How SSL Works

"Hiding Place." (here)

How much of what Nicholas van Rijn does is theatrical? An act carefully calculated to produce an effect? I am tempted to answer: almost all.

He knows what men and women are like, that he uses his money to get the attention of women, that individuals are free to do as they like, that Jeri might well spend time with someone else while he, van Rijn, concentrates on the job in hand. Yet he shatters a churchwarden to express outrage! He verbally abuses Torrance and demands that he kneel to ask forgiveness! This is too much. We know that van Rijn would not want to employ men who responded to his bellowing by crawling at his feet. Equality before the law and equality of opportunity do not add up to equality in skills and abilities. Van Rijn excels in business acumen, in entrepreneurial energy and in accumulated personal wealth. In the Polesotechnic League, all of that is enough to make him Torrance's employer. But it does not make him a despot nor does he seek to become one. He welcomes a fight from Torrance and happens to knock him out but then brings him round with brandy, offers to replace his missing tooth on expenses, wants him to share in the solution that he has just found to their immediate problem and says that he will promote him from captain of a yacht to commander of a trading squadron. That is how Solar Spice & Liquors works.