The newspapers had made much of John Steele’s luck in falling heir to a considerable sum of money. The circumstances and unexpected nature of the legacy gave the item a semi-sensational value which was not neglected by the reporters, and even if the amount was in many cases exaggerated, the reputation of being a wealthy man revealed an entirely new world to the young superintendent—the world of social life. He was taken up by society with a warmth that was peculiarly gratifying to so modest a man as John Steele, and for this taking-up T. Acton Blair was largely responsible. On two or three occasions he invited John to dinner, where the young man met many delightful people. He now saw a side of Blair that had heretofore been entirely hidden from him, and, in spite of Rockervelt’s former warning, quite unsuspected. Blair as a host was one of the most charming of men; debonair and polite as a Frenchman; a very prince of good fellows. His house was a veritable palace, and when first John was ushered into the midst of its magnificence, it seemed scarcely credible that a young nobody like himself, but a few years past occupying a miserable position on the railway in the prairies, should actually have browbeaten and defeated the owner of all this wealth.
Blair evinced no rancour over this defeat, and Steele esteemed him a human nettle, dangerous only when timorously handled. Steele was too shrewd a man not to have recognised that he had discovered the weak spot in Blairs armour, which was a fixed aversion against being brought into conflict of any kind with the great Rockervelt, and this knowledge gave the young man assurance that his position on the staff of the gigantic corporation was more stable than he had hitherto regarded it. He now saw Blair as a genial, easy-going man, who always took the line of the least resistance, avoiding unnecessary trouble, which was wise in one-so well to do in the world’s goods, and as John himself was imbued with the most kindly feelings toward even his enemies, he had the gratification now of beholding his future extend before him like a well-ordered railway line: a clear right-of-way, and no signals against him.
One morning Mr. Blair entered the division superintendent’s room, accompanied by a man so much like himself that he might almost be taken for his younger brother.
“Mr. Steele,” cried the general manager, in his most amiable manner, “I wish to introduce you to Colonel Beck, an officer of the company, who keeps us all out of prison. Colonel Beck is Mr. Rockervelt’s chief legal adviser, who knows so much about the law that he can enable any one with money to evade it. Colonel Beck, this is Mr. John Steele, our youngest, and I believe I may add, our most capable division superintendent.”
The Colonel laughed pleasantly as he shook hands with the young man.
“Mr. Blair gives you a better character than he bestows upon me,” said the lawyer, with a good-natured twinkle of the eye. “If there is one characteristic more distinctive than another in the Rockervelt system, it is the unvarying respect it holds for the law.”
“Oh, that’s true enough,” rejoined Blair. “Why shouldn’t we respect the laws when the Colonel here makes most of them pertaining to railways?”
“Are you then a member of the Legislature?” asked John innocently.
Both of the fat men laughed, and Colonel Beck replied: “No, I am not so restricted as all that. A member of the Legislature possesses one vote. In the secret sanctity of this room, now that my friend Blair has given a hint in that direction, I may say I control many votes in the various Legislatures, and perhaps a few in the National Capitol as well. Still, that’s all among ourselves, Mr. Steele, and, getting to safer ground, I may add that I esteem this meeting a pleasure, for you are one of the few men I have heard Mr. Rockervelt speak highly of, and when Mr. Rockervelt praises a man I like to know that man and make him my friend if possible, for he is sure to go far. I think,” continued the Colonel, turning toward Blair, “that Mr. Rockervelt said the superintendent here was rather a considerable shareholder in the Midland.”
“Mr. Rockervelt was a trifle premature if he said that,” replied the general manager. “He spoke to me about it last time I was in New York, but I was unable at the time to give him definite information.”