"I'll do it," he said with firm accent.

"I know you'll win—you never fail!" she cried, "You'll not lose a moment?"

"No. I'll 'phone him at once."

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."

He seized his telephone and made an appointment to call at once on Bivens.

The financier extended his delicate hand and with a cordial smile led Stuart to a seat beside his desk. The only sign he betrayed of deep emotion was the ice-like coldness of his slender fingers.

"Well, Jim, you've completed your very thorough investigation?"

"How did you know I was making a thorough investigation?"

Stuart looked at Bivens with a quick movement of surprise. The little man was gazing intently at the ceiling.

"I make it my business to know things which vitally interest me. You found my facts accurate?"

"Remarkably so."

"And you are ready to strike?"

The black eyes flashed.

"When I have confirmed some statements you have made in your story concerning the private life of these men. How do you know the accuracy of the facts you state in a single line, for instance, about the private life and habits of the president of a certain trust company?"

A cold smile played about Bivens's mouth for a moment.

"You don't suppose I would make a statement like that unless I know it to be true?"

"I found all your other facts correct. This I haven't been able to verify. You make it incidentally, as though it were a matter of slight importance. To my mind it's the key to the man's character and to every act of his life. How did you discover it?"

"Very simply."

Bivens walked to his door, opened it, looked outside, stepped to one of the great steel safes and drew its massive doors apart. He pulled a slip from a cabinet fitted with a card-case index, noted the number, replaced the card, opened another door and drew out a manuscript notebook of some three hundred pages of type-written matter. Each page was written without spacing and contained as many words as the average page of a printed novel. On the back of the morocco cover was printed in plain gold lettering:

"THE PRIVATE LIFE OF NO. 560."

He handed the volume to Stuart, closed the safe, and resumed his seat.

"You may take that book with you, Jim," he said quietly. "I trust to your honour not to reveal its contents except in the discharge of your sworn duty as an officer of the law. You will find in it the record of the distinguished president's private life for the past ten years without the omission of a single event of any importance."

Stuart glanced through the book with amazement.

"How did you come into possession of such facts?"

"No trouble at all," was the easy answer. "It only requires a little money and a little patience and a little care in selecting the right men for the right job. Any man in the business world who thinks he can do as he pleases in this town will wake some morning with a decided jolt. The war for financial supremacy has developed a secret service which approaches perfection. The secret service of armies is child's play compared to it.

"Not only do I systematically watch my employees until I know every crook and turn of their lives, but I watch with even greater care the heads of every rival firm in every department of the industrial world where my interests touch theirs.

"I not only watch the heads of firms, I watch their trusted assistants and confidential men. In that big safe a thousand secrets lie locked whose revelation would furnish matter enough to run the yellow journals for the next five years.

"Every man who holds a position of trust and puts his hands on money has his shadow. It's a question of business. The wholesaler must know the character of the retailer to whom he extends credit. A trust must know what its remaining independent rivals are doing, what business they are developing, what big orders they seek. I must know, and I must know accurately and fully what every enemy is doing, what he is thinking, with whom he drinks, where he spends his time and how he lives.

"Modern business is war, the fiercest and most cruel the world has ever known. It is of greater importance to a modern captain of industry to know the plans of his enemy than it ever was to the commanding general of an opposing army."

"I see," Stuart responded, thoughtfully.

"There are men down there in the street now," Bivens went on dreamily, "who are wearing silk hats to-day for whom the prison tailor is cutting a suit. I have their records in that silent little steel-clad room. It's a pitiful thing, but it's life. And, believe me, the realities of our every-day life here are more wonderful than the wildest romance the novelist can spin.

"Last year I had a man of genius at the head of one of my corporations. Not the slightest suspicion had ever been directed against him. But my men reported to me that he was supporting two establishments, besides the one he kept for his family, and that in those two secret orchards which he tended he was making presents of fine jewelry. An examination of his office by experts revealed the fact that he was wrong. He was bounced. He would have gone no matter what his accounts showed. It is only a question of time and a very short time when such a man goes wrong.

"The scarcest thing in New York to-day, Jim, is the man who can't be bought and sold. The thing that's beyond price in the business world is character—combined with brains. That's why I made you the offer I did once upon a time to come in with me. There are positions to-day in New York with a salary of half a million a year waiting for men who can fill them. If I could find one man of the highest order of creative and executive ability who would stand by me in my enterprises I could be the richest man in the world in ten years."

Stuart lifted his eyes from the record he was casually scanning and smiled into Bivens's dark, serious face.

The look silenced the speaker. The little man knew instinctively that Stuart was at that moment weighing his own life and character by the merciless standard he had set up for others. Judged by conventional laws he had nothing to fear. He was a faithful member of his church. He gave liberally to its work and gave generously to a hundred worthy charities. He loved his wife with old-fashioned loyalty and tenderness and grieved that she was childless. He stood by his friends and fought his enemies, asking no quarter and giving none.

Yet in his heart of hearts he knew that, judged in the great white light of the Eternal when all things hidden shall be revealed, he could not stand blameless. He knew that while he had kept within the letter of the law, his genius consisted in the skill with which he had learned to divert other men's earnings into his own coffers.

And deep down in the depths of his memory there lay one particular deed which lent colour to all that followed. He knew that however loftily he might discourse at present about "character," "honour," "integrity," and "fair dealing," he had stolen the formula from his big-hearted employer with which he had laid the foundation of his fortune. It was the first half-million that came hard. It was this first half-million that bore the stain of shame. He had justified it with fine sophistry until he counted himself a benefactor to Woodman, but the grim fact stood out in his memory with growing clearness as his millions piled up with each succeeding year.

His other questionable acts on which the fate of millions had often hung he had no difficulty in justifying. Business was war. In war it was fair to deceive, to march in the night, to attack when least suspected, to strike to kill, to destroy and lay waste the fairest countries and starve your enemy into submission.

All this had flashed through Bivens's imagination when Stuart smiled, and in spite of his conscious dignity and power, he had fallen silent. The smile had made him nervous. He wondered vaguely what was in the mind of the tall quiet man that provoked a smile at such a serious moment.

He wondered particularly whether the lawyer could have suspected his hobby, for he had one of the most curious—a collection of historic material on the origin of American fortunes. The origin of his own had early made Bivens suspect that all great fortunes which had mounted into millions, like his own, may have been built in their first foundations on fraud. He wondered if Stuart had by any accident stumbled on this information. Even if he had he could not understand his real motive in such an investigation, and yet the lazy smile with which he looked up from that record was disconcerting.

Bivens waited for him to speak. The moment was one big with fate. Stuart was about to reach a decision that would make history. No one knew so well its importance as the keen intellect that gleamed behind the little black eyes watching with tireless patience.

Bivens was the one odd man in a thousand who knew that big events were not to be found in earthquakes, tornadoes and battles. He had long since learned that the events which shake the world are always found in the silent hours when the soul of a single man says, "I will!"

Below he could hear the roar of the city's life. On the Curb brokers were shouting their wares with their accustomed gusto. On the floor of the Exchange the tide of business ebbed and flowed with the fierce pulse of an apparently exhaustless strength. Men bought and sold with no fear of to-morrow. Yet a single word from the lips of the tall, clean-shaven young officer of the law and a storm would break which might tear from the foundations institutions on whose solidity modern civilization seemed to rest.

The silence at length became suffocating to Bivens. He moistened his lips and drew his smooth fingers softly over his silky beard.

"Well, Jim," he said at length. "You are going to act?"

In the moment's pause the little swarthy body never moved, his breath ceased and every nerve quivered with the strain and yet he betrayed nothing to the man who sat before him, silent, thoughtful.

