And now the Major’s store-rooms of gossip were unlocked.  He told Montague about the kings of Steel, and about the men they had hated and the women they had loved, and about the inmost affairs and secrets of their lives.  William H. Roberts had begun his career in the service of the great iron-master, whose deadly rival he had afterwards become; and now he lived but to dispute that rival’s claims to glory.  Let the rival build a library, Roberts would build two.  Let the rival put up a great office building, Roberts would buy all the land about it, and put up half a dozen, and completely shut out its light.  And day and night “Roberts the Silent” was plotting and planning, and some day he would be the master of the Steel Trust, and his rival would be nowhere.

“They are lively chaps, the Steel crowd,” said the Major, chuckling.  “You will have to keep your eyes open when you do business with them.”

“What would you advise me to do?” asked the other, smiling.  “Set detectives after them?”

“Why not?” asked the Major, seriously.  “Why not find out who sent that Colonel Cole to see you?  And find out how badly he needs your little railroad, and make him pay for it accordingly.”

“That is not quite in my line,” said Montague.

“It’s time you were learning,” said the Major.  “I can start you.  I know a detective whom you can trust.—­At any rate,” he added cautiously, “I don’t know that he’s ever played me false.”

Montague sat for a while in thought.  “You said something about their getting after one’s telephone,” he observed.  “Did you really mean that?”

“Of course,” said the other.

“Do you mean to tell me that they could find out what goes over my ’phone?”

“I mean to tell you,” was the reply, “that for two hundred and fifty dollars, I can get you a stenographic report of every word that you say over your ’phone for twenty-four hours, and of every word that anybody says to you.”

“That sounds incredible!” said Montague.  “Who does it?”

“Wire tappers.  It’s dangerous work, but the pay is big.  I have a friend who once upon a time was putting through a deal in which the telephone company was interested, and they transferred his wire to another branch, and he finished up his business before the other side got on to the trick.  To this day you’ll notice that his telephone is ‘Spring,’ though every other ’phone in the neighbourhood is ‘John.’”

“And mail, too?” asked Montague.

“Mail!” echoed the Major.  “What’s easier than that?  You can hold up a man’s mail for twenty-four hours and take a photograph of every letter.  You can do the same with every letter that he mails, unless he is very careful.  He can be followed, you understand, and every time he drops a letter, a blue or yellow envelope is dropped on top—­for a signal to the post-office people.”

“But then, so many persons would have to know about that!”