uld
gladly have aided in a movement to amend the penal code so as to
prevent it, for he believed it possible for law to bring within the
scope of its crushing penalties the audacity of these modern
Captain Kidds. When he read the formal advertisement of a great
industrial monopoly declaring a dividend of a few per cent, per
annum basis on a lake of water owned by "outsiders," he thought of
the beautifully worded contracts made between the officers of the
concern, the "insiders," and their dummies, in the dozen or so
parasitic companies whose stock was nearly all in their own hands,
and paid from twenty to forty and even a hundred per cent, on the
investment in unadvertised dividends. He thought of this and
hundreds of other forms of legalized theft practiced by these men
of church standing, who made it a point never to engage in petit
larceny. They preferred to steal millions and keep on the safe
side. They divided up the "swag" in the office of the American
Transportation and Terminal Company, organized solely for that
respectable purpose. It had a fine name, but the Bowery thieves
would recognize it as a "fence." John MacDonald used to say: "A
corporation is not known by the companies it keeps."

For five years Gabrielle Tescheron had advanced under the guidance
of this simple, wise and good man, so that at the time of our story
she had been well grounded in her profession, in its philosophy, in
the routine of its office practice, and to some extent in the
knowledge of human nature its successful followers must command.
The long rows of sheepskin-bound books in the office library were
less formidable; the grind of detail was no longer an obstacle to
her ambition, which nerved her onward to the higher slopes of
professional occupation, for she now had reliable subordinates
trained according to the MacDonald system of thoroughness to
complete for her the irksome tasks. Mixed up as the business was in
corporation matters, it had much to look after that had fallen to
it through legal processes, but which, of itself was pure business
management and far away from the law. There were receiverships, and
fortunate was the weak-kneed concern that fell into John
MacDonald's hands; it generally meant new life and success for a
dying venture. He worked no magic, but he applied a lot of
common-sense where it had been scarce before, so that the results
seemed much as if a fairy in finance had touched the difficult
problems with a