CHAPTER XXI

I had said it. Mr. Rogers' eyes snapped just once. Only on two other occasions in all my long and intimate acquaintance with this wonderful man have I seen him lose his self-control. To anger he will give way frankly if the occasion justifies it or he desires to intimidate or impress an individual; but his face, mobile though it is, presents a calm and impassive mask. I caught the snap, and I think he caught me catching it. It meant much to me—more even than if he had said in so many words "I've got him." In such encounters one cannot see into one's adversary's mind nor know what he is trying to do, and any indication is like the sight of a buoy in a fog to a mariner. I gathered that the snap indicated relief at my compliance, and that he had been afraid I might balk. That showed me that consent on my part was important—which meant that he saw no possible way of carrying the enterprise to the end we had mapped out unless I stepped into the gap. Then I knew that he would have to agree to my terms, provided they were not too harsh and that I did not too vehemently insist upon them. It is a cardinal principle of "Standard Oil" never to do anything they decide they won't do, and that which they decide they won't do is what any man on earth says they must do. You may lead "Standard Oil," but you cannot drive it. If at that critical moment I had foreseen all that subsequently occurred, or realized that this copper affair, which was to me a matter of life and death, was to Henry H. Rogers only another device to extort dollars from the public, I should then and there have thrown down the gauntlet and demanded that "Standard Oil" step out into the open and assume all legal responsibility, or have exposed the whole scheme. But my suspicions were suspicions only, and I could not be sure that Mr. Rogers was doing other than discretion warranted, when he desired to have things done in such a way as to allow me to continue to conjure with the magic name "Standard Oil." In other words, wasn't he doing exactly what I myself was engaged upon? I was planning to have him consent to things he was otherwise unwilling to allow, and he, in his turn, was scheming to have the bank and his "Standard Oil" associates pass over things they would be