Stuart rose abruptly, his reply sharp and clear.

"Yes, I'm going to act."

"At once?"

"It's my duty."

Bivens grasped his hand.

"I congratulate you, Jim. You are going to do a big thing, one of the biggest things in our history. You are going to teach the mighty that the law is mightier. It ought to land you at the very top in politics or any other old place you'd like to climb."

"That's something which doesn't interest me yet, Cal. The thing that stuns me is that I've got to do so painful a thing. But my business is the enforcement of justice. There's one thing I still can't understand."

He paused and looked at Bivens curiously.

"What's that?" the financier softly asked.

"Why you of all men on earth should have put this information in my hands. The honour of the achievement, if good shall come to the country, is really yours, not mine."

"And you can't conceive of my acting for the country's good?"

Bivens's black eyes twinkled.

"Not by the wildest leap of my imagination."

The twinkle broadened into a smile as the lawyer continued:

"Your code is simple, Cal. There's no provision in it for disinterested effort for others. Few financiers of modern times can conceive of a sane man deliberately working for the good of the people as against his own. In your face, there has never been any doubting, any perplexity, since you made your first strike in New York. Behind your black eyes there has always glowed the steady, deadly purpose of the man who knows exactly what he wants and how he is going to get it. This time you've got me up a tree. You have rendered the people a great service. You have placed me under personal obligations. But how you are going to get anything out of it is beyond me."

"Oh, I'll have my reward, my boy," Bivens answered jovially, as his dainty fingers again stroked his beard, pressing his mustache back from the thin lips, "and I assure you it will not be purely spiritual."

The door had scarcely closed on Stuart when Bivens pressed the button which called his confidential secretary.

In a moment the man stood at his elbow with the tense erect bearing of an orderly on the field of battle. The quick nervous touch of the master's hand on that button had told to his sensitive ears the story of a coming life-and-death struggle. His words came with sharp nervous energy:

"Yes sir?"

The financier slowly drew the big cigar from his mouth and spoke in low tones:

"A meeting of the Allied Bankers here in 30 minutes. No telephone messages. A personal summons to each. They enter one at a time that no one on the outside sees them come. You understand?"

"I understand."

Bivens raised his finger in warning. "Your life on the issue."

Trembling with excitement the secretary turned and quickly left the room.



CHAPTER V

GATHERING CLOUDS

The sensation which the District Attorney sprang in the sudden indictment of the president of the Iroquois Company was profound and far-reaching. The day before the indictment was presented to the Grand Jury stocks began to tumble without any apparent cause. The "big interests" who had hitherto counted on exhaustless funds to sustain them in any market they might choose to make were paralyzed by the suddenness of the attack on stocks and the daring of its hidden leader.

When the warrant for the arrest of the great man had been served and he was admitted to bail to await his coming trial, there was a feeble rally in the market, but the rats quickly began to desert a sinking ship. The president under indictment had ceased to be a power. There was a wild scramble of his associates who were equally guilty to save their own skins. The press, which at first denounced Stuart, now boldly demanded the merciless prosecution of all the guilty. And they hailed the brilliant young District Attorney as the coming man.

In the meantime all kinds of securities continued to tumble. For six consecutive days stocks had fallen with scarcely an hour's temporary rally. Every effort of the bull operators, who had ruled the market for the two years past, to stem the tide was futile. Below the surface, in the silent depths of growing suspicion and fear, an army of sappers and miners under the eye of one man were digging at the foundations of the business world—the faith of man in his fellow-man.

Each day there was a crash and each day the little financier and his unscrupulous allies marked a new victim. The next day the death notice was posted on a new door, and when the bomb had exploded they picked up the pieces and moved to a new attack.

In the midst of the campaign for the destruction of public credit which Bivens and his associates, the Allied Bankers, were conducting with such profound secrecy and such remarkable results, when their profits had piled up into millions, a bomb was suddenly exploded under their own headquarters.

The Van Dam Trust Company was put under the ban of the New York Clearing House. The act was a breach of faith, utterly unwarranted by any known law of the game. But it was done.

When the president of the company walked quietly into Bivens's office and made the announcement, for a moment the little dark man completely lost his nerve—cold beads of sweat started from his swarthy forehead.

"Are you joking?" he gasped.

"Do you think I'd joke about my own funeral?"

"No, of course not, but there must be some mistake."

"There's no mistake. It's a blow below the belt, but it's a knockout for the moment. They know we are solvent, two dollars for one. But they know we have $90,000,000 on deposit and we have some big enemies. They know that the group we have supported have smashed this market, and they've set out to fight the devil with fire. They're determined to force a show-down and see how much real money is behind us. We can pull through if we stand together."

The stolid face of the banker became a motionless mask as he asked:

"Are we going to stand together?"

Bivens sprang to his feet, exclaiming fiercely:

"Until hell freezes over!"

The banker smiled feebly for the first time in a week.

"Then it's all right, Mr. Bivens. We'll pull through. They'll start a run on us to-morrow. Five millions in cash will meet it and we'll win, hands down. We have powerful friends. Our only sin is our association with your group. We must have that five millions in the safe before the doors are opened to-morrow."

"You shall have it," was the firm answer.

With a cheerful pressure of the hand the president of the Van Dam Trust Company left and Bivens called his secretary.

"We turn the market to-morrow—orders to all our men. Knock the bottom out of it until the noon hour, then turn and send it skyward with a bound. You understand?"

"Yes sir."

With an instinctive military salute the secretary hurried to execute the order.

* * * * *

When Dr. Woodman returned home that night from one of his endless tramps among the poor, Harriet opened the door.

Something about the expression of his face startled her. For the first time in her life she saw in its gaunt lines the shadow of despair. He had aged rapidly of late, but the sunlight had never before quite faded from his eyes.

"What is it, Papa dear?" she asked tenderly, slipping an arm about his neck as she drew him down into his favourite chair.

"What, child?" he responded vaguely.

"You look utterly worn out. Tell me what's the matter. I'm no longer a child. I'm a woman now—strong and well and brave. Let me help you."

"You do help me, baby!" he laughed with an effort at his old-time joyous spirit. "Every time I touch your little hand, you give me new life. Every note from your sweet voice thrills me with new hope. And I dream dreams and build castles and plan for to-morrow as if I were a boy. What more can a woman do? What more did God mean for a beautiful daughter to do for her old father?"

"Well, I want to do more, I want to share your troubles and help you carry your burdens."

"And so you shall, my dear. Some day your voice will thrill thousands as it now thrills my heart. You'll win fame and wealth for your father. You shall care for him in old age. And his pride and joy shall be to say to those he meets—'the great singer, yes, my daughter, sir—my little baby!'"

Harriet nestled closer.

"But I want to help now. I'm afraid I've been thoughtless and selfish. You look so miserable to-night. It cuts me to the heart."

"Nonsense, Baby dear," he broke in cheerfully. "I'm not miserable. I've really had a good day. I've spent the whole afternoon superintending the distributing of flowers among the hospitals. And I've discovered a curious thing—you couldn't imagine what it is?"

The doctor paused and laughed in his old playful way.

"What?" she cried.

Harriet clapped her hands with a moment's childish happiness as she had done so often when her father propounded one of his mysterious problems for her solution.

The doctor whispered:

"I've discovered that pinks are feminine and roses masculine."

"How?"

"Because the men in the hospitals all beg for pinks and the women for roses. It's curious. I never hit on the explanation before. Isn't it reasonable?"

"Yes, quite," was the sober answer. "But it doesn't explain the lines of suffering in your dear face to-night—I'm worried."

