“Really? Why, I was tremendously impressed by Nicholson’s manner and appearance!”
“Oh, his manner and appearance were all right. He came here with the very highest recommendations—in fact, he was the one man in our employ of all the hundreds here that I had orders from headquarters not to dismiss on any account. I was as much taken with his looks as you were. I would have sworn he was true to his employers, yet I have not the slightest doubt he sold them as if they were a flock of sheep.”
“You are mistaken, Simmonds. He was perfectly true to his employers.”
CHAPTER XII—THE EMBODIMENT OF MAMMON
THERE now projects across these pages the sinister shadow of a man. He was one seldom seen except by his immediate business associates, and yet seldom has a newspaper been issued that did not contain his name. This was Peter Berrington, the greatest financial brain the world had hitherto produced—the modern embodiment of Mammon. In early life there had occurred to him the obvious proposition that if any one man could control the manufacture and sale of some simple article in universal use, he would secure a fortune greater than that of all the monarchs on earth put together. Peter Berrington chose soap as his medium, and the world-renowned trust called Amalgamated Soap has been the outcome. His methods were as simple as his products. He offered what he considered a fair price to a rival for his business and if that rival refused, Peter crushed him by a competition the other could not withstand. Berrington seemed to act on one fixed rule in life, which was to avoid the law courts wherever possible; yet, nevertheless, he was haled to the bar on many occasions, but invariably he escaped unscathed, without a stain on his character, as if the soap he supplied to the universe had removed even the suspicion of dishonesty from himself. It pleases the world to buy soap under different titles, but it is all manufactured by the same company. Berrington’s air-tight monopoly finally produced an annual income in excess of the fortune any man on earth possessed twenty-five years ago. With this ever-increasing income he bought banks, first in New York, then in every other great city, and finally in the larger towns. He purchased trust companies and insurance associations. He bought railways and steamship lines, also city councils and State legislators, judges, juries and senators. He was now the guardian and manipulator of the people’s savings, and his banks had the handling of all the money the United States Government possessed. Magazines printed vivid articles exhibiting the dark points of his career. Peter never entered a protest. Powerful newspapers hurled vigorous denunciations against him, but Peter never replied. The few who knew him in private life described him as a quiet, timorous man, apparently without opinions of his own, who was withal deeply religious. Yet all the histories printed of him never contained the record of any man who had defeated him.
It was but natural, then, that the Chicago papers should make much of John Steele’s encounter with this giant of the financial world. Steele had met him on the battle-ground of the Chicago wheat-pit, and had routed him, horse, foot and dragoons. The Daily Blade’s exposure of the real wheat situation of the country had been so sudden that the barrels of money which Peter Berrington kept in readiness to buy the whole crop, when he had hammered the price low enough, remained unopened and unexpended.
Berrington would have made billions at one fell swoop had not this man Steele blindly, quite unwittingly, stumbled across his path and tripped him up. The newspapers exaggeratingly credited Steele with making many more millions than he had actually secured, and it was only when the anxious three days of panic had ended that Steele himself realised what a tremendous fortune had been within his grasp if he could have commanded the capital to manipulate the situation, or even if he had risked all he actually possessed. Indeed, Steele perceived when too late that he had blundered into the biggest deal ever projected upon this earth, and while he undoubtedly spoiled the game for its inaugurates, he did not himself profit nearly as much as might have been the case. He began to question his own judgment, and the uneasy thought came to him that if he had made terms that night with Nicholson in the office of the Press Alliance, he might have made from ten to twenty millions instead of three or four. Yet he was consoled by the belief that Peter would have been true to no bargain he might have made, and in the end would have robbed him of the agreed share. In spite of his religious reputation, Peter was accredited with no qualms of conscience in a business transaction.
The Western newspapers re-recited Steele’s brief besting of Rockervelt, which was now utterly eclipsed by his victory over Berrington, and they jocularly advised New York rustics to stay at home and not venture into a real city like Chicago. In face of all this ridicule, and in spite of accusations and denunciations levelled against him for his efforts to mislead a free and incorruptible Press, Peter Berrington made no sign, and New York silently swallowed up the mysterious Nicholson. A few wiseacres in Chicago shook their heads as they read the laudations of Mr. John Steele, saying the young man was not yet done with Peter Berrington; and later events proved the correctness of their surmise.