“I want in on this,” he said. “You will need me. I am made for this game and have been waiting for a chance to get at it. Just count me in as one of the promoters if you will.”
Sam nodded his head. Within a week he had formed a pool of his own company’s stock controlling, as he thought, a safe majority and had begun working to form a similar pool in the stock of his only big western rival.
This last job was not an easy one. Lewis, the Jew, had been making constant headway in that company just as Sam had made headway in the Rainey Company. He was a money maker, a sales manager of rare ability, and, as Sam knew, a planner and executor of business coups of the first class.
Sam did not want to deal with Lewis. He had respect for the man’s ability in driving sharp bargains and felt that he would like to have the whip in his own hands when it came to the point of dealing with him. To this end he began visiting bankers and the men who were head of big western trust companies in Chicago and St. Louis. He went about his work slowly, feeling his way and trying to get at each man by some effective appeal, buying the use of vast sums of money by a promise of common stock, the bait of a big active bank account, and, here and there, by the hint of a directorship in the big new consolidated company.
For a time the project moved slowly; indeed there were weeks and months when it did not appear to move at all. Working in secret and with extreme caution Sam encountered many discouragements and went home in the evening day after day to sit among Sue’s guests with a mind filled with his own plans and with an indifferent ear turned to the talk of revolution, social unrest, and the new class consciousness of the masses, that rattled and crackled up and down his dinner table. He thought that it must be trying to Sue. He was so evidently not interested in her interests. At the same time he thought that he was working toward what he wanted out of life and went to bed at night believing that he was finding, and would find, a kind of peace in just thinking clearly along one line day after day.
One day Webster, who had wanted to be in on the deal, came to Sam’s office and gave his project its first great boost toward success. He, like Sam, thought he saw clearly the tendencies of the times, and was greedy for the block of common stock that Sam had promised should come to him with the completion of the enterprise.
“You are not using me,” he said, sitting down before Sam’s desk. “What is blocking the deal?”
Sam began to explain and when he had finished Webster laughed.
“Let’s get at Tom Edwards of the Edward Arms Company direct,” he said, and then, leaning over the desk, “Edwards is a vain little peacock and a second rate business man,” he declared emphatically. “Get him afraid and then flatter his vanity. He has a new wife with blonde hair and big soft blue eyes. He wants prominence. He is afraid to venture upon big things himself but is hungry for the reputation and gain that comes through big deals. Use the method the Jew has used; show him what it means to the yellow-haired woman to be the wife of the president of the big consolidated Arms Company. THE EDWARDS CONSOLIDATED, eh? Get at Edwards. Bluff him and flatter him and he is your man.”
Sam wondered. Edwards was a small grey-haired man of sixty with something dry and unresponsive about him. Being a silent man, he had created an impression of remarkable shrewdness and ability. After a lifetime spent in hard labour and in the practice of the most rigid economy he had come up to wealth, and had got into the firearms business through Lewis, and it was counted one of the brightest stars in that brilliant Hebrew’s crown that he had been able to lead Edwards with him in his daring and audacious handling of the company’s affairs.