Bivens called Stuart and made an appointment to meet him at the Algonquin Club for dinner two days later.

"Why two days' delay?" Nan asked petulantly.

"It will require that time to prepare the papers. Don't worry. I'll put the thing through now."

When Stuart sat down with Bivens in one of the magnificent private dining rooms of his millionaire club two days later, he was struck with the perfection of the financier's dress, and the easy elegance of his manners.

"Nan has surely done wonders with some pretty crude material!" he mused.

As the meal progressed the lawyer's imagination continued to picture the process of training through which she had put Bivens to develop from the poor white Southerner, the polished little man of the gilded world he now saw. No flight of his fancy could imagine the real humour of it all. He recalled Nan's diary with grim amusement.

While Bivens had really been wax in her skillful hands since the day of her marriage, the one task she found hard was her desperate and determined effort to make him a well-groomed man. She was finally compelled to write out instructions for his daily conduct and enforce them with all sorts of threats and blandishments. She pasted this programme in Bivens's hat, at last, and he was in mortal terror lest some one should lift the inside band and read them. They were minute and painfully insistent on the excessive use of soap and water. They required that he wash and scrub two and three times daily. Not only did they prescribe tooth brushes and mouth washes, with all sorts of pastes and powders, but that he should follow it with an invention of the devil for torturing the gums known as "dental floss." To get even with the man who invented the thing Bivens bought him out and stopped its manufacture--only to find the scoundrel had invented a new one and had it on the market three weeks later.

In the midst of this agony of breaking him to the copious use of water, Bivens found a doctor who boldly declared that excessive bathing was ruinous to the health--that water was made for fish and air for man.

The little millionaire made him chief of the staff of his household doctors, but Nan refused to admit him when she learned his views.

Bivens secretly built him a hospital, endowed it, and gave a fund to found a magazine to proclaim his gospel.

It took two years to thoroughly break him so that she could always be sure that his nails were trimmed and his clothes in perfect style. He had long since ceased to struggle and had found much happiness of late years in vying with her in the perfection of his personal appearance until he had come to fit into the great establishments, which he had built at her suggestion, as though to the manor born.

When the dinner was finished Bivens dismissed the waiter, lighted one of his huge cigars and drew from a morocco case which he had placed beside his chair a type-written manuscript. He turned its leaves thoughtfully a moment and handed them to Stuart.

"There's a document, Jim, that cost me ten thousand dollars to prepare; for whose suppression a million dollars would be paid and no questions asked."

"And you give it to me?" the District Attorney asked, with a smile.

"I give it to you."

"But why this generosity on your part, Cal?"

The sarcasm which the lawyer threw into the playful banter of his tone was not lost on the financier. The mask of his cunning, dark visage was not slipped for a moment as he slowly replied:

"I have anticipated that question. I answer it fully and frankly. There is enough dynamite in that document to blow up half of Wall Street and land somebody in the White House."

"And many in the morgue?"

"And some in the penitentiary. I've watched your work the past nine years with genuine pride, Jim. You've said a lot of hard things about rich malefactors, but you've never touched me."

"No, I think you're too shrewd to be caught in that class, Cal."

"I pride myself that I am. It's only the clumsy fool who gets tangled in the criminal law. But a lot of them have done it--big fellows whose names fill the world with noise. I've taken the pains to put into that type-written document the names, the dates, the places, the deeds, the names of the witnesses and all the essential facts. Do what you please with it. If you do what I think you will, some men who are wearing purple and fine linen will be wearing stripes before another year and you will be the biggest man in New York."

"And your motive?"

"Does it matter?"

"It vitally affects the credibility of this story."

"You must know my motive?"

"I prefer to be sure of it before taking so important and daring an action as you suggest."

Bivens rose and stood before his friend with his smooth hands folded behind his back.

"You believe me, Jim, when I say that my pride in your career is genuine?"

"I've never doubted it," was the quick answer.

"Then two suggestions will be enough. Perhaps I wish to get even with some men who have done me a dirty trick or two, and perhaps, incidentally, in the excitement which will follow this exposure of fraud and crime, I may make an honest penny--is that enough?"

"Quite."

"And you'll make the attack at once?"

Stuart glanced rapidly through the first page of the document and his eyes began to dance with excitement.

"The only favour I ask," Bivens added, "is twenty-four hours' notice before you act."

"I'll let you know."

Stuart rose quickly, placed the document in his inside pocket and hurried home.

CHAPTER IV

EVERY MAN'S SHADOW

The deeper the young lawyer probed into the mass of corruption Bivens had placed in his hands the more profound became his surprise. At first he was inclined to scout the whole story as an exaggeration invented in the fierce fight with financial foes.

It was incredible!

That men whose names were the synonyms of honesty and fair dealing, men entrusted with the management of companies whose assets represented the savings of millions of poor men, the sole defense of millions of helpless women and children--that these trusted leaders of the world were habitually prostituting their trusts for personal gain, staggered belief.

He delayed action and began a careful, patient, thorough investigation.

As it proceeded, his amazement increased. He found that Bivens had only scratched the surface of the truth. He found that the system of fraud and chicanery had spread from the heads of the big companies until the whole business world was honeycombed with its corruption.

New York, the financial centre of the Nation, had gone mad with the insane passion for money at all hazards--by all means, fair or foul.

The Nation was on the tidal wave of the most wonderful industrial boom in its history. The price of stocks had reached fabulous figures and still soared to greater heights. Millionaires were springing up, like mushrooms, in a night. Waiters at fashionable hotels, who hung on the chairs of rich guests with more than usual fawning, were boasting of fortunes made in a day. Broadway and Central Park and every avenue leading to the long stretches of good country roads flashed with hundreds of new automobiles, crowded with strange smiling faces.

Two months had passed since Bivens placed in the District Attorney's hands the document which was destined to make sad history in the annals of the metropolis. Stuart felt that the time had come to act. It was his solemn duty to the people.

He sat in his private office in one of the great skyscrapers down town holding in his hand a list of the men he was about to ask the Grand Jury to indict for crimes which would send them to prison, exile and dishonoured death. It was a glorious morning in May. The window was open and a soft wind was blowing from the south. The view of the blue expanse of the great harbour and towering hills of Staten Island in the distance was entrancing. The south wind filled his heart with memories of high ideals, and noble aspirations born in his own land of poverty and want.

His people in the South had known the real horrors of want, had fought the grim battle, won an honest living and kept their lives clean and strong. And just because they had, his heart was filled with a great pity as he read over and over again the illustrious names he was about to blacken with the stain of crime. He thought of women in sheltered homes up town whose necks would bend to the storm; of the anguish of old-fashioned fathers and mothers who could think no evil of their own, whose spirits would droop and die at the first breath of shame. He rose at last with calm decision.

"I've got to do it--that's all. But before I do, I'm going to know one or two things beyond the shadow of a doubt."