The more we talked, the more at home I felt with him and the more I liked him. It was almost like talking with Mr. McClure and Mr. Phillips.
Finally we made a compact. I was to take up with him each case in their history as I came to it. He was to give me documents, figures, explanations, and justifications—anything and everything which would enlarge my understanding and judgment. I realized how big a contribution he would make if he continued to be as frank as he was in this preliminary talk. I made it quite clear to him, however, that while I should welcome anything in the way of information and explanation that he could give, it must be my judgment, not his, which prevailed.
“Of course, Mr. Rogers,” I told him, “I realize that my judgments may not stand in the long run; but I shall have to stand or fall by them.”
“Well,” he said as I rose to go, “I suppose we’ll have to stand it. Would you be willing to come to my office for these talks? It might be a little more convenient.”
“Well,” he said a little doubtfully, “I’ll try to arrange it.”
For two years our bargain was faithfully kept, I usually going to his office at 26 Broadway. That in itself at the start, for one as unfamiliar as I was with the scene and customs of big business, was an adventure. My entrance and exit to Mr. Rogers’ office were carried on with a secrecy which never failed to amuse me. The alert, handsome, businesslike little chaps who received me at the entrance to the Rogers’ suite piloted me unerringly by a route where nobody saw me and I saw nobody into the same small room opening on to a court, and it seemed never the same route. I was not slow in discovering that across the court in the window directly opposite there was always stationed a gentleman whose head seemed to be turned my way whenever I looked across. It may have meant nothing at all. I only record the fact.
The only person besides Mr. Rogers I ever met in those offices was his private secretary, Miss Harrison: a woman spoken of with awe at that date as having a $10,000 salary, one who knew her employer’s business from A to Z and whom he could trust absolutely. She radiated efficiency—business competency. Along with her competency went that gleam of hardness which efficient business women rarely escape. Miss Harrison appeared only on rare occasions when an extra document was needed. She was as impersonal as the chairs in the room.