The next day some of us gathered in Dickinson’s office and decided that Grierson should go ahead and get the options.  This was done; not, of course, in Grierson’s name.  The next move, before the formation of the Riverside Company, was to “see” Mr. Judd Jason.  The success or failure of the enterprise was in his hands.  Mahomet must go to the mountain, and I went to Monahan’s saloon, first having made an appointment.  It was not the first time I had been there since I had made that first memorable visit, but I never quite got over the feeling of a neophyte before Buddha, though I did not go so far as to analyze the reason,—­that in Mr. Jason I was brought face to face with the concrete embodiment of the philosophy I had adopted, the logical consequence of enlightened self-interest.  If he had ever heard of it, he would have made no pretence of being anything else.  Greatness, declares some modern philosopher, has no connection with virtue; it is the continued, strong and logical expression of some instinct; in Mr. Jason’s case, the predatory instinct.  And like a true artist, he loved his career for itself—­not for what its fruits could buy.  He might have built a palace on the Heights with the tolls he took from the disreputable houses of the city; he was contented with Monahan’s saloon:  nor did he seek to propitiate a possible God by endowing churches and hospitals with a portion of his income.  Try though I might, I never could achieve the perfection of this man’s contempt for all other philosophies.  The very fact of my going there in secret to that dark place of his from out of the bright, respectable region in which I lived was in itself an acknowledgment of this.  I thought him a thief—­a necessary thief—­and he knew it:  he was indifferent to it; and it amused him, I think, to see clinging to me, when I entered his presence, shreds of that morality which those of my world who dealt with him thought so needful for the sake of decency.

He was in bed, reading newspapers, as usual.  An empty coffee-cup and a plate were on the littered table.

“Sit down, sit down, Paret,” he said.  “What do you hear from the Senator?”

I sat down, and gave him the news of Mr. Watling.  He seemed, as usual, distrait, betraying no curiosity as to the object of my call, his lean, brown fingers playing with the newspapers on his lap.  Suddenly, he flashed out at me one of those remarks which produced the uncanny conviction that, so far as affairs in the city were concerned, he was omniscient.

“I hear somebody has been getting options on that tract of land beyond the Heights, on the river.”

He had “focussed.”

“How did you hear that?” I asked.

He smiled.

“It’s Grierson, ain’t it?”

“Yes, it’s Grierson,” I said.

“How are you going to get your folks out there?” he demanded.

“That’s what I’ve come to see you about.  We want a franchise for Maplewood Avenue.”