"But I'm not suffering!" he insisted with a frown. "On the other hand I'm cheerful to-night. I saved a kid's life with a flower. His father used to work for me in the old days. They asked me to come to see him. There was no hope. He had been given up to die. I gave him a fragrant white pink. His thin feverish fingers grasped it eagerly. In all his life he had never held a flower in his hand before. He pressed it to his lips, his soul thrilled at its sweet odour, and the little tired spirit came staggering back from the mists of Eternity just to see what it meant. He will live. It was the feather's weight that tipped the beam of life the right way. How little it takes sometimes to give life and happiness. And how tragic and pitiful the fact that so many of us can't get that little at the right moment!"

The joy and laughter had slowly faded from his face and voice as he spoke until the last words had unconsciously fallen into accents of despair.

The girl's arms slipped around his neck in a tightening hold and she pressed her cheek against his a moment in silence.

"Papa dear, it's no use trying to deceive me. I've the right to know what is troubling you. I'm not a child. You must tell me."

"Why, it's nothing much, dearie," he answered gently. "I'm worried a little about money. I've a note due at the bank and they've called on me unexpectedly to meet it. But I'll manage somehow. Don't you worry about it. Everything will come out all right. I feel like a millionaire among the people I've seen to-day."

"I'll give up my music, go to work and help you right away."

"Sh!"

The father placed his hand gently over her lips and the tears sprang into his eyes in spite of his effort to keep them back.

"Don't talk sacrilege, my child. Such words are blasphemy. God gave me a man's body for the coarse work of bread-winning. He gave you the supreme gift, a voice that throbs with eloquence, a power that can lift and inspire the world. Only when you are cultivating that gift are you working. Then you are doing the highest and finest thing of which you are capable. I should be a criminal if I permitted you to do less. Never say such a thing again unless you would make me utterly miserable."

He paused and took her cheeks between his hands.

"Promise me, dear—it's the one wish of my heart, the one thing worth working and struggling for—promise me that you will never stop until the training of your voice is complete, that no matter what happens you will obey me in this. It is my one command. You will obey me?"

There was dignity and compelling power now in the deep tones of his voice.

The girl felt instinctively its authority.

"Yes, Papa, I promise, if it will make you happy."

"It's the only thing I live for. I've never said this to you before, but I say it now and I don't want you ever to forget it. Now run along to bed and never bother your pretty head again about such things. I'll find food and a home for my baby and she shall live her own beautiful life to the last reach of its power. All I ask is that you do your level best with the gift of God."

"I'll try, Papa dear," was the quiet answer as she kissed him again and softly left the room.

Harriet had scarcely reached her room when Adams, the cashier of one of the Allied Banks, who owed the doctor for three months' rent, entered the library with quick nervous tread.

"I've big news, sir," he said excitedly.

The doctor looked up with a half bantering smile.

"You don't mean that you've got the whole of your three months' rent? If you have, break it to me gently, Adams, or I'll faint."

"Better than three months' rent," the cashier whispered nervously. "I've a big tip on the stock market."

The older man grunted contemptuously.

"Yes, that's what ails you, I know. You've been getting them for some time. That's why you owe me for your rooms. That's why there's something the matter with your accounts."

"I swear to you, Doctor, my accounts are clean. My expenses have been so big the past year, with the doctor's bills I've had to pay, I simply couldn't live. The price of everything on earth has gone up fifty per cent. except my wages. I've bought a few stocks. I've made a little and lost a little. I've got the chance now I've been waiting for. I've a real piece of information from the big insiders who are going to make the market to-morrow."

The doctor shook his head and looked at the cashier with humourous pity. The man was trembling from excitement he could not control.

"So you've really got it straight, this time?"

"Beyond the shadow of doubt!" he cried excitedly. "I want you to share with me the fortune I'm going to make."

He paused and breathed heavily, his eyes widening into an unnatural stare, as he continued:

"My God, if I only had ten thousand dollars to-morrow I could be worth a hundred thousand before night!"

The doctor leaned forward with deepening interest.

"You really believe such rot?"

"Believe it, man, it's as certain as fate! There can't be any mistake about it. At twelve o'clock the tide will turn and they'll begin to leap upward in the wildest market that's been seen in a generation. Doctor, you've been so good to me and I can trust you implicitly. You're the only man on earth I've told. You need money. If you can raise five hundred dollars in cash you can make five thousand in six hours."

The older man's eyes flashed with sudden excitement, which he suppressed with an effort.

"Adams, you're crazy," was the gruff reply.

"I've got it straight, I tell you!" he went on breathlessly. "I got it from Bivens's private secretary. The little weasel has made millions on this break and he has been selling the market short for two weeks. To-morrow morning he is going to smash it for the last time and at noon throw his millions on the bull side. The market will go down three points on the break in the morning. It will jump five points in ten minutes when it turns the other way. There are stocks on the list that will recover ten points before the market closes."

"Bivens is going to do this?" the older man interrupted.

"Yes. I got it from the man who took his order."

"Then it's a trick. It's a lie. Take my advice and do just the opposite from what you understand. Bivens will sell out his partners in the deal."

"Man, he can't sell out!" the cashier insisted. "It's his own deal. He's in it for all he's worth!"

The doctor rose with sudden excitement.

"Adams, this is the first time in my life I've ever been tempted to buy stocks."

"You can't lose, sir."

"But I'm in desperate need of money. I've a note for three thousand due. I've two thousand dollars set aside to finish my little girl's musical studies. I've got to meet that note somehow and I've got to have the money for her. It looks like a chance. I'll go in and watch the market to-morrow."

"If it don't act exactly as I say—don't touch it. It if does, go in for all you're worth. If stocks start down as I say they will, sell short, cover at noon, and then buy for the rise. Don't listen to fools, just buy, buy, buy! You can sell before the market closes and make twenty thousand dollars."

"I'll drop into a broker's office and watch the market open any way, Adams."

The doctor seized his hand cordially.

"And I want to thank you for your thoughtfulness in coming to me."

"I wish I could do more, sir," the cashier said, with deep feeling. "I'll never forget your kindness to me the past three months. When the sun shines again, you'll hear from me."

"Oh, that's all right, my boy. Some men invest in stocks, some in bonds, some in real estate. My best investments have always been in the good turns I've done my neighbours. Good night."



CHAPTER VI

THE STORM BREAKS

The morning came in a mist of dull gray clouds that clung in rings about the street lamps like the damp fog of a typical February thaw, yet it was the last day of October. Such weather was uncanny. It added to the strange feeling of impending calamity which had been hanging over the business world during the summer and had broken at last into the fierce storms of disaster of the past two weeks. Men who usually rose at nine o'clock were up at dawn. Some of them hadn't slept at all.

The more optimistic traders on the Stock Exchange expected to-day a change in the market. Stocks had declined for two weeks with appalling swiftness and fatality. Every hour had marked the ruin of men hitherto bulwarks of solidity. Experienced men reasoned and reasoned from experience that there must be a turn somewhere. The bottom surely had been reached. The time for a rally had come. Nine men out of every ten in the market at its close the night before expected the rally to begin at the stroke of the gong the next morning. The men who bought stocks in the closing hour were sure of this.

They rose to curse the weather. For the weather always affects speculation. Wall Street is superstitious. The proud intellect that struts the floor of the Exchange and scorns the powers of his feebler fellow-men carries secretly a horse chestnut in his pocket for luck. Without an exception all these great men believe in signs and wonders, in witches, palmists, spells and hoodoos.

Weather always gets on their nerves. Half the fluctuations of stocks under normal conditions of trade are purely the results of the mental states of the men who buy and sell.

