By this time such substantial progress had been made with the plans that they were formulated on paper and the time had come when it seemed advisable to try them on the "Standard Oil" law-department. We arranged that night that next morning Mr. Rogers should himself go over the matter with Mr. Sterling. I was waiting in his office when he returned from this consultation, and the expression of his face as he entered indicated plainly that a real snag had been struck. His jaw and the droop of the upper corners of his eyelids gave a curiously sinister aspect to his face.
"Well," said he, "Sterling says if we carry out that plan there may be h—l to pay some day."
"Wherein does he say it is wrong?" I asked, not over-surprised.
"Everywhere. He says if there is any slip-up in the future Mr. Rockefeller and myself may have to pay back a lot of money."
"Well, what are you going to do?" I said.
"Just what we started to do." No lawyer's warnings could hold him back from the bursting barrels now in sight. He went on:
"I told Sterling to forget I had asked him to pass on the matter, and that I would have my own counsel take the responsibility. So we go right ahead, and nothing is to be said to any one, not even to William Rockefeller. I have always argued that it is fool business to go to a lawyer with a scheme that depends entirely on how it is carried through as to whether it is perilous or not. I could have told Sterling there is apt to be more danger in a deal in which one makes thirty-five to forty million dollars without turning a hair, than in furnishing staid advice from an office-chair for a fixed sum per diem."
The concentrated incisiveness of these sentences! Opposition, the mere suggestion of danger, had stimulated his determination to proceed rather than enjoined caution. Himself convinced of the expediency of our deal, no power on earth could make him deviate or face about. Truly a man of blood and iron, as Bismarck or Moltke was, his erected will is a sword and a vise. To gain a predetermined goal Henry H. Rogers will go through hell, fire, and water, swing about and make the return trip, and then repeat, until death interferes or his object is attained. Such men as he in other days subjugated kingdoms or made deserts where they operated; in religion they became St. Pauls or Savonarolas.
It may occur to my readers that in depicting Henry H. Rogers I use more whitewash than tar, and that if he is half as determined and relentless as my characterization of him, he will surely exact a terrible reprisal for what I have written here. In describing the man I adhere to the facts, and before I began this crusade I weighed well the consequences. From the implacable wrath of Henry H. Rogers and his associates, from a thirst for vengeance which grows more bitter as it is deferred, nothing can save me, nothing but—myself.
And now events flew. Mr. Rogers took the forenoon to notify Governor Flower, President Frederic P. Olcott, of the Central Trust Company; Marcus Daly, and J. P. Morgan, that they, in connection with William Rockefeller, himself, his counsel, and James Stillman, were to constitute the directors of the new company.