And, finally, you must put your hand and seal to a statement that you do this to "reconcile interests that have seemed to conflict" and "equalize the business," and that this agreement gives you your "due proportion thereof." This "free contract" two of the three men who were to make it knew nothing of until their consent was demanded. One of the partners had secretly been won over. Through him all preliminary negotiations had been conducted. "I was not consulted," testified one of the other two, until after the contract was "all drawn and prepared," and at first he refused to sign it. The plan was concocted "secretly and unknown to me." "I was at first opposed to the arrangement," declared the other.[91] But this was not all the contract. The President, who, as he testified, "conducted most of the negotiations," and "had been familiar with the dealings thereunder," supplemented the written documents with oral instructions:[92] You must not seem to be prosperous. You must not put on style,[93] he cautioned them; above all, you must not drive fast horses or have fine rigs; you must not even let your wives know of this arrangement.[94] A false account was opened on the books to conceal the nature and origin of this transaction from their own book-keepers. In the name of that account false and fictitious checks were drawn, bills made out, balances struck. A box was taken out at the Cleveland post-office--box 125--in the name of an imaginary "Mr. G.A. Mason," and through this box the correspondence of the "adventure" was carried on. Each of the three parties to the "adventure" continued to march and fight under its own flag as before. All possible pains were taken to conceal the fact that they had ceased competition with each other. They kept up every appearance to the public of being actively engaged in competitive business. The inevitable spy appears in this scene as in every other in the play. The "reconciler," to enforce the provisions that the "reconcilees" should not engage in business elsewhere, extended a system of espionage over them, and followed their movements, and kept watch what they did with their money, and made oath to the courts of the results of these "inquiries and investigations." The espionage continued after this. A year or two after this contract had been broken by the help of the courts, the then secretary of the great oil company, through an intermediary, approached the book-keeper of the firm which had been freed from the trust. "Would you not like to make some money?" "He inclined to let him believe he did want to make some money," his employer afterwards told Congress. "He came and told me about it. I requested that he continue and find out what information they wanted. He was to have had so much per year, but he was to have been paid a down payment; he got $25." "What service was he to render for that?" "I have a memorandum. There were so many things he was to do that I cannot carry it in my head."