The doctor rose early with a new hope filling his heart which no cloud could obscure. He watched Harriet pour his coffee at breakfast with his old-time smile of good cheer playing about his fine mouth.

Stuart was sleeping late. He was up until one o'clock writing a reply to a peculiarly venomous attack on his integrity which a morning paper had printed. The writer had boldly accused him of being the hired tool of the group of financial cut-throats who were coining millions out of the ruin of others in the destruction of public faith.

His reply was simple and his concluding paragraph was unanswerable, except by an epithet.

"My business is the enforcement of justice. I am the servant of the people. If Wall Street can not stand the enforcement of law, so much the worse for the Street. It's no affair of mine. I didn't make the laws of the State any more than I made the law of gravitation. Nor did I write the Ten Commandments, but I have an abiding faith that they will stand when the last stone in the Stock Exchange building shall have crumbled into dust. I refuse to believe that the only way to save Wall Street is by a sworn officer of the law compounding a felony."

The doctor hurried down town to the office of a friend on Pine Street, an old-fashioned banker and broker whose name had always stood for honesty and fair dealing and conservative business. It was half an hour before the Stock Exchange opened but the dingy little office was packed with an excited crowd of customers. They all talked in low tones as if fearing the spirits of the air that hovered near. An eager group leaned over the bulletin from the London market. London was up half a point. The credulous were pleased. It was a good omen. The pessimists scoffed.

"Rigged from New York!" sneered a fat German the office boy had nicknamed the "Judge."

The doctor was struck with the curiously mottled crowd that jostled one another, waiting for the first cry of the opening quotations. Every walk and profession of life had its representative there—merchants, lawyers, doctors, clerks, clergymen, barbers, boot-blacks, retired capitalists and capitalists about to retire permanently.

The saddest group of all was in the adjoining room reserved for ladies. An opening through the partition wall allowed them to see the quotations as they were placed on the board around which the throng of jostling, smoking, perspiring men moved and stood. Most of these pale excited women with their hats awry and their hair disordered were the wives of solid business and professional men who wouldn't allow their husbands to know of their little venture into stocks for the world. They peeped through the opening occasionally and turned their backs quickly to avoid the gaze of the men.

But the most ominous figures were two or three "vultures" who stood grim and silent on the outer fringe of the moving crowd. Only one or two of the older ones recognized them.

The "Judge" saw them first.

"Ach, Gott, look at dem!" he exclaimed. "They never come except for carrion; they've scented the dead. It's all over with us, poys!"

One of the most curious things in the history of Wall Street is the appearance of these vultures in a panic. They scent the final death-struggle with unerring accuracy. They never buy stocks except in those awful moments of ruin. They hold them grimly until the next tidal-wave of prosperity, sell out at the top, and wait patiently for the next killing. They are the only outsiders who ever make a dollar in Wall Street.

The doctor followed old Dugro, the head of the firm, into his private office and asked his advice. He got it—sharp, short and to the point.

"Go home, Doctor, and stay there. This market is no place for an amateur. It's all I can do to keep the wolf from my door in these days."

"But I've received some important information."

"Keep it dark," old Dugro scowled. "Don't tell it to your worst enemy. If you've got a dollar, nail it up and sleep on the box."

"But I've some information I think I'm going to act on and I want to open a small account with you."

"All right. I've warned you," was the grim answer. "I wish you good luck."

The doctor drew his check for two thousand dollars and smilingly took his place among the crowd before the board. He was never surer of anything in his life than he was of Adam's sincerity. He prided himself on the fact that he was a judge of character. He was sure the cashier was wrong in his accounts; he was equally sure that the information he had received from Bivens's private secretary was accurate, provided, of course, the little weasel carried out the program he had mapped out.

The ticker would tell the story in the first hour. If stocks should sell off three points before noon, he would know. He determined to put this to the test first. He would not sell the market short. He would be content with the big jump the market would make upward when it started.

The ticker began its sharp metallic click.

The crowd stirred as if the electric shock had swept every nerve. A moment of breathless silence and the board boy leaning over the ticker shouted:

"Atch—92-1/2!"

A groan, low, half-stifled, half-articulate came from the room and then a moment of silence followed.

"There, Gott," muttered the "Judge." "I knew London was rigged—I told you so!"

In quick, sharp, startling tones the man at the ticker called out the quotations as the market rapidly sank.

For half an hour the downward movement never paused for a moment. The silence of the crowded room became more and more suffocating. Men stood in their tracks with staring eyes and dry lips as they watched the last hope of a morning rally fade into despair.

The doctor's breath came quicker and his eyes began to sparkle intense excitement.

Now and then old Dugro's stolid face appeared at the door and summoned another man to his inner office—"the chamber of horrors"—where the lambs are sheared. The story was always the same. The customer squirmed and asked for a little more time to watch the market. The old man was adamant.

"I've got to have more money to margin your stock or I'll sell it in five minutes. This firm is sound as a dollar and it's going to stay sound as long as I'm at the helm. If I carry weak accounts I imperil the money of every man who has put his faith in my bank."

If the squirming victim had more money he always put it up. If he had drawn his last dollar he just wiped the cold sweat from his brow and gasped:

"You'll have to sell out."

Quick as a flash the old man's hand was on the telephone and his broker on the floor of the Exchange was executing the order.

As the noon hour drew near the doctor's heart was beating like a sledge hammer. Bivens's programme had been carried out to the letter. Stocks had declined for the first hour a point, and in the second hour suddenly smashed down two more points amid the wildest excitement on the Exchange.

There was a momentary lull and the market hesitated. For ten minutes the sales dragged with only fractional changes—first up, then down.

The moment to buy had come. The doctor was sure of it. Stocks had touched bottom. The big bear pool would turn bull in a moment and the whole market would rise by leaps and bounds.

He called old Dugro.

"Buy for me now, Amalgamated Copper, the market leader, for all I'm worth!"

The broker glared at him.

"Buy! Buy in this market? Man, are you mad?"

"I said buy!" was the firm answer. "What's the limit?"

"Not a share without a stop loss order under it."

"Well, with the stop?"

"I'll buy you 400 shares on a four-point stop."

"And when it goes up five points?" the doctor asked eagerly.

"I'll double your purchase and raise your stop, and every five points up I'll keep on until you are a millionaire!"

The old broker smiled contemptuously, but it was all lost on the doctor.

"Do it quick."

The order was scarcely given before it was executed. Dugro handed the memorandum to Woodman with a grunt.

"It don't take long to get 'em to-day!"

The words had scarcely left his lips when a hoarse cry rose from the crowd hanging over the ticker.

Copper had leaped upward a whole point between sales. A wild cheer swept the room. For ten minutes every stock on the list responded and began to climb.

The doctor's face was wreathed in smiles. Men began to talk and laugh and feel human for the first moment in two weeks.

Dugro grasped the doctor's hand and his deep voice rang above the roar:

"You're a mascot! You've broken the spell! For God's sake stay with us!"

Suddenly another cry came from the crowd at the ticker. The boy at the board sprang to the instrument with a single bound, his eyes blazing with excitement. His cry pierced every ear in the room with horror.

"The hell you say! Down a whole point! No!"

There was a moment's hush, every breath was held. Only the sharp click of the ticker broke the stillness.

"It was one point," groaned the Judge, "now, Gott, it's two—now it's three!"

The last words ended in a scream. Hell had broken loose at last.

The panic had come!

In ten minutes stocks tumbled five points and the doctor's last dollar was swept into space while the whole market plunged down, down, down into the abyss of ruin and despair.

Men no longer tried to conceal their emotion. Some wept, some cursed, some laughed; but the most pitiful sight of all was the man who could do neither, the man with white lips and the strange hunted expression in his eyes who was looking Death in the face for the first time.

