successful issue so well as I can. Under such circumstances, of course,
I cannot make any personal demand upon you, without indecency. To do so
would be to take advantage of your necessities. It would amount to a
threat that, if you refused my demands, I would abandon these
enterprises and leave you to get out of all their difficulties as best
you could. Don't you see, Captain Hallam, that under such circumstances,
I simply could not make a demand upon you for more salary, or for
anything else of personal advantage to myself?"

"No, I don't see it at all. And yet, somehow, I seem to understand you.
If I were in your place I'd regard these circumstances as trump cards,
and I'd lead them for all they are worth. So would any other man in the
Mississippi Valley--or anywhere else, I think."

"That may perhaps be so, and I suppose I am 'queer,' as you say. But to
me it would seem a despicable thing to take advantage of the fact that
you need me in these affairs of yours. You have bidden me be frank. I
will be so. When I came to Cairo I sought work of the hard, physical
kind, at the small wages that such work commands. You quickly gave me
better work and larger pay than I had expected to earn for months to
come. Little by little you have advanced me in your regard until now I
seem to enjoy your confidence. When you first brought me into contact
with the big men of affairs--more or less big--I was oppressed with an
exaggerated sense of their greatness. Presently, I discovered that while
you are always deferential toward them, you are distinctly their
superior in intellect and in your grasp of affairs. You allow them to
think that they are your masters, while in fact you never fail to have
your way, and to compel them and the many millions of other people's
money whose use they control, to your own purposes."

At this point Hallam uttered a low chuckle.

"A little later I discovered another fact," continued Duncan. "It slowly
dawned upon my mind that you put me forward in your conferences with
them, because you valued my suggestions and my initiative more than you
did theirs. Thinking of that I came at last to the conclusion that I
must, in fact, be superior to these men in those qualities that
originate, execute, achieve. Otherwise, with your genius for affairs,
you would have suppressed me and listened to them."

Again Hallam chuckled.

"Then another thought occurred to me. The only reason why they can
execute plans tha