For Dan Waterman was one of the Major’s own generation, and he knew all his life and his habits.  Just as Montague had seen him there, so he had been always; swift, imperious, terrible, trampling over all opposition; the most powerful men in the city quailed before the glare of his eyes.  In the old days Wall Street had reeled in the shock of the conflicts between him and his most powerful rival.

And the Major went on to tell about Waterman’s rival, and his life.  He had been the city’s traction-king, old Wyman had been made by him.  He was the prince among political financiers; he had ruled the Democratic party in state and nation.  He would give a quarter of a million at a time to the boss of Tammany Hall, and spend a million in a single campaign; on “dough-day,” when the district leaders came to get the election funds, there would be a table forty feet long completely covered with hundred-dollar bills.  He would have been the richest man in America, save that he spent his money as fast as he got it.  He had had the most famous racing-stable in America; and a house on Fifth Avenue that was said to be the finest Italian palace in the world.  Over three millions had been spent in decorating it; all the ceilings had been brought intact from palaces abroad, which he had bought and demolished!  The Major told a story to show how such a man lost all sense of the value of money; he had once been sitting at lunch with him, when the editor of one of his newspapers had come in and remarked, “I told you we would need eight thousand dollars, and the check you send is for ten.”  “I know it,” was the smiling answer—­“but somehow I thought eight seemed harder to write than ten!”

“Old Waterman’s quite a spender, too, when it comes to that,” the Major went on.  “He told me once that it cost him five thousand dollars a day for his ordinary expenses.  And that doesn’t include a million-dollar yacht, nor even the expenses of it.

“And think of another man I know of who spent a million dollars for a granite pier, so that he could land and see his mistress!—­It’s a fact, as sure as God made me!  She was a well-known society woman, but she was poor, and he didn’t dare to make her rich for fear of the scandal.  So she had to live in a miserable fifty-thousand-dollar villa; and when other people’s children would sneer at her children because they lived in a fifty-thousand-dollar villa, the answer would be, ‘But you haven’t got any pier!’ And if you don’t believe that—­”

But here suddenly the Major turned, and observed a boy who had brought him some cigars, and who was now standing near by, pretending to straighten out some newspapers upon the table.  “Here, sir!” cried the Major, “what do you mean—­listening to what I’m saying!  Out of the room with you now, you rascal!”

CHAPTER XIII