A full quarter of an hour of the panic had spent itself before the dazed crowds in the broker's offices read the startling news that caused the big break. The ticker shrieked its message above the storm's din like a little laughing demon:

"The Van Dam Trust Company Has Closed Its Doors and Asked for the Appointment of a Receiver!"

"Impossible!"

"A fake!"

"Hell—it's a joke!"

From all who read it at first came these muttered exclamations. It was beyond belief.

The "Judge" was particularly emphatic.

"Dot's a lie, chentlemens! Take my vord for it! Dey haf ninety millions on deposit."

It took the second bulletin with particulars to convince them. Bivens had not kept his solemn pledge. The great bank had stood the run for two hours and closed its doors. And the work of destruction had just begun.

At three o'clock, the doctor walked out of Dugro's office without a dollar. It was utterly impossible for a man of his temperament to realize it. The crash had come so suddenly, its work was so complete and overwhelming it seemed a sort of foolish prank Fate had played on him.

He walked home in a state of strange excitement. He had seen many sights in his eventful life among the people of New York; never had he passed through a scene so weird, so horrible, so haunting as the five hours he had just spent among those men and women whom the struggle for money had transformed into raving, jibbering, snivelling maniacs. It was too absurd to be real. His own loss was appalling but at least he thanked God he was not mad. He yet had two good hands and legs. He could see, hear, smell, taste and feel, and he had a soul with five more senses still turned upward toward the infinite and eternal by which he could see the invisible and hear the inaudible. He felt almost happy by contrast with the fools he had left shuffling over the floor of Dugro's office.

His own sense of loss was merely a blur. The revelation he had just had of the mad lust for money which had begun to possess all classes was yet so fresh and startling he could form no adequate conception of his own position.

It was not until he entered his own door, and paused at the sound of Harriet's voice, that he began to realize the enormity of the tragedy that had befallen him.



CHAPTER VII

AT THE KING'S COMMAND

Bivens's plan would have gone through without a hitch but for one thing. He had overlooked the fact that the Kingdom of Mammon in America has a king and that the present ruler is very much alive. This king has never been officially crowned and his laws are unwritten, but his rule is none the less real, and he is by far the most potent monarch Wall Street has ever known. A man of few words, of iron will, of fiery temper, of keen intellect, proud, ambitious, resourceful, bold, successful, a giant in physique, and a giant in personality. He moves among men with the conscious tread of royalty, thinks big thoughts and does big deeds as quietly and effectively as small men do small ones, and then moves on to greater tasks.

It happens that his majesty is an old time Wall Street banker with inherited traditions about banks and the way their funds should be handled. He had long held a pet aversion. The Van Dam Trust Company had become an offense to his nostrils.

His own bank, hitherto the most powerful in America, is a private concern which bears the royal name. It had long been the acknowledged seat of the Empire of Mammon and within its unpretentious walls the king has held his court for years, extending his sceptre of gold in gracious favour to whom he likes, refusing admission to his presence for those who might offend his fancy.

The Van Dam Trust Company had built a huge palace far up town and its president had attempted to set up a court of his own. He had gathered about him a following, among them an ex-president of the United States. Gold had poured into the treasury of the great marble palace in a constant stream until its deposits had reached the unprecedented sum of $90,000,000, a sum greater than the royal bank itself could boast.

When the king heard the first rumour of the fact that the Van Dam Trust was backing the schemes of the Allied Bankers in their sensational raid on the market his big nostrils suddenly dilated.

At last he had them just where he wanted them. He signed the death warrant of the bank and handed it to his executioner without a word of comment. And then a most curious thing happened. The king summoned to his presence a little dark swarthy man.

When Bivens received this order to appear at court he was dumfounded. He had long worshipped and feared the king with due reverence and always spoke his name with awe. To be actually called into his august presence in such a crisis was an undreamed-of honour.

He was sure that his majesty had heard of his generous offer to help the Van Dam Trust in its hour of trouble and meant to reward him with promotion to high rank in the Empire.

He hastened into the royal presence with beating heart.

A court official conducted him into the king's private room where the ruler sat alone, quietly smoking.

The sovereign glanced up with quick energy.

"Mr. Bivens, I believe?"

The little man bowed low.

"I hear that you are about to aid the Van Dam Trust with four millions in cash?"

Bivens smiled with pride.

"My secretary will deliver the money to the bank within an hour."

The king suddenly wheeled in his big arm chair, raised his eyebrows and fixed the little man with a stare that froze the blood in his veins. When he spoke at length his tones were smooth as velvet.

"If I may give you a suggestion, Mr. Bivens, I would venture to say that the Van Dam Trust Company is beyond aid. The larger interests of the nation require the elimination of this institution and its associates.

"I have heard good reports of you and I wish to save you from the disaster about to befall the gentlemen who have been conducting the present campaign in Wall Street. If your secretary will report to me at once with the four millions you have set aside for the Van Dam Company I shall be pleased to place your name on my executive council in the big movement we begin to-day. The other gentlemen whom I have thus honoured are now waiting for me in the adjoining room. They represent a banking power that is resistless at the present moment.

"When the Van Dam Trust closes its doors to-day, a temporary panic will follow. We will give the gentlemen who started this excitement a taste of their own medicine, render a service to the nation, and, incidentally of course, earn an honest dollar or two for ourselves. I trust I have your hearty support in this programme?"

Bivens again bowed low.

"My hearty support and my profoundest gratitude!"

"I'll expect your secretary with your check for four millions within thirty minutes."

The king waved a friendly gesture of dismissal and the little dark figure tremblingly withdrew.

It was not until he had reached the seclusion of his own office that the magnitude of the crisis through which he had passed fully dawned on Bivens. One of the dreams of his life had been to touch elbows with this mighty ruler at whose name he had often trembled. To-day he had joined the magic circle of those about the throne. The place had been bought at a fearful price. But the end would justify the means. No one knew with clearer perception than he what the king meant by his "suggestions." They were orders. He had been ordered to stab his associates.

At first he had raged in silent fury, but as the king continued his wonderful speech and revealed his generous intentions, his anger had melted into glowing gratitude.

"After all, business means war!" he exclaimed, "a war in which dog eat dog and devil take the hindmost becomes sooner or later the supreme law."

It hurt to break his word—the pledge he had made the president of the Van Dam Company—but it was unavoidable. Their death warrant had already been signed. His money would only be sunk in the bottomless pit the king had dug beneath them. He felt himself for the moment in the grip of forces beyond human control, blind, inevitable, overwhelming. The only thing for a sane man to do was to ride the storm and take care of himself. He had found a place of safety. And such a place—at the right hand of the king himself.

He had dreamed of making a paltry five millions when the raid on the market had ended. Now his very soul stood blinded by the splendour of the vision before him. Beyond a doubt in the holocaust which would follow the day's work he would more than treble his entire fortune, perhaps multiply it by four. He could see it all before it happened. His slender hands trembled as he fumbled his beard and his bead eyes became two scintillating points of light. The thirst for gold was now a raging fever and his blood molten fire. The lust for gain had ceased to be a human passion—it was the hunger of a beast.

Without a moment's hesitation he gave the cruel orders that sent his associates hurling over the precipice. As the day progressed he stood with one hand on the tape of his private ticker and the other holding the receiver of the telephone which connected him with the floor of the Stock Exchange. He received no word from friend or foe without. Only the king's messenger could reach him. He paused not a moment for food or drink, and at three o'clock when the market closed he stood with a hundred yards of tape from the ticker coiled serpent like about his legs, the wreck of empires of wealth beneath his feet, his heart still beating a single wild cry—"more, more, more!"

