"Oh, I know these chaps," said Steiner, "and the old ones are the worst. They've made their fifty million or their hundred million—that's what the Texans call a unit. Did you know that? They call a hundred million dollars a unit. I think that's delightful. A unit, of course, is a starting point. In any case, this sort of chap makes his great colossal pile, and he goes to a dinner party, and he's sitting next to some pretty young thing, and he's getting a bit of the old tingle—but she hasn't the faintest notion who he is. A hundred million dollars!—and she's never even heard his name, and she isn't interested in who he is when he tries to tell her. What can he do? He can't very well go about with a sign around his neck saying financial giant. At that point, believe me, they begin to lose some of their purported scruples concerning publicity."

Fallow believed him. It was not for nothing that Steiner had founded The City Light and kept it going at an operating loss of about ten million dollars a year. No longer was he merely another financier. He was the dread buccaneer of the dread City Light.