• • •

JUDGE JAMES CONGDON listened with a cold smile as the now thoroughly cowed Black Jack Gleason turned to flattery to try to shift the subject from the price of coal.

“Some members of the Duquesne Club were wondering out loud at lunch the other day whether you would consider a run at public office?”

“The ‘people’ won’t elect a banker president,” Congdon replied.

“I’ll bet you could change their minds.”

“No, they won’t vote for a Wall Street man. I know. I ran for governor and I lost. They beat the pants off me.”

“There’s always a next time.”

Congdon shrugged his broad and bony shoulders. “Who knows what the future holds?” he asked modestly while thinking to himself, I do. Next time, I know how to win.

“First thing you ought to do,” said Gleason, “is get the damned newspapers to stop complaining about your senators.”

“If only it were that simple, Gleason. The papers can howl their heads off about bribing congressmen and buying senators. People don’t give a hang. Oh no. People expect it. People admire a president who controls Congress.”

“So you would consider running for president?”

“Who knows what the future holds?” Congdon repeated. “Other than that in the immediate future, starting this afternoon, my mills will pay twenty cents a ton less than you’ve gotten used to, and my roads and barges will increase our shipping rates by five percent.”

Gleason turned pale.

“How am I to make a profit?”

“Rob Peter to pay Paul.”

“How do you mean?”

“You may think of me as Paul. Labor is Peter. After you meet my terms and get your coal on the market, you can keep whatever you can hold on to. In other words, pay labor less.”

“I’m doing everything I can, but, I warn you, labor is fighting back.”

Judge James Congdon stood to his full height. “I warn you: I will not subsidize any mine operator’s failure to bring labor to heel.”

10

HEADING OUT TO MEET ISAAC BELL, JOSEPH VAN DORN swaggered proudly from the high-class Cadillac Hotel on Broadway, where he had just signed the lease on a suite of rooms for his brand-new New York field office. He was not one to throw money around, but a client clapping eyes on its fine limestone façade would not be inclined to quibble over fees. And having passed through its marble lobby—under the watchful eye of top-notch house detectives supplied by Van Dorn in exchange for a break on the rent—and been wafted upstairs in its gilded elevator, the client would count himself lucky that the Van Dorn Detective Agency agreed to take his case.

At Forty-fourth Street, a redheaded gentleman stopped dead in his tracks and stared at him. Van Dorn stared back. Faint scars on the man’s brow indicated some experience with fisticuffs, though hardly in the professional prize ring, for the fellow looked prosperous, in a tasteful tweed suit and a bowler and with a heavy gold watch chain. Van Dorn saw anguish in his expression and a tear forming in his eye.