sat earning the fifty-dollar gold pieces that went to each for attending a directors' meeting. The aroma of expensive cigars filled the room. At the head of the polished table sat President John B. Donaldson, shrewd but square.
Short, squatty Vice-President McGuire, seated on Donaldson's right, was shrewd only. It had been his idea to call Carter, an idea of which Donaldson did not wholly approve. Stephen Carter was the Inter-City's handy man, especially when something more delicate than refined was to be attempted. It was Carter who found and organized the strike breakers when labor troubles harassed the Inter-City. It was he who stationed the spies and other annoyances among the striking employees and dampened their morale. He was reported to have at his beck and call the largest assortment of thugs and gunmen ever enlisted under one banner. As a lobbyist at Albany or Washington he was also thoroughly at home. And at conducting confidential negotiations, from buying up land at half what it was worth to freeing transit magnates' wayward sons from predatory chorus girls, particularly when a certain amount of strong-arm work was required, he had no superior.
It went rather against John Donaldson's grain to do business with a man like Carter. But the present emergency seemed to other members of the Board to require that wily gentleman's services, and Donaldson had yielded.
"Take this seat, Mr. Carter," proffered Donaldson, indicating the chair at his left. When Carter
