CHAPTER II.
THE PARTNERS.
Then, as was his habit, translating ideas into immediate action, hestrode to a door at the far end of the office, flung it open and said:
"See here a minute, Wally!"
"Busy!" came an answering voice, from behind a huge roll-top desk.
"Of course! But drop it, drop it. I've got news for you."
"Urgent?" asked the voice, coldly.
"Very. Come in here, a minute. I've got to unload!"
From behind the big desk rose the figure of a man about five and forty,sandy-haired, long-faced and sallow, with a pair of the coldest,fishiest eyes--eyes set too close together--that ever looked out of aflat and ugly face. A man precisely dressed, something of a fop, withjust a note of the "sport" in his get-up; a man to fear, a man cool,wary and dangerous--Maxim Waldron, in fact, the Billionaire's right-handman and confidant. Waldron, for some time affianced to his eldestdaughter. Waldron the arch-corruptionist; Waldron, who never yet hadbeen "caught with the goods," but who had financed scores of industrialand political campaigns, with Flint's money and his own; Waldron, thesmooth, the suave, the perilous.
"What now?" asked he, fixing his pale blue eyes on the Billionaire'sface.
"Come in here, and I'll tell you."
"Right!" And Waldron, brushing an invisible speck of dust from thesleeve of his checked coat, strolled rather casually into theBillionaire's office.
Flint closed the door.
"Well?" asked Waldron, with something of a drawl. "What's theexcitement?"
"See here," began the great financier, stimulated by the drug. "We'vebeen wasting our time, all these years, with our petty monopolies ofbeef and coal and transportation and all such trifles!"
"So?" And Waldron drew from his pocket a gold cigar-case, monogrammedwith diamonds. "Trifles, eh?" He carefully chose a perfecto. "Perhaps;but we've managed to rub along, eh? Well, if these are trifles, what'son?"
"Air!"
"Air?" Waldron's match poised a moment, as with a slight widening of thepale blue eyes he surveyed his partner. "Why--er--what do you mean,Flint?"
"The Air Trust!"
"Eh?" And Waldron lighted his cigar.
"A monopoly of breathing privileges!"
"Ha! Ha!" Waldron's laugh was as mirthful as a grave-yard raven's croak."Nothing to it, old man. Forget it, and stick to--"
"Of course! I might have expected as much from you!" retorted theBillionaire tartly. "You've got neither imagination nor--"
"Nor any fancy for wild-goose chases," said Waldron, easily, as he satdown in the big leather chair. "Air? Hot air, Flint! No, no, it won'tdo! Nothing to it nothing at all."
For a moment the Billionaire regarded him with a look of intenseirritation. His thin lips moved, as though to emit some caustic answer;but he managed to keep silence. The two men looked at each other, a longminute; then Flint began again:
"Listen, now, and keep still! The idea came to me not an hour ago, thismorning, looking over the city, here. We've got a finger on everythingbut the atmosphere, the most important thing of all. If we could control_that_--"
"Of course, I understand," interrupted the other, blowing a ring ofsmoke. "Unlimited power and so on. Looks very nice, and all. Only, itcan't be done. Air's too big, too fluid, too universal. Human powerscan't control it, any more than the ocean. Talk about monopolizing theAtlantic, if you will, Flint. But for heaven's sake, drop--"
"Can't be done, eh?" exclaimed Flint, warmly, sitting down on thedesk-top and levelling a big-jointed forefinger at his partner. "That'swhat every new idea has had to meet. It's no argument! People scoffed atthe idea of gas lighting when it was new. Called it 'burning smoke,' andmade merry over it. That was as recently as 1832. But ten years later,gas-illumination was in full sway.
"Electric lighting met the same objection. And remember the objection tothe telephone? When Congress, in 1843, granted Morse an appropriation of$30,000 to run the first telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington,one would-be humorist in that supremely intelligent body tried tointroduce an amendment that part of the sum should be spent in surveyinga railroad to the moon! And--"
"Can't be done, Eh?" said Flint.]
"Granted," put in Waldron, "that my objection is futile, just what'syour idea?"
"This!" And Flint stabbed at him with his forefinger, while the otherfinancier regarded him with a fishily amused eye. "Every human being inthis world--and there are 1,900,000,000 of them now!--is breathing, onthe average, 16 cubic feet of air every hour, or about 400 a day. Thetotal amount of oxygen actually absorbed in the 24 hours by each person,is about 17 cubic feet, or _over 30 billions of cubic feet of oxygen_,each day, in the entire world. Get that?"
"Well?" drawled the other.
"Don't you see?" snapped Flint, irritably. "Imagine that we extractoxygen from the air. Then--"
"You might as well try to dip up the ocean with a spoon," said Waldron,"as try to vitiate the atmosphere of the whole world, by any meanswhatsoever! But even if you could, what then?"
"Look here!" exclaimed the Billionaire. "It only needs a reduction of 10per cent. in the atmospheric oxygen to make the air so bad that nobodycan breathe it without discomfort and pain. Take out any more and peoplewill die! We don't have to monopolize _all_ the oxygen, but only a verysmall fraction, and the world will come gasping to us, like so many fishout of water, falling over each other to buy!"
"Possibly. But the details?"
"I haven't worked them out yet, naturally. I needn't. Herzog will takecare of those. He and his staff. That's what they're for. Shall we putit up to him? What? My God, man! Think of the millions in it--thebillions! The power! The--"
"Of course, of course!" interposed Waldron, calmly, eyeing his smoke."Don't get excited, Flint. Rome wasn't built in a day. There may besomething in this; possibly there may be the germ of an idea. I don'tsay it's impossible. It looks visionary to me; but then, as you wellsay, so has every new idea always looked. Let me think, now; let methink."
"Go ahead and think!" growled the Billionaire. "Think and be hanged toyou! _I'm_ going to act!"
Waldron vouchsafed no reply, but merely eyed his partner with coldinterest, as though he were some biological specimen under a lens, andsmoked the while.
Flint, however, turned to his telephone and pulled it toward him, overthe big sheet of plate glass. Impatiently he took off the receiver andheld it up to his ear.
"Hello, hello! 2438 John!" he exclaimed, in answer to the query of"Number, please?"
Silence, a moment, while Waldron slowly drew at his cigar and while theBillionaire tugged with impatience at his gray mustache.
"Hello! That you, Herzog?"
* * * * *
"All right. I want to see you at once. Immediately, understand?"
* * * * *
"Very well. And say, Herzog!"
"Bring whatever literature you have on liquid air, nitrogen extractionfrom the atmosphere, and so on. Understand? And come at once!"
* * * * *
"That's all! Good-bye!"
Smiling dourly, with satisfaction, he hung up and shoved the telephoneaway again, then turned to his still reflecting partner, who had nowhoisted his patent leather boots to the window sill and seemed absorbedin regarding