MacRae faced the man over a broad table in an office more like the library of a well-appointed home than a place of calculated profit-mongering.  Robbin-Steele, Senior, was tall, thin, sixty years of age, sandy-haired, with a high, arched nose.  His eyes, MacRae thought, were disagreeably like the eyes of a dead fish, lusterless and sunken; a cold man with a suave manner seeking his own advantage.  Robbin-Steele was a Scotchman of tolerably good family who had come to British Columbia with an inherited fortune and made that fortune grow to vast proportions in the salmon trade.  He had two pretty and clever daughters, and three of his sons had been notable fighters overseas.  MacRae knew them all, liked them well enough.  But he had never come much in contact with the head of the family.  What he had seen of Robbin-Steele, Senior, gave him the impression of cold, calculating power.

“I wonder,” MacRae heard him saying after a brief exchange of courtesies, “if we could make an arrangement with you to deliver all the salmon you can get this season to our Fraser River plant.”

“Possibly,” MacRae replied.  “But there is no certainty that I will get any great number of salmon.”

“If you were as uncertain as that,” Robbin-Steele said dryly, “you would scarcely be putting several thousand dollars into an elaborately equipped carrier.  We may presume that you intend to get the salmon—­as you did last year.”

“You seem to know a great deal about my business,” MacRae observed.

“It is our policy to know, in a general way, what goes on in the salmon industry,” Robbin-Steele assented.

MacRae waited for him to continue.

“You have a good deal of both energy and ability,” Robbin-Steele went on.  “It is obvious that you have pretty well got control of the blueback situation around Squitty Island.  You must, however, have an outlet for your fish.  We can use these salmon to advantage.  On what basis will you deliver them to us on the Fraser if we give you a contract guaranteeing to accept all you can deliver?”

“Twenty per cent, over Folly Bay prices,” MacRae answered promptly.

The cannery man shook his head.

“No.  We can’t afford to boost the cost of salmon like that.  It’ll ruin the business, which is in a bad enough way as it is.  The more you pay a fisherman, the more he wants.  We must keep prices down.  That is to your interest, too.”

“No,” MacRae disagreed.  “I think it is to my interest to pay the fishermen top prices, so long as I make a profit on the deal.  I don’t want the earth—­only a moderate share of it.”

“Twenty per cent. on Folly Bay prices is too uncertain a basis.”  Robbin-Steele changed his tactics.  “We can send our own carriers there to buy at far less cost.”

MacRae smiled.

“You can send your carriers,” he drawled, “but I doubt if you would get many fish.  I don’t think you quite grasp the Squitty situation.”