My face must have reflected my mind, for Woodruff merely replied, "Oh, very well. Of course that alters the case."
"We must get Croffut without him," I went on.
Woodruff shook his head. "Can't get him," he said. "Dominick controls the two southern ranges of counties. He finances his own machine from what he collects from vice and crime in those cities. He gives that branch of the plum tree to the boys. He keeps the bigger one, the corporations, for himself."
"He can be destroyed," said I, waving aside these significant reminders.
"Yes, in five years or so of hard work. Meanwhile, Dunkirk will run things at the capital to suit himself. Anyhow, you're taking on a good deal more than's necessary--starting with two big fights, one of 'em against a man you ought to use to do up the other. It's like breaking your own sword at the beginning of the duel."
"Go back to the capital," said I, after a moment's thought; "I'll telegraph you up there what to do."
It was my first test--my first chance to show whether I had learned at the savage school at which I had been a pupil. Scores, hundreds of men, can plan, and plan wisely,--at almost any cross-roads' general store you hear in the conversation round the stove as good plans as ever moved the world to admiration. But execution,--there's the rub! And the first essential of an executive is freedom from partialities and hatreds,--not to say, "Do I like him? Do I hate him? Was he my enemy a year or a week or a moment ago?" but only to ask oneself the one question, "Can he be useful to me _now_?"
"I will use Dominick to destroy Dunkirk, and then I will destroy him," I said to myself. But that did not satisfy me. I saw that I was temporizing with the weakness that has wrecked more careers than misjudgment. I felt that I must decide then and there whether or not I would eliminate personal hatred from my life. After a long and bitter struggle, I did decide once and for all.
I telegraphed Woodruff to go ahead. When I went back to Pulaski to settle my affairs there, Dominick came to see me. Not that he dreamed of the existence of my combine or of my connection with the new political deal, but simply because I had married into the Ramsay family and was therefore now in the Olympus of corporate power before which he was on his knees,--for a price, like a wise devotee, untroubled by any such qualmishness as self-respect. I was ready for him. I put out my hand.
