new "My word for
it" was all gold and a hundred cents to the dollar. For a minute we
gazed steadily into--through each other, and I knew he was reading away
into the back of my head. Inwardly I said: "If I do business with this
man for a day or for a lifetime, I will never face him and give him my
word for one thing and mean another," and in the years after when we did
millions upon millions of business, with only each other's word for a
bond of fair treatment, not once did I depart from the letter of my
resolution. Up to the recent famous "Gas Trial," where our roads
suddenly shot off at right angles, owing to a foul act of perjury, Henry
H. Rogers never tired of meeting all his associates' attacks upon me
with: "Lawson's word is gospel truth for me."

When we dropped our eyes, both evidently satisfied, he said: "Now, what
have you to say to me?"

I spoke my piece rapidly and without interruption: "There are four
things possible, as I wrote you--only four. I will take up the fourth
first. I have absolute power to speak for all our local companies. If
we, you and I, come to no settlement by to-morrow night, I will, without
warning to any one, confess a default to the notes of our different
companies and have a receiver appointed. As our stocks and bonds are
held by our best investors all over New England, and as no such move is
suspected, there will be a terrific rumpus. In the crash I shall go down
with Addicks and the rest, for we have all put our personal resources
behind the enterprise. I will see that the howl following the crash
shall be such as all must hear, and I will call attention to the illegal
acts of every one--your companies, Addicks' companies, and the city and
State officials that have made such conditions possible. I don't think
you will be able to stand against the cyclone this crash will raise; but
even if you do, the receiver, having no interest to pay on bonds, will
be in a position to smash the price of gas to seventy or seventy-five
cents, and make it impossible for you to get possession of our companies
for so long a time that the consumers will never allow you to get the
price back to a profitable one. Have I made it clear that you cannot, as
you were counting on doing, continue this fight till you have us tired
out and crushed?"

His answer came as clear, quick, and sharp as the click of a revolver:
"Perfectly, provided you can do the thing you say."

"I will prove to you I can."

"It is