What a day! In all the annals of man's inhumanity to his fellow-man never were there more opportunities for generosity, for kindly deeds and noble acts of kingly heroism. Never were so few recorded.

Martial war at least has for its justification the flag and the life of a nation for which it stands the gleaming symbol in the sky, and in real war they do not kill the wounded or fire on women and children. Even the Turk does not fire on a hospital. But in this war which maniacs waged for gold, they fired on women and children without mercy and when night had fallen they searched the field, dragged out and stabbed to death the wounded!

When the president of the Van Dam Trust Company failed to receive the promised millions from Bivens he called his telephone and receiving no answer sprang into his automobile and dashed down town to the little main office.

When the clerk at the door informed him that Mr. Bivens could not be seen by anyone, he turned quickly on his heel, drove back to the palatial house of his bank, smiled sadly at the mob in front of its huge pillars, ordered its bronze doors closed, walked around the corner to his home, locked himself in his room and blew his brains out.



CHAPTER VIII

A RAY OF SUNLIGHT

For a week the panic held the financial world in the grip of death. A dozen banks had closed their doors and a score of men who had long boasted their courage among men had died the death of cowards when put to the test.

One of the most curious results of the panic was the revulsion of popular feeling against the daring and honest young officer of the law who had rendered the greatest service to the people wrought by any public servant in a generation.

His enemies saw their opportunity. When the panic was at its worst they opened their artillery of slander and falsehood. The people who yesterday had shouted his praises for the fearless work in their behalf joined his enemies and vied with each other now in reviling him. He was hailed as the arch traitor of the people, the man who had used his high office to produce a panic and carve a fortune out of the ruin of millions whose deposits were tied up in banks that might never again open their doors.

Stuart, stung to desperation by their infamous charges, attempted at first to repel them. He stopped at last in disgust and maintained afterward a dignified silence.

From the first day of the run Bivens had laughed in the face of the crowd that besieged the door of his big Broadway bank. He stood on top of the granite steps and shouted in their faces:

"Come on, you dirty cowards! I've got your money inside waiting for you, every dollar of it, one hundred cents on the dollar!"

The crowd made no reply. They merely moved up in line in stolid silence a little closer to the door. Each day this line had grown longer. Bivens was not worrying. The king had spoken. The people outside did the worrying. They had lost faith in everything and every man. What they wanted was cash. They camped on the doorstep at night and in grim silence held their place in line.

The folly of these people in their insane efforts to wreck Bivens's bank was making impossible a return to normal business.

Stuart determined to face this crowd and have it out with them. He believed that a bold appeal to their reason would silence his critics and allay their insane fears.

He told Bivens of his purpose over the telephone, and the financier protested vigorously:

"Don't do it, Jim, I beg of you," he pleaded. "It will be a waste of breath. Besides, you risk your life."

"I'll be there when the bank opens at ten o'clock to-morrow morning," was the firm answer.

Stuart left his office at three and hurried to his room. He wished to be alone and collect the vague ideas of passionate appeal which he felt rioting through his mind. He stood by his window looking across the square. The fall winds had strewn the grass with dead leaves and the half-bare limbs swayed desolately. The big houses on the north side, were unusually quiet. He could see crepe fluttering from two doors. The widow of the dead president of a suspended bank lived in one of them; in the other the widow of a great man who was found dead in his office the second day of the panic. He had been buried yesterday.

A feeling of stupid depression crept over his senses, and held them in its deadly embrace. He couldn't think. He gave up the effort and asked Harriet to go with him for a ramble over the hills, up the Hudson. They took the subway to the end of the line, climbed to the top of the hills overlooking the river, sat down in the woods on a fallen tree and watched the sun slowly sink in scarlet glory behind the Palisades.

Neither had spoken for several minutes. He loved these rambles with his slender golden-haired little pal, because it wasn't necessary to talk. She had developed the rarest of all gifts among womankind, a genius for silence. He wondered at it, too, for she was such a little chatterbox as a kid.

A squirrel climbed down from a tree nearby where he was storing his winter food, paused, and looked up in surprise at his unexpected visitors. Stuart smiled and pressed Harriet's hand, nodding toward the squirrel. She smiled an answer in silence. The faintest little flush tinged the smooth white skin of her neck at the touch of his hand, but he never noticed it.

A ruffled grouse suddenly sprang on the end of the log, cocked his head in surprise and stood trembling with fear, uncertain whether the intruders in his domain were friend or foe.

Harriet saw him first, gently pressed Stuart's hand and whispered:

"Look, Jim."

As Stuart turned his head, the bird rose with a roar that brought a cry of terror to the girl's lips. Involuntarily she gripped his hand and nestled closer.

"Scared you out of a year's growth, didn't he?"

"He certainly did."

"What a flood of memories the whir of those wings brings back to my tired soul," Stuart dreamily cried; "of woods and fields and hills and valleys of the South, where men and women yet live a sane human life! I'd begun to forget there were any hills and fields."

"I wish I lived down South, Jim!"

"Why?"

"I don't know, it's just an idea of mine. I suppose I get it from hearing you tell about their old-fashioned ways, their neighbourly habits and the sweet home life."

The man was silent. The deep soft note of a mallard drake far above the treetops caused him to look up.

He seized Harriet's arm.

"Watch now, little pal—the river—you'll see a flock of ducks swing into that open space under the sun!"

He had scarcely spoken when the ducks circled the broad sweep of the river in a graceful curve, their wings flashing in the rays of the setting sun, and slowly one at a time dropped their feet and pitched in the little smooth bay at the foot of the hill. The sun was just sinking behind the tree tops on the Palisades, lighting the calm mirror-like surface of the water with every colour of the rainbow.

"Now, look behind you, dear!" Stuart exclaimed.

"Why, it's the moon just rising, isn't it? I never saw the moon rising through the treetops before. It's glorious, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's full moon to-night. See how high the tide is on the river banks. It's just high water now—the highest, fullest tide of the month. It will be less to-morrow and the next and the next day until it falls back to its lowest point two weeks from now, then starts climbing up again for the next full moon. Every sailor, man and bird, knows this. I wonder how many men and women in this money-mad city know that the tide ever ebbs and flows around Manhattan Island at all."

"It's wonderful—isn't it?"

"What dear, the men and women of New York or the tides?"

"Both, Jim, when we try to understand them, isn't it all God's work?"

"I don't know, child. I sometimes think God made the world and only man or the devil built the cities afterward. I believe the reason why the spirit grows savage and we forget that we are human here so often is that we never see the sun or moon. We never hear the stir of wings in the sky, feel the throb of Nature's heart in the ebb and flow of tides, or walk with our heads among the stars."

Harriet sat in thoughtful silence a while and a curious searching look crept into her eyes as she softly asked:

"You have seen much of Mr. Bivens lately, Jim—I've wondered if you have never yet looked your dead love in the face?"

"No, little pal."

"You are still afraid?"

An answer started to his lips and he choked it back.

She laid her warm hand on his.

"Tell me, I want to help you. We are pals, you know."

"Well, I'm ashamed to confess it dear, but I am afraid, horribly afraid! I've been fighting some grim battles, but I'll have to see her sooner or later."

"I wish you wouldn't," the girl said, wistfully.

"I'll try to keep away—but every turn in the wheel seems only to bring us closer. My association with Bivens in this prosecution of crime was not of my choosing, but it came. I shall be compelled to see him often."

"Does she know that you are afraid?"

"I think not. She feels that I've never forgiven her treachery, but come, dearie, it's growing dark, we must hurry. I've a hard night's work before me. You've helped me immensely."

