For Dan Waterman was one of the Major’s own
generation, and he knew all his life and his habits.
Just as Montague had seen him there, so he had been
always; swift, imperious, terrible, trampling over
all opposition; the most powerful men in the city
quailed before the glare of his eyes. In the
old days Wall Street had reeled in the shock of the
conflicts between him and his most powerful rival.
And the Major went on to tell about Waterman’s
rival, and his life. He had been the city’s
traction-king, old Wyman had been made by him.
He was the prince among political financiers; he had
ruled the Democratic party in state and nation.
He would give a quarter of a million at a time to
the boss of Tammany Hall, and spend a million in a
single campaign; on “dough-day,” when the
district leaders came to get the election funds, there
would be a table forty feet long completely covered
with hundred-dollar bills. He would have been
the richest man in America, save that he spent his
money as fast as he got it. He had had the most
famous racing-stable in America; and a house on Fifth
Avenue that was said to be the finest Italian palace
in the world. Over three millions had been spent
in decorating it; all the ceilings had been brought
intact from palaces abroad, which he had bought and
demolished! The Major told a story to show how
such a man lost all sense of the value of money; he
had once been sitting at lunch with him, when the
editor of one of his newspapers had come in and remarked,
“I told you we would need eight thousand dollars,
and the check you send is for ten.” “I
know it,” was the smiling answer—“but
somehow I thought eight seemed harder to write than
ten!”
“Old Waterman’s quite a spender, too,
when it comes to that,” the Major went on.
“He told me once that it cost him five thousand
dollars a day for his ordinary expenses. And that
doesn’t include a million-dollar yacht, nor
even the expenses of it.
“And think of another man I know of who spent
a million dollars for a granite pier, so that he could
land and see his mistress!—It’s a
fact, as sure as God made me! She was a well-known
society woman, but she was poor, and he didn’t
dare to make her rich for fear of the scandal.
So she had to live in a miserable fifty-thousand-dollar
villa; and when other people’s children would
sneer at her children because they lived in a fifty-thousand-dollar
villa, the answer would be, ‘But you haven’t
got any pier!’ And if you don’t believe
that—”
But here suddenly the Major turned, and observed a
boy who had brought him some cigars, and who was now
standing near by, pretending to straighten out some
newspapers upon the table. “Here, sir!”
cried the Major, “what do you mean—listening
to what I’m saying! Out of the room with
you now, you rascal!”
