He interrupted in his old aggressive way before the sentence was half out of my mouth:
"Cut that line out, Lawson; I told you Flower has that end of the affair entirely in his hands."
And at this point my resolution to keep quiet and play the game did almost go by the board. For a second I literally boiled. Then there flashed before my mind's mirror the dreadful procession of the night before, and I once more held tight and, oh, so deferentially and politely, like a chastened school-boy, went on:
"Oh, that will be all right. I was not going to suggest that you let me interfere with Flower's plans, for I can gather, Mr. Rogers, that you and the others have decided on doing things your own way, and you can rest easy I shall not interfere."
"That's something like, Lawson," he said, with a heartiness I could see was from the lower hold. "That's the way to look at a big thing of this kind, and if we all just pull together for a while we shall have your old plans going like oil again."
Yes, Mr. Rogers was plainly pleased at my complaisance and the prospect of using me to gather in another harvest of dollars later. Playing my game, I pursued:
"Is it fair, Mr. Rogers, to ask what arrangements Stillman has made for loaning money to those who may want to borrow on their subscriptions? You know we gave out before the subscription was opened that the City Bank would loan on the stock?"
"That is one of the things I was going to tell you, Lawson. Flower is going to let it be known that any one and every one who cares to, can borrow the remaining seventy-five per cent. at the City at going rates, so there will be no excuse for any one selling."
There it was as plain as a haystack: it was the old trap, the old ambush; within were the victims lured there by the cupidity which I had played upon; the bars were up now and "Standard Oil" was ready to begin its familiar trick of going through their clothes.
Already "Standard Oil" had laid its hands on the amount each subscriber had paid in, which represented twenty-five per cent. of the total value of the shares allotted. The National City Bank would generously loan the balance. A little later an accomplice would cause a flurry in the market. The loans would be called and, automatically, the stock, together with the money that had been paid for it, would fall into the greedy maws of Rockefeller and Rogers. No fluttering fly was ever so surely enmeshed and at the mercy of weaving spider as the unfortunates whom I had so decoyed to the "Standard Oil" web. With the most valiant assumption of indifference, I continued: