And yet they fitted with each other like the halves of a shell.

Also they were masters of intrigue; only John Harley intrigued like a Wolsey and Senator Hanway like a Richelieu.
John Harley played the business man, and was rough and plain and blunt--a man of no genius and with loads of common sense.

He made a specialty of unpalatable truths and discarded sentiment.

Indeed, he was so good a business man that he got possession of a rotund interest in a group of coal mines without the outlay of a dollar, and later became the owner of sundry sheaves of railway stocks on the same surprising terms.
Not that the coal and the railway companies lost by John Harley.

When it was known that he possessed an interest in the mines, certain armor plate mills and shipbuilding concerns, as well as nineteen steamboat lines, came forward to buy the coal.