ed, and into his private
den. There he sat, at a small, plain table, in the middle of the room
without any article of furniture in it but his table and his chair. On the
table was a small inkstand, perfectly clean, a steel pen equally clean, on
the rest attached to it. And that was all--not a letter, not a scrap of
paper, not a sign of work or of intention to work. It might have been the
desk of a man who did nothing; in fact, it was the desk of a man who had
so much to do that his only hope of escape from being overwhelmed was to
despatch and clear away each matter the instant it was presented to him.
Many things could be read from the powerful form, bolt upright in that
stiff chair, and from the cynical, masterful old face. But to me the
chief quality there revealed was that quality of qualities, decision--the
greatest power a man can have, except only courage. And old James Galloway
had both.

He respected Roebuck; Roebuck feared him. Roebuck did have some sort
of conscience, distorted though it was, and the dictator of savageries
Galloway would have scorned to commit. Galloway had no professions of
conscience--beyond such small glozing of hypocrisy as any man must put on
if he wishes to be intrusted with the money of a public that associates
professions of religion and appearances of respectability with honesty.
Roebuck's passion was wealth--to see the millions heap up and up. Galloway
had that passion, too--I have yet to meet a multi-millionaire who isn't
avaricious and even stingy. But Galloway's chief passion was power--to
handle men as a junk merchant handles rags, to plan and lead campaigns of
conquest with his golden legions, and to distribute the spoils like an
autocrat who is careless how they are divided, since all belongs to him,
whenever he wishes to claim it.

He pierced me with his blue eyes, keen as a youth's, though his face was
seamed with scars of seventy tumultuous years. He extended toward me
over the table his broad, stubby white hand--the hand of a builder, of a
constructive genius. "How are you, Blacklock?" said he. "What can I do
for you?" He just touched my hand before dropping it, and resumed that
idol-like pose. But although there was only repose and deliberation in his
manner, and not a suggestion of haste, I, like every one who came into that
room and that presence, had a sense of an interminable procession behind
me, a procession of men who must be seen by this master-mover, that they
m