e road is muddy. If those who covet the golden rewards will
participate in a deal or two, wallow in the filthy double-dealing which
is an inevitable part of the cost price of success, they will quickly
realize the dark side of the glittering game, and that the sacrifices
are in proportion to the winnings. If I had been asked that night what
price would recompense me for the hell Addicks' shabby deceit had
stirred up in me, I should have said--that night--that no number of
millions would pay for the bitterness of the experience.

It was after midnight when I left Addicks' office, and as I walked to my
hotel I was steeped in gloom and bitterness. Before me was the most
humiliating ordeal with which Fate had ever saddled me. I had to confess
failure a second time, and under such circumstances that Rogers would be
justified in believing me either a swindler or a dupe unworthy of
respect or consideration.

I was at 26 Broadway by ten o'clock the same morning. Mr. Rogers was in
his main private office. His secretary was with him. He was full of
business, and, I thought, preoccupied. As I entered, and before a word
of greeting passed, he gave me one of his keen, appraising glances.

"Well?" was all he said.

"Your estimate of Addicks was correct. He has no bonds," I said, giving
him the worst of it at once. I was desperate and certainly in no mood
for apology. Rogers looked at me. I thought he gasped. He
rushed--whether he pushed or pulled me, or we both slid, or how we got
there I don't know--but in an instant after I had said "He has no
bonds" we were in one of the number of 8 x 12 glass-sided pens he calls
waiting-rooms, but which the clerks have dubbed "visitors' sweatboxes."
He put both hands on my shoulders and he yelled--fairly _yelled_: "Say
that again! I did not get it."

In after-years I became on rather playful terms with the extraordinary
bursts of wrath to which Henry H. Rogers occasionally gives way, and
which sweep through the "System's" shrine like a tornado; but this was
my first experience, and it was a shock and a revelation. Just what was
going to happen next I could not imagine. I remembered afterward that
the most definite of the impressions that chased each other through my
mind was that Henry H. Rogers would surely have a stroke of apoplexy.
Then that he would "bust." However, I pulled myself together and began:

"Mr. Rogers, what's the use of getting excited?"

I got no further. He jumped backwa