"I wasn't thinking of business, Mr. Rawn, and if you please, we'll not discuss that. I only spoke freely because of what we both know—in fact, I'd rather stay home than go to New York with you. If you took along your assistant—Miss Delaware, I suppose?"
Rawn nodded. "Yes, she has the details of the sub-companies well in hand. I want her along, just as I want you, so that all questions can be answered as to details of the office and factory work, in case I should not personally be familiar with them—as I think I am, for the most part."
"Then you couldn't use the stenographer on the train—I mean the regular one?"
"I could not, Mr. Halsey," said John Rawn icily. "What business is it of yours?"
"None in the least. I was only thinking about any possible talk. She's a very beautiful girl, and very—stunning. Yes, on the whole, Mr. Rawn, I think it better for me to go. One day in New York ought to do us, ought it not?"
Rawn nodded. "Yes, we'll be back here on the fourth day, at worst. I've got to have you down there to explain the different installations. I am as impatient as anybody else. I want to get to the place where I'll be making some real money."
"I thought you had been," grinned Halsey. "Your house, for instance?"
"Over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in there now, and as much more to go in later," said Rawn. "I've spent over a half million altogether, private, overheads and investments, since I went in with this company. My salary is only a hundred thousand, and no man ever lives on his salary and lays up any money—he's got to make his start on the side. I've not done badly in that way. I'm learning the market from the inside. I've had one killing after another—Oil, Rubber—awfully good luck. Charles, the next ten years in all likelihood will see me a rich man, very rich. I've not done badly now, for the son of a Methodist preacher out of a little Texas town. Let me tell you something. Money is easy to make when you get the start. It rolls, I tell you, it rolls up like a snowball. It grows and spreads—there's nothing like it in its power. It's power itself!"
VII
Rawn rose, soon pausing in his excited walk, in his wonted posture, feet apart, hands under his coat tails. Halsey looked at him, frowning half sullenly, as he went on.