"The stock-holders' meeting of Coal and Ore isn't far distant. After it comes the annual election of officers. I fancy Malone may know of a man who might grace the directorate with a more deferential humility than I show—when he speaks Jove-like from the head of the table."
"To be ousted from that board would mean to wear the brand of defeat."
"If Mr. Malone wants to put some one else in my place he can do it—the chair I occupy faces the window. Sometimes the glare hurts my eyes."
Carl Bristoll thought he knew his chief. Such docile acceptance of reduction to the ranks astounded him and his blank amazement stamped itself on his face. When the elder man had enjoyed it for the space of a long silence he rose suddenly and his voice rang out like a command for a bayonet charge:
"Yes, Malone can have my chair. I mean to take his—at the head of the table."
The secretary started violently. He could never quite accustom himself to the dauntless fashion with which his chief essayed the impossible—and accomplished it. Hamilton Burton's fist came down savagely on the mahogany. The smiling features of a moment ago had vanished and Bristoll was looking up into eyes that rained immeasurable wrath.
"They hate me, because they fear me!" The voice was not loud, but it was terrific in its intensity of anger. "By the Almighty God in heaven, I mean to give them cause to hate me. I mean to crush them to a pulp until nothing remains except the stench of their unmourned memory!" ... Once more the timbre changed and with startling abruptness became quietly declarative.
"This morning, I received a confidential note from Carton."
"The secretary of Coal and Ore?"
"The same. I put him where he is—he's a valuable man—and incidentally a member of my secret service. Malone is calling in all the proxies he can control; he and his myrmidons. He has not taken me into his confidence. How would you construe that?"