held the trembling Slack transfixed, took the other by the arm and led him to the south side of the office, to a window that overlooked the city, its smoked-smudged waterfront, the great lake and the rugged sweep of the North Shore.
“Don’t you remember, John J.?” Acey Smith’s voice was low and vibrant. “It was on this very hill, on the very site of this office, that I stood with my arm linked in yours as I stand now. You confessed to me your ruling passion was for power. You intimated you would sell your very soul to be great, to be mighty.
“I, as the representative of the powerful J.C.X., came to offer you the thing you craved most. I asked you to look to the South, to the East and to the West. As far as you could see and beyond would be your absolute domain. The North Star was prepared to make you ruler of the whole North Shore and the Upper Lakes, and a mighty force in the woods beyond and across the prairie West. You were to have power of a kind—a figurehead ’tis true—but executive power patently greater than any other one individual in this whole Dominion of Canada—and that was what your heart yearned for.
“There was a price named for this prize—you remember? It was your unquestioning obedience at all times to the will of J.C.X. None was to know whence your instructions came. This was all laid down very definitely to you—and, you accepted gladly, without reservation.”
Slack stood dumb, his gaze averted from the accusing blaze of the other man’s. His relentless inquisitor went on:
“I need not here dilate on how the North Star has lived up to its covenant with you. Your family’s social prominence here and at the Capital, the political honours that have been showered upon you all attest the might that was loaned you. The North Star has demanded only service in return and cared not whether it had your gratitude or not.
“Think you, Slack, that the power that made you a leader among men has not the will to cast you down again into the depths from which you came—that the unseen arm that reached out and lifted you to wealth and affluence has not the strength to unmake you and brush you from its path into the discard?