"But in life, never! He laughs and grows fat. I haven't reached the fat period yet because I've just begun----"

"You've just begun?" Stuart interrupted, laughingly.

"Yes, you'll understand what I mean before I've finished the day's work."

"But why?" the young lawyer asked passionately. "Such a purpose seems to me in view of this stunning revelation the sheerest insanity. Life, the one priceless thing we possess, is too short. And what lies beyond the six feet of earth we don't know."

"That's because you're an unbeliever, Jim."

There could be no mistaking the seriousness with which Bivens spoke.

Yet Stuart laughed in spite of his effort to control the impulse.

"On the other hand, Cal," he answered, with mischievous banter, "if your little heaven and your little hell in which you seem to take so much comfort are true, so much the worse. I can see you shovelling coal through all eternity----"

"But I happen to be going to the other place," Bivens broke in, good-naturedly.

Stuart looked at the pile of gold a moment and then at Bivens and said slowly:

"Well, if you do get there, Cal, there's one thing certain, the angels will all have to sleep with their pocket-books under their pillows."

Bivens's eyes sparkled and a smile played about the hard lines of his mouth. In spite of its doubtful nature he enjoyed the tribute to his financial genius beneath the banter of his friend's joke.

With a gesture of conscious dignity he turned to the table and quietly said:

"Count one of those heaps of coin. Each stack of twenty-dollar pieces contains a hundred--exactly two thousand dollars. Between each pile of a million a scarlet thread is drawn. When you have counted one section, you will find twenty exactly like it. Verify my statement and then make a note of those packages of stocks and bonds, all gilt-edged dividend payers. On that side table there in the corner," he waved in that direction, "I have thrown a heap of rubbish, the common stock of various corporations, not yet paying a dividend. Some of it will be very valuable in time. For example, 100,000 shares of U.S. Steel, Common. When that stock reaches par, and it will yet do it, that package alone will be worth ten millions. I haven't counted any of that stuff at all.

"You will find on this table exactly ninety millions. Within an hour you can examine each division of coin, stocks and bonds and bear witness to the truth of my assertions. I'm going to close that door and leave you here for an hour."

"Alone with all that?"

"Oh, there's only one way out," Bivens laughed, "through my little reception room and I'll be there. I'll meet some of the gentlemen who are waiting. When you are satisfied of the accuracy of my account, just tap on my door and I'll join you immediately. Do the inspection carefully. It's of grave importance. I shall call on you as a witness bye and bye before that group of newspaper men."

When Bivens disappeared into the adjoining room, Stuart at once began the task of verifying the financier's statement of his assets. In half an hour he had completed the task with sufficient care to be reasonably sure there could be no mistake--a million dollars more or less was of no importance. Ten millions in gold would make good every liability of Bivens's banks.

When Stuart had satisfied himself of the accuracy of the count, he stood gazing at the queer looking piles of yellow metal and richly tinted paper, stunned by the attempt to realize the enormous power over men which it represented. Even in dead bulk as it lay there the power it represented was something enormous, an annual banking income of at least four millions, a sum beyond the power of any human being to spend intelligently. But when the huge pile should thrill with life at the touch of the deft fingers of the master who could grasp its stunning force in human affairs, who could tell its possibilities?

He folded his arms and stood there lost in thought. Through his imagination the old stories of the world's treasure-caves came trooping. The Lamp of Aladdin and all the dreams of the Arabian Nights seemed tame and passive before the incredible fact on which he gazed.

Back of that marvellous vision he saw the figure of a bare-footed boy of the poor white trash of the South rising to a world empire. The very mention of his name now sent a thrill of hate, of envy or of admiration to the hearts of millions. Surely the age of the warrior, the priest, and the law-giver had passed. The age of materialism had dawned, and the new age knew but one God, whose temple was the market place.

A wave of bitterness swept his spirit, and for the first time he questioned for the briefest moment whether he had missed the way in life. Only for a moment, and then the feeling passed, and in its place slowly rose a sense of angry resentment against Bivens and all his tribe. The audacity and assurance with which he was presenting the offer of a change in the whole bent of his character he felt to be a personal insult. And yet he knew the deep, underlying, affectionate loyalty in the man's heart on which the act was based. He couldn't resent it. But when the little swarthy figure suddenly appeared in the doorway, his soul was in arms for the struggle he knew coming.

"Well, you found I've not made a mistake?"

"No. To put it mildly, you will not be forced to apply to the Charity Bureau for any outside help this year. Of course there's no telling what may happen if hard times strike you."

"But at present I ought to be able to pay my debts and still have enough to shuffle along somehow?"

"I think so. In fact I'll make oath to that effect if you need it to stem the present tide of adversity."

"Well, I don't mind confessing to you, Jim, that I went into the recent panic with only twenty-five millions. You have counted ninety there without looking over the trash on that side table. As I told you a while ago, I've just begun. I've schemes on foot that circle the globe.

I've made up my mind to have you with me. We won't discuss terms now--that's a mere detail--the thing is for us to get at the differences between us. Now say the meanest and hardest things you can think. I understand."

Stuart dropped into a seat beneath the pile of millions and a frown darkened his face.

"My opinions, Cal, of your business methods are known to everyone."

