Addicks smiled. "You are too high," he said. "I'll pay you $50,000 commission and give you $250,000 capital, and after I show you in what good shape my fight now is and how near I am to victory, you'll agree that the terms I offer are good pay and fair."
"Mr. Addicks," said I, "I have just time to get dinner, look in at the theatre, and catch the midnight back to Boston. It is my business to keep posted on such scrimmages as you are engaged in. If you and your affairs are where I believe they are, the terms I offer are exceptionally low. If your affairs are as you would have me believe, you need no one to captain your fight."
Addicks asked where I thought his affairs stood, and I answered: "I don't think--I know, or, at least, I feel quite sure I do. You are at the end of your rope and are practically bankrupt."
At once Addicks grew indignant. "You are absolutely wrong," he asserted. "I'll admit I have had a hard fight, and that it has cost me, so far, considerable money; but I give you my word I'm worth between six and seven millions clear and clean right now."
I bade him good-night and left. Our interview had consumed not over twenty to twenty-five minutes. I said to his bankers:
"Addicks is the Addicks I have sized him up to be, only worse."
We got back to Boston next morning, and at the opening of the Stock Exchange I sailed into the Bay State stock in earnest, for I felt surer than before that Addicks was nearing his finish. A few minutes after the Exchange opened, Addicks' banker rushed into my office and said the Delaware financier begged that I would return to New York at once, and whispered to me that in a conversation just held on the telephone Addicks had stated that he would accept my terms. I informed the banker I was not anxious for the job, but as he urged his own interest, I jumped on the noon train and in the evening was again in New York.
It was a warm day and I was pleased to get a wire on the train from Addicks asking me to meet him at the pier, as we should hold our conference on his yacht, the _Now-Then_, at that time one of the fastest steam-yachts afloat.
It was a night of memorable beauty. In the golden light of a dazzling sunset we flew up the majestic Hudson. From under the awning I watched the serried edges of the Palisades as we slipped swiftly by them to the broad reaches of tinted waters above Yonkers. Every natural influence conspired to make acute to me the warning whisper of my soul, which flashed the caution as I crossed the gang-plank, "Watch out!" But, as I said before, Fate hangs no red lights at the cross-roads of a man's career, and I plunged recklessly into the toils my Mephistophelian companion so artfully wove around me.