To look at the man, now in his forty-fifth year, meant, generally, an expression of admiration for his unusual physique, and a wholly erroneous appraisal of his character. His build was that of a gladiator. He stood six-feet-four in height, with Herculean shoulders and arms, and a pair of legs that suggested nothing so much as the great pillars which supported the facade of the Ames building. Those arms and legs, and those great back-muscles, had sent his college shell to victory every year that he had sat in the boat. They had won every game on the gridiron in which he had participated as the greatest “center” the college ever developed. For baseball he was a bit too massive, much to his own disappointment, but the honors he failed to secure there he won in the field events, and in the surreptitiously staged boxing and wrestling bouts when, hidden away in the cellar of some secret society hall, he would crush his opponents with an ease and a peculiar glint of satisfaction in his gray eyes that was grimly prophetic of days to come. His mental attitude toward contests for superiority of whatever nature did not differ essentially from that of the Roman gladiators: he entered them to win. If he fell, well and good; he expected “thumbs down.” If he won, his opponent need look for no exhibition of generosity on his part. When his man lay prone before him, he stooped and cut his throat. And he would have loathed the one who forbore to do likewise with himself.
In scholarship he might have won a place, had not the physical side of his nature been so predominant, and his remarkable muscular strength so great a prize to the various athletic coaches and directors. Ames was first an animal; there was no stimulus as yet sufficiently strong to arouse his latent spirituality. And yet his intellect was keen; and to those studies to which he was by nature or inheritance especially attracted, economics, banking, and all branches of finance, he brought a power of concentration that was as stupendous as his physical strength. His mental make-up was peculiar, in that it was the epitome of energy––manifested at first only in brute force––and in that it was wholly deficient in the sense of fear. Because of this his daring was phenomenal.
Immediately upon leaving college Ames became associated with his father in the already great banking house of Ames and Company. But the animality of his nature soon found the 102 confinement irksome; his father’s greater conservatism hampered his now rapidly expanding spirit of commercialism; and after a few years in the banking house he withdrew and set up for himself. The father, while lacking the boy’s fearlessness, had long since recognized dominant qualities in him which he himself did not possess, and he therefore confidently acquiesced in his son’s desire, and, in addition, gave him carte blanche in the matter of funds for his speculative enterprises.
Four years later J. Wilton Ames, rich in his own name, already becoming recognized as a power in the world of finance, with diversified enterprises which reached into almost every country of the globe, hastened home from a foreign land in response to a message announcing the sudden death of his father. The devolving of his parent’s vast fortune upon himself––he was the sole heir––then necessitated his permanent location in New York. And so, reluctantly giving up his travels, he gathered his agents and lieutenants about him, concentrating his interests as much as possible in the Ames building, and settled down to the enjoyment of expanding his huge fortune. A few months later he married, and the union amalgamated the proud old Essex stock of Ames, whose forbears fought under the Conqueror and were written in the Doomsday Book, to the wealthy and aristocratic Van Heyse branch of old Amsterdam. To this union were born a son and a daughter, twins.
The interval between his graduation from college and the death of his father was all but unknown to the cronies of his subsequent years in New York. Though he had spent much of it in the metropolis, he had been self-centered and absorbed, even lonely, while laying his plans and developing the schemes which resulted in financial preëminence. With unlimited money at his disposal, he was unhampered in the choice of his business clientele, and he formed it from every quarter of the globe. Much of his time had been spent abroad, and he had become as well known on the Paris bourse and the exchanges of Europe as in his native land. Confident and successful from the outset; without any trace of pride or touch of hauteur in his nature; as wholly lacking in ethical development and in generosity as he was in fear; gradually becoming more sociable and companionable, although still reticent of certain periods of his past; his cunning and brutality increasing with years; and his business sagacity and keen strategy becoming the talk of the Street; with no need to raise his eyes beyond the low plane of his material endeavors; he pursued his business partly for the pleasure the game afforded him, partly for the power which his accumulations bestowed upon him, and mostly because 103 it served as an adequate outlet for his tremendous, almost superhuman, driving energy. If he betrayed and debauched ideals, it was because he was utterly incapable of rising to them, nor felt the stimulus to make the attempt. If he achieved no noble purpose, it was because when he glanced at the mass of humanity about him he looked through the lenses of self. His glance fell always first upon J. Wilton Ames––and he never looked beyond. The world had been created for him; the cosmos but expressed his Ego.
On the morning after his conversation with the Beaubien regarding the social aspirations of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, the financier sat at his rich mahogany desk on the top floor of the Ames building in earnest discussion with his lawyer, Alonzo Hood. The top floor of the tower was divided into eight rooms. Two of these constituted Ames’s inner sanctum; one was Hood’s private office; and the rest were devoted to clerks and stenographers. A telegrapher occupied an alcove adjoining Hood’s room, and handled confidential messages over private wires to the principal cities in the country. A private telephone connected Ames’s desk with the Beaubien mansion. Private lines ran to the Stock Exchange and to various other points throughout the city. The telegraph and telephone companies gave his messages preference over all others. At a word he would be placed in almost instant communication with New Orleans, San Francisco, London, Berlin, or Cairo. Private lines and speaking tubes ran to every room or floor of the building where a company, firm, or individual was doing business. At the office of the Telegraph Service up-town he maintained messengers who carried none but his own despatches. In the railroad yards his private car stood always in readiness; and in the harbor his yacht was kept constantly under steam. A motor car stood ever in waiting in the street below, close to the shaft of a private automatic elevator, which ran through the building for his use alone. This elevator also penetrated the restaurant in the basement of the building, where a private room and a special waiter were always at the man’s disposal. A private room and special attendant were maintained in the Turkish baths adjoining, and he had his own personal suite and valet at his favorite club up-town.
This morning he was at his desk, as usual, at eight o’clock. Before him lay the various daily reports from his mines, his mills, his railroads, and his bank. These disposed of, there followed a quick survey of the day’s appointments, arranged for him by his chief secretary. Then he summoned Hood. As the latter entered, Ames was absorbed in the legend of the stock ticker.
“C. and R. closed yesterday at twenty-six,” he commented. Then, swinging back in his chair, “What’s Stolz doing?”
“For one thing, he has made Miss Fagin his private stenographer,” replied Hood.