“Mr. Chairman,” said Nicholson, quite unruffled, “I move we now proceed to allotment.”
“I have pleasure in seconding the motion,” said John Steele, rising, bowing to the company, and leaving the room.
CHAPTER XIII.—PERSONALLY CONDUCTED BY A GIRL
SUGAR is a fattening product, and the Consolidated Beet Sugar Company waxed fat and prospered. Its shares stood high on the Stock Exchange, and the members of the syndicate to whom John Steele had sold his portion were exuberantly grateful to the young man for the opportunity he had given them. His reputation of possessing a keen financial brain was enhanced by the forming of this company; for it was supposed that it was he who had induced Amalgamated Soap to take it up. It was erroneously surmised that the great Peter Berrington and his colleagues had been so much impressed by Steele’s genius in the wheat deal, where he was opposed to them, that they now desired the co-operation of this rising young figure in the commercial world. No hint of the momentary death-struggle in the board-room of the bank had ever leaked out through the solid doors. Steele was now one of the men to be counted with in the large affairs of the Western metropolis. Everything he touched was successful. Personally he was liked, and great social success might have been his had he cared for society, which he did not. He was commonly rated as being worth anywhere from six to ten millions, and the world looked upon him as the most fortunate of men. It did him no harm to be thought to enjoy the backing of the powerful Peter Berrington, and probably not more than half-a-dozen men knew that such was far from being the case. He did not bask in Peter’s smile, but, on the contrary, shivered in his shadow.
The one man who had no delusions on the subject was John Steele himself. For the second time he had been entirely victorious over Nicholson and the gigantic coterie behind him; but this, strange as it may appear, gave him no satisfaction. If he had won the determined fight through his own superior skill, or because of some great display of mental power, he might have rested more at ease. Had that been the case, he would have awaited the next onslaught with more equanimity than he at present possessed; but he knew that his victory came to him through chance; chance multiplied again and again. It was chance that his partner had been out of his room when the messenger-boy brought the telegram. It was chance that Steele had opened the envelope. It was chance that he knew a man who could decode the cipher before it was too late for him to take action on the information it carried. After these three lucky throws of the dice, he admitted to himself that he had handled the situation with diplomatic success; but it disturbed him to remember that all his vigilance would have proved unavailing, had not pure luck stood his friend. Yet, after all, the initial mistake was Nicholson’s, who should not have sent a cipher telegram to the office of the man he intended to destroy. Nicholson presumably did not know that his agent was actually housed with Steele, and it was a mistake on Metcalfe’s part not to have furnished his chief with this information. But even putting the best face upon the matter, he could not conceal from himself the large part that luck had played in compassing his salvation.
This never-lifted shadow of the silent Peter Berrington began to produce its effect upon him. He became timourous—afraid to venture in any large concern. He knew he was wasting time in pottering with small affairs—street railways in outside towns, the installing of electric light here and there, and such enterprises, which furnished only a moderate revenue to an enterprising speculator. Time and again he refused chances involving large amounts which turned out tremendously lucrative to the promoters, but which he had been afraid to touch, fearing the grip of Peter Berrington’s unseen hand on his throat. He began to acquire the unexpected reputation of being an over-cautious capitalist, and finally well-known people, who formerly professed much admiration for him, ceased to come to his office with their schemes. Steele laughed uneasily to himself as he thought that Peter Berrington might perhaps accomplish his purpose by the gradual wearing down of his courage. Of course, the fact that a project became successful was no proof that the hand of Nicholson was not concealed somewhere within its intricacies to clutch at John Steele if he had become involved. He tried to shake off this depression, and once or twice plunged rather recklessly, only to become nervous before the climax arrived and sell out, sometimes at a small profit and sometimes at a loss.
At last he came to the conclusion that it was not Peter Berrington at all, or his shadow, that was affecting him, but the usual breakdown which afflicts strenuous business men in the stimulating atmosphere of a great American city.
“My nerve’s gone; that’s what’s the matter with me,” he said to himself. “I must go and rough it for a summer in the mountains, or else take a trip to some spa in Europe. If I keep on like this, I shall be utterly useless in a live city like Chicago.”