Whose money financed this sinister business only the company’s bankers knew, and what they knew they did not tell. The business seemed in some mysterious manner to run itself—so successfully that it reached out and dominated what it pleased, with an uncanny penchant for stamping out rivals and smashing all opposition in its path. Its progress and expansion had a certainty and a swiftness of a thing on the tables of destiny. Its sub-managers were all reputed to be clever rogues, deliberately chosen because past performances had given proof that a working conscience was the least of their moral burdens. Strange to say, none of them had even been known to double-cross the North Star subsidiary for which he worked. Perhaps this, in a sense, was due to a knowledge that nowhere else could they secure positions so lucrative or power of a kind such as they wielded under Slack. But more likely there was a deeper reason; a sense of an unseen guiding mind whom none could name but all felt—a power in the background that could make and unmake, could create and destroy at its pleasure.
Slack’s sudden ascension to command of all the varied industries dominated by the North Star interests was at first lightly taken. Merely a figurehead president appointed for political strategy, every one said. All of which feazed the Hon. J. J. Slack not the least. He went smilingly on his way accumulating millions, quite contented to be under-rated in the matter of personal ability. The executives of the North Star and its subsidiaries soon learned in a quiet but effective manner that Slack’s word was law; that, wherever his counsels might come from, he was at all times clothed with absolute executive authority.
The thing that puzzled the gossiping public was why the North Star Company had been so willing to cut and deliver the poles from the Nannabijou Limits for their hated rival, the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills. With an almost exclusive monopoly on towing and loading equipment, they could have been almost certain of tying up delivery to the Kam City Company for an indefinite period by simply ceasing operations on the Nannabijou till long-drawn-out action in the courts forced them to abide by what was in a legal sense unprecedented action on the part of the government. Instead, the North Star carried on their cutting and booming as before. By many this was looked on as portentous; the North Star’s quiet submission was too obvious to be natural and without deeper designs, as was also the fact that, though they had not even yet received their machinery, they were going on with the completion of their pulp and paper mill building. But more ominous than any was the editorial silence of the North Star newspapers on this particular question. From the day that the North Star changed its tactics before the government, the newspapers currently believed to be under control of the North Star never again so much as mentioned the matter of the cutting rights on the Nannabijou Limits.