"How?"

"I don't know, child. The sunlight just seems to get tangled in your hair, and it always shines in your eyes day and night. You warm me into life and health, just being near you."

Harriet smiled tenderly, and hurried across the hills in silence by his side.

When they passed out of the last clump of trees near the subway station she looked up into his face and slowly asked:

"Did any one else ever have that effect on you, Jim?"

"Yes," he answered soberly.

"Who?"

The question was asked in a low whisper, but it was not so low that Stuart failed to catch its accent of pain.

He laughed, teasingly.

"My mother."

"And no one else?"

"No one else."

"Well, I'm jealous of that sort of influence. I wish a monopoly."

"You have it, dear. Somehow others bring pain and storm and stress. But you have always brought peace and rest."

"Then I'm content."

She looked up and laughed softly.



CHAPTER IX

BENEATH THE SKIN

Stuart rose next morning with a dull headache. The more he had puzzled over the speech he should make to the mob besieging Bivens's bank the more doubtful seemed the outcome. Still to remain silent longer, amid the accusations which were being daily hurled at him, was intolerable. He was possessed with a fierce desire to meet at least one of his foes face to face.

He took his breakfast early and walked down town to his office through the Bowery and Centre Street as he was in the habit of doing occasionally. Everything rubbed him the wrong way this morning. Every sight and sound of the city seemed to bruise and hurt. Never before had the ugliness of the elevated railroad struck him with such crushing hopelessness. He felt that its rusty hideous form, looming against the sky line, was a crime. The crowded trolley cars, the rushing, rattling lines of drays, the ugly, dirty, cheap-looking people hurrying past—it was all horrible!

The sense of loneliness and isolation grew upon him—a sort of dumb hatred of all these unthinking stolid beasts of burden who were bending their backs daily to their stupid tasks, trampling each other to death, too, in their own mad sordid scramble for money.

He paused at the Brooklyn Bridge and stood in silence while the black torrent of unmeaning faces, whose expression this morning was distinctly inhuman, rolled past and spread out into the square and streets.

He was glad for the moment that not one of them knew him, though he was daily giving his life to their service.

He turned and pushed his way through the throngs, crossed the City Hall Square and in a few minutes reached the Broadway corner on which the Bivens bank stood. Its magnificent marble facade, crowned with gilded dome, gleamed white and solemn in the morning sun like some proud temple man had built to the worship of God.

The crowd about its doors, which had not yet been opened, was unusually large and turbulent. With the aid of two officers he pushed and fought his way unrecognized through the mob and at last reached the side entrance of the bank.

Bivens, watching from within, opened the door and he stepped inside.

"Jim, if you try to speak to that gang of madmen you're a fool," the financier began, with a scowl. "What they need is not eloquence, they need a club."

"You can't blame them for wanting their money, Cal, after all it's theirs, not yours, you know."

"You're going to talk to them?"

"I'm going to try."

"It's a foolish and dangerous thing to do."

"Nonsense. They are at least human. They have reason."

A low howl of rage stirred the crowd without. A fight for place in the line had broken out.

"Is that reason?" Bivens asked, cynically. "It's not even human. It's the growl of the beast that always sleeps beneath the skin."

"I haven't lost faith in my fellow-men yet," was the dogged answer.

"All right, good luck. I know your intentions are the best. You think it's your duty to yourself and the people. I'm sorry I can't stay to hear you. I've an important meeting this morning. I must go at once. I've instructed my detectives inside to stand by you if you need help."

"Thanks, I won't need them."

The little swarthy figure paused at the door.

"Don't fool yourself into believing anybody in that crowd cares about the work you have done in their service. Scores of them are under deep personal obligations to me. But I'm leaving this building by my neighbour's roof this morning. You don't want to forget, Jim, that the rabble for whom even Christ lived and died, shouted in his face at last 'Crucify him! Crucify him!'"

Stuart smiled at the incongruous farce of Bivens's familiarity with the Bible—yet there was no mistaking the fact of his emotions and the sincerity of his religious faith. The little financier had already begun to pose to himself as a martyr and a public benefactor. In spite of howling mobs and crushing markets he was busy now saving the credit of the Nation! He was one of the group of the king's council engaged in that important work. The "undesirable" had been eliminated and now a vast pool was being formed to support the market and kindly hold the securities until the people could get their breath and make money enough to buy them back at a profit. In due time he knew that his name would be enrolled with the king's as a patriot and public benefactor.

Bivens lingered a moment as if reluctant to give up dissuading Stuart, waved him a friendly adieu at last, stepped into the elevator and left by the roof.

It was yet fifteen minutes to ten, the hour for opening the bank's doors, and Stuart decided to address the crowd immediately.

In accordance with Bivens's instructions the cashier opened the bronze doors and squeezed through, admitting Stuart and two detectives. At the sight of the cashier a thrill of horror swept the crowd—half-groan, half-sigh, half-cry, inarticulate, inhuman, beastly in its grovelling fear.

"Great God!"

"They're going to suspend!"

"It's all over!"

The groans melted into broken curses and exclamations and died into silence as the cashier lifted his hand.

"I have the honour, gentlemen, of presenting this morning a distinguished servant of the people who has a message for you, the man whose unselfish devotion to the cause of Justice has earned him the right to a hearing, the Honourable James Stuart, your District Attorney."

The young lawyer stepped from the doorway in front of the cashier, who retired.

A roar of rage swept the crowd. Howls, curses, catcalls, hisses, hoots and yells were hurled into his face. It was a new experience in Stuart's life. He flushed red, stood for a moment surveying the mob with growing anger, and lifted his hand for silence.

The answer was a storm of hisses. Apparently he hadn't a friend in all the swaying mass of howling maniacs. He drew his heavy brows down over his eyes and the square jaws ground together with sullen determination. He folded his arms deliberately and waited for silence. Evidently these people had swallowed every lie his enemies had printed. It was incredible that rational human beings should be such fools, but it was true.

For a moment the hideous thought forced itself into his soul that a life of unselfish public service was futile. In all this babel of jangling cries and cat-calls not one voice was lifted in decent protest. He felt that his work was a failure and he had been pitching straws against the wind.

As wave after wave of idiotic hissing rose and fell only to swell again into greater fury a feeling of blind rage filled his being. He understood at last the persistence in the human mind of the doctrine of hell. It was a necessity of the moral universe. God simply must consume such trash. Nothing else could be done with it.

With a sudden impulse, he threw his right hand high above his head and his voice boomed over the crowd in a peal of command. The effect was electrical. A painful hush followed. The swaying mass stood rooted in their tracks by the tones of authority his first word had expressed.

"Gentlemen!"

He paused and his next words were spoken in intense silence.

"My answer to the extraordinary greeting you have given me this morning is simple. I am not working for your approval, I work for my own approval, because I must in obedience to the call within me. Long ago in my life I gave up ambition and ceased to ask anything for myself. You cannot destroy my career because I cherish none. If I succeed in the work to which I have been called it is well. If I fail, it is also well. I have done my duty and obeyed the call to the service of my fellow-man!"

Again he paused as his voice choked with deep emotion. The crowd stared as if in a spell.

"The scene you are enacting here this morning is a disgrace to humanity. You have surrendered to the unmeaning fear that drives a herd of swine over a precipice. You have, by an act of your will, joined in a movement to paralyze the motive power of the world—faith! There is but one thing that runs this earth of ours for a single day—faith in one another.

"You are scrambling here for a few dollars in this bank. What can you do with it when you draw it out? There is not enough cash in the world to transact a single day's business. Business is run on credit—faith.