"Yes I know you started life with a theory, but sooner or later, Jim, you can't resist the pressure in this town. You started with ideals you can't realize. You have grown older and wiser and don't dream so much.

One by one illusions fade. One by one the men who set out to serve the common people always come over to the side of the mighty. Why? Because we alone recognize their worth and reward them accordingly."

Stuart looked at Bivens thoughtfully and then at the millions heaped on the dark blood-red table, while he slowly said:

"They say, Cal, that the warriors of the Dakota Indians used to eat the heart of a fallen foe to increase their courage and the New Zealander swallowed whole the eyes of his enemy that he might see further. Your business methods haven't made much progress beyond this stage, so far as I can see."

Bivens stroked his silken beard with a nervous puzzled movement, rose and walked to the window.

"Come here, Jim."

He gazed for a moment over the city and slowly said:

"Look over this sea of buildings rising like waves of the ocean and stretching away until its lines are lost in the clouds. The swarming thousands who live in them, what is their trade? Their business is by hook or crook, to get hold of the money simple-minded people have produced in other sections of the world. They were born to be the kings and rulers of ignorant masses. This kingship of mind over matter may be a hard law but it _is_ the law. There's no other meaning to those great buildings whose argus eyes gleam to-night in the shadows among the stars. I am simply doing what every man in New York or the world would do if he had the chance, the brains and the daring."

"Not every man, Cal," was the steady answer. "There are men in New York who would cut their right arm off rather than do such things."

"Show me one that would cut his right arm off rather than do them and I'll show you ten thousand who would cut off both arms and spare a leg to win the half of my success. I'm simply doing better than they can what they'd give their bodies and souls to do. That's why I'm above the law and people envy and worship me. If I am a devil, I am their creation. That's why I wield a power kings never knew. That's why I need regard no restraint of culture, experience, pride, class or rank.

I am the product of the spirit of the age--the envy and despair of them all. I might be torn limb from limb by the black, creeping thing on the pavements below, that clutched at your throat that day, but for the fact that they all love money and lust after it with abject longing.

"The people will only get justice when they learn to love justice.

Because they love privilege and lust after money they are plundered by men who are their superiors in intelligence. If I am a wolf it's because so many lambs are always bleating at my heels that I have to eat them to save my self-respect. People will continue to starve so long as they are content with a circus and a bread-line. And such people ought to starve. They get what they deserve. The government is trying to rescue four thousand men who are stranded and starving in Alaska. Are they paupers? No, just average business men who are mad for money, who dare frozen seas or blazing deserts, death or hell to win it. That's why my power _is_ power. This passion for money, money for its own sake, right or wrong, is the motive power of the modern world.

That's why I laugh at my critics and sneer at threats. I am secure because I've built my career on the biggest fact of the century. You'd as well have common sense and accept the world as it is. As you've just said, we've only a little while to live in it anyhow."

"But I want to really live," Stuart broke in, "not merely exist. You don't live. You are engaged in an endless fight, desperate, cruel, mercenary--for what? The superfluous, ambitions you never exploit, privileges you don't know how to use, caprices without the genius to express them, pleasures when you don't know how to play. Why?"

"The game man, the game!"

"Game? what game? To crush and kill for the mere sake of doing it, as a sheep-killing dog strangles fifty lambs in a night for the fun of hearing them bleat? Isn't there a bigger game? a game of mutual joys and hopes, of sunlight and laughter?"

"But, Jim," the little financier protested, "I don't make men as they are, nor did I make conditions."

"Still is that any reason why a man shouldn't take his place on the right side of the fight? The eternal struggle is always on between Life and Death. A man's in league with one or the other. Which is it? You are a wrecker and not a builder."

"But is that true?" Bivens interrupted eagerly. "I'm organizing the industries of the world. I have furthered the progress of humanity."

"Yes, in a way you have. And if the price of goods continues to rise for another ten years as it has during the past ten under your organizing the human race will be compelled to make still further progress. They will have to move to another planet. Nobody but a millionaire can live on this one. A day of reckoning is bound to come."

Bivens laughed, walked back to the window and gazed down on the narrow streets below.

"A day of reckoning!" he exclaimed. "Look at those crawling lines of men, Jim, and think for a moment of the millions like them on the surface of the earth, each one fighting tooth and nail for his own kennel and the bone that he claims. Think of the centuries of stupid history back of each generation of those crawling things--their selfish habits, as fixed as the colour of hair and eyes, their pride, their little prejudices of race and creed--and talk to me about days of reckoning and revolution! Hurl yourself against the mighty system of business that has slowly built itself through the centuries out of such material and you simply beat your brains out against a granite wall."

"Well, I see something entirely different," Stuart answered, "as I look on that slowly moving line of men down there. To me they symbolize the eternal, the endless stream that sweeps through time to whose life a century is but a moment. You think that you are one of the mighty. By the signs on that table you are. And yet, you could die to-night and that black stream of humanity would flow along that narrow street to-morrow as it does to-day and not one in all the crowd would pause to look up at the flag at half mast on your building. One by one the mighty fall and are forgotten and yet that crowd grows denser, its feet swifter, and the pressure of its united life becomes more and more resistless. A hundred years from now and your name will have vanished from human memory. A millionaire dies every day. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. Is such a life at its best worth living? And yours is never at its best. You can't eat much. You don't sleep well and you can't live beyond fifty-five."