“At the first intimation I gave him that I looked upon his plans as illegal and immoral, if not absolutely criminal, he attempted to prove to me in a plausible argument that bankers have a right to look out for themselves, no matter who it hits.

“‘This plan of mine,’ he said, ’is just a stroke of financiering; it is what any man would do if put in my place.’

“This did not satisfy me, and the expression of scorn that came over my face did not escape him.

“From attempting to prove the righteousness of the case, he then took to berating me for interfering with his business.  Had I not enough to do to attend to my affairs in his office, without prying into his outside dealing?  Was it a matter that he must lay before his manager?  These were the questions he put to me in sharp tones.

“I saw that it would be useless to argue with him so I arose and said: 

“’As you will not listen to reason, as you are a hypocrite and a villain, I shall be compelled to quit your employ.  But I wish to inform you that I shall expose this diabolical plan.  It shall not be carried out if I can prevent it, and you know that I am in possession of the facts.’

“At this statement his anger knew no bounds.  He railed at me as a trickster.  He charged me with wishing to blackmail him.  Then seeing that this was not the way to gain his point, he adroitly shifted his lines.

“Would I not take a share in the profits that were to be made?  Did I not see that banking was a business in which every advantage was to be seized and worked for all that was in it?  At length he offered to let me in his firm as a partner.  This last offer was one that a man would have been more than human to set aside without weighing.

“He saw me hesitate.  It was not the hesitation that comes as a forerunner of surrender; it was the pause that a man will make when he has to confront a momentous problem that is to have an effect on his after-life.  I did not intend to accept his alluring terms; it had been my resolve at the outset to leave his employ should he refuse to abandon his scheme of loot.

“In the few seconds that I stood facing him, the light of lust came in his eyes, he became the incarnation of greed.  A snake that sees its quarry edging inch by inch toward the fangs of death could not have had a more exultant, triumphant look shoot from its treacherous eyes.

“‘You will be a man,’ said he; ‘you will listen to reason.’  He uttered these words not as a query, but as an assertion of fact.

“‘I shall do as I have said,’ was my reply, and I walked toward the door.

“‘But you do not mean to say that you refuse to become a partner?’ he ejaculated in amazement.

“’That is just what I mean.  I tell you once for all that I will not be a party to such crimes as you propose to commit.’ “’Then I warn you, young man,’ he thundered, losing his self control, ’that if you attempt to thwart me in my business I shall make it uncomfortable for you in this city.