urred to me you might
like to have your balance of this section in hand ready for use. I have
the statement here, and if you find it all right I'll go upstairs and
get all it calls for fixed up at once."

We were in the little glass pen where most of our conferences took
place. I, with my elbows on the small mahogany table, sat looking across
at him leaning back in his chair. Without knowing what was to happen,
but from a certain suppressed eagerness I had detected under his frigid
composure, I had a strong conviction that he was nerving himself for a
coup of some kind. I realized that he and Mr. Rockefeller had talked me
over pretty thoroughly and had decided that they had best run this
gauntlet as soon as possible. Since Mr. Rogers had broached the
substitution of Anaconda for the properties originally intended for the
first section of Amalgamated, I had felt that this balancing of accounts
would be a crucial affair, and after the recent turn of the screw, I
hardly knew what to expect, but was ready for the worst. Now a swift
thrill of apprehension suggested I'd better look for real deviltry.
There was perhaps a minute's delay while he fumbled in his pocket and
drew out letters and papers. My blood steeplechased in my veins as I
waited for him to deal me the hand that might decide my fate. In such
tense moments thoughts flash in and out of the mind like lightning, and
as I watched him rise, the fateful paper in his hand, it came over me
with a sharp exultation that however the trumps fell it was a great
game--great even for this king of gamesters who was about to play his
hand.

Henry H. Rogers looked piercingly into my eyes and said: "There's the
account, Lawson." He laid on the table in front of me an oblong piece of
paper. On it were some lines of words followed by other lines of
figures. That was all. I spread it out carefully between my two hands
and bent over it. Then I looked up. Before I allowed the significance of
the figures to penetrate my mind, I wished to know exactly what they
represented.

"If I understand aright, Mr. Rogers," I asked, "this statement does not
take in our Boston deals nor my loans on the Butte and other affairs,
but is a settlement of this first section only--a final clearing-up
showing just what my twenty-five per cent. of the Amalgamated and the
things connected with it amount to? Am I right?"

My voice was even and calmly business-like, and he answered in exactly
the same tone.