"
"He can be an interesting man when he chooses," Montague responded.
"He is marvellous!" said she. "You look at that lean figure, and the
wizened-up old hawk's face, with the white hair all round it, and
you'd think that he was in his dotage. But when he talks--I don't
wonder men obey him!"
"They obey him!" said Montague. "No mistake about that! There is not
a man in Wall Street who could live for twenty-four hours if old Dan
Waterman went after him in earnest."
"How in the world does he do it?" asked Lucy. "Is he so enormously
rich?"
"It is not the money he owns," said Montague; "it's what he
controls. He is master of the banks; and no man can take a step in
Wall Street without his knowing it if he wants to. And he can break
a man's credit; he can have all his loans called. He can swing the
market so as to break a man. And then, think of his power in
Washington! He uses the Treasury as if it were one of his branch
offices."
"It seems frightful," said Lucy. "And that old man--over eighty! I'm
glad that I met him, at any rate.
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