"Faith is the sustaining force of all personal and social life; a panic is its end—a lapse to the level of the beast of the field whose life is ruled by fear.

"Banks were not made as strong boxes for the hoarding of money. Money was hoarded in strong boxes centuries before banks were invented. Banks are institutions of public credit, to facilitate the useful circulation of money, not its withdrawal from use. The business of a bank is to keep money moving and make it do the world's work. You are attempting to stop the work by the destruction of its faith."

Suddenly a man who had quietly pushed his way through the crowd sprang on the step before the speaker and thrust a revolver into his face.

A cry of horror swept the crowd, as Stuart paused, turned pale and looked steadily down the flashing barrel into the madman's eyes.

"Who started this work of destruction?" he cried—"You—You—-Do you hear me? And I've been commanded by God Almighty to end this trouble by ending you!"

As Stuart held the glittering eyes levelled at him across the blue-black barrel he could see the man's nervous and uncertain finger twitching at the trigger.

For the first time in his conscious existence he felt the stinging anguish of physical fear. Never had life—life for its own sake with strong sound limbs and alert mind—seemed so sweet. At the first touch of fear his tall body had suddenly stiffened and the pallor of death shrouded his face. The next instant came the conscious shame and horror of the moment's cowardice. The crowd that watched the tragic situation had not known, but he knew and it was enough. His face flushed red and his deep set eyes began to sparkle with anger, the red animal-anger of power wrought to insane fury. Every nerve and muscle and sinew quivered with the desire to kill, a consuming passionate desperate lust! His fingers closed involuntarily as the claws of a beast and he drew his breath with trembling intensity.

For one brief instant he hated all men. Not merely the fool who had shamed his soul with fear but all the mob of hissing howling brutes that surged about him and all the millions like them that crawl over the earth.

There was a pause of only a few seconds while these ideas flashed with the vividness of lightning through his imagination. The crowd noted no pause of any kind. His action seemed instantaneous.

With a sudden panther-like spring he leaped across the five feet which separated him from the man who held the revolver. His left hand gripped the weapon and threw it into the air as it was fired while his right hand closed on the throat of his assailant. With his knee against the man's breast he hurled him down the steps, wrenched the revolver from his hand and with a single blow knocked him into insensibility.



The spell was broken. The mob that hated him saw their chance. A yell of rage swept them, and a dozen men sprang toward him with curses. For a moment he held his own, when suddenly a well-directed blow from behind knocked him down.

He sprang to his feet instantly, climbed on the shoulders of the mass of enraged men who pressed on him from every direction and attempted to walk on their heads toward the two detectives who were fighting their way toward him. He made two successful leaps missed his foothold and fell in the arms of his enemies. In blind fury he felt the smash of blows on his face and head. A stream of blood was trickling down his forehead and its salty taste penetrated his mouth. With a desperate effort he freed his hands and knocked two men down.

A sudden crash from space seemed to send the world into a mass of flaming splinters and the light faded. He heard the soft rustle of silk and felt the pressure of a woman's lips on his. Surely he must be dead was the first thought that flashed through his mind. And then from somewhere far away in space came Nan's voice low and tense:

"Come back, Jim, dear, I've something to tell you. You can't die, you shall not die until I've told you!"

A tear fell on his face and he knew no more until suddenly, into the dark cave in which he lay dead a ray of sunlight flashed.

He opened his eyes and found Nan bending over him. His hand rested on her soft arm and his head lay pillowed on her breast.

"Why, Nan, it's you."

Her lips quivered. She closed her eyes and murmured:

"Thank God, you're alive!"

"Why, yes," he said, slowly rising. "Very much alive; what's happened?"

She placed her finger on his lips.

"Oh, I remember now."

"You mustn't talk, Jim," she said, with quiet authority. "The doctor will be here in a moment."

"Oh, I'm not hurt much, just a few scratches and bruises." He lifted himself on his elbow. "Oh the snake that choked me! If I could only have killed him I think I'd be happy."

He looked at Nan in a stupor.

"But what on earth are you doing here, Nan?"

He looked about the room and saw that he was in the inner office of the president of the bank, alone with Bivens's wife. He was lying on the big leather couch.

"I heard that you were going to speak this morning. I wanted to hear you and came. I arrived just as you began and managed to get into the bank. I saw that man try to kill you, Jim, and that crowd of wild beasts trampling you to death. I saw you knock them down one at a time while I watched you, paralyzed with fear. I wanted to rush out and fight my way to your side—but I was a coward. I tried to go, but my legs wouldn't move. I only stood there trembling and sobbing for some one else to go. I'm afraid I'm not very heroic."

Stuart smiled feebly.

"I understand, Nan, I felt the same thing out there."

"The two detectives pulled you out and dragged you into the bank."

The doctor entered and quickly dressed Stuart's wounds, and turned to Nan.

"He'll be all right in a week or so, Mrs. Bivens—provided he doesn't insist on breaking the run on another bank by the spell of his eloquence. I hope you can persuade him not to try that again."

"I think I'm fully persuaded, Doctor," Stuart answered grimly, "I've seen a great light to-day."

When the doctor had gone and Nan was left alone with Stuart an embarrassed silence fell between them.

She was quietly wondering if he were fully unconscious when she was sobbing and saying some very foolish things. Above all she was wondering whether he knew that she had kissed him.

And the man was wondering if the memory of the tear that fell on his face and the pressure of a woman's lips were only a dream.

He scouted the idea of going to a hospital and Nan insisted on taking him home.

When her car stopped at South Washington Square and Stuart insisted on scrambling out alone, she held his hand tight a moment and spoke with trembling earnestness:

"You will see me now, Jim, and be friends?"

He answered promptly.

"Yes, Nan, I will. The world is never going to be quite the same place for me after to-day. There was one moment this morning in which I think I lived a thousand years."

A hot flush stole over the woman's beautiful face as she looked steadily into his eyes and quietly asked:

"What moment was that?"

"The moment I looked down that gun barrel, saw the stupid hate in that fool's eyes and felt the throb of the insane desire to kill in the people behind him, the people for whom I've been giving my life a joyous sacrifice."

Nan smiled a sigh of relief.

"Oh! I see—well, you've made me very happy with your promise, I know you'll keep your word."

Stuart looked at her a moment curiously. Was there a tear trembling in the corner of her dark eyes as she spoke the last sentence, or was it his imagination?

He pressed her hand firmly.

"You are more beautiful than ever, Nan. Yes, I'll keep my word. Good-bye until I call."

And the woman smiled in triumph.



CHAPTER X

THE DEMI-GOD

The clouds of the panic slowly lifted and the sun began once more to shine. A fearless officer of the law had struck a blow for justice that marked the beginning of a new era of national life. And yet apparently the only men to profit by it were the giants who rode the storm it had created. The people were left in mental bewilderment. To their short-ranged vision the young District Attorney who lay prostrate on a bed of illness was a man who had been tried and found wanting. He had either wilfully and corruptly played into the hands of a powerful group of millionaires or had blunderingly done so. In either case the act was a crime.

Slowly but surely the prices of stocks began to mount and the great men who had bought them at the bottom grew greater.

Incidentally a corner in wheat was suddenly developed, and the price of bread rose twenty per cent. Bivens was found to be the mysterious power behind the deal, and before the old-timers in the wheat pit could marshal their forces to crush him, he closed out his holdings at a profit of five millions.

The little financier awoke next morning to find himself the most famous man in America. His picture now appeared everywhere and all sorts of writers began to weave marvellous stories of his achievements. The suicide of his associates, the higher price of bread, and the long trail of blood behind the panic were forgotten by the rabble which began to regard him with the awe due a demi-god.