There was no friend whose fate
was part of his own. There was the Boss Doctor: but Rockwell was tied to
his own responsibilities, and he could not give up, of course, would not
give up his life to the schemes of another. There were a dozen men whom
he had helped to forge ahead by his own schemes, but their destinies were
not linked with his. Only one whose life was linked with his could be
trusted to be his eyes, to be the true reporter of all he did, had done,
or planned to do. Only one who loved him.
But even one who loved him could not carry through his incompleted work
against the assaults of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful, astute,
and merciless; who had a greed which set money higher than all else in
the world. They were of the new order of things in the New World. The
business of life was to them not a system of barter and exchange, a
giving something of value to get something of value, with a margin of
profit for each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was a cockpit
where one man sought to get what another man had--and get it almost
anyhow.
It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the
man that carried the gun.
All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who
exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in
greater or less degree till the present generation--all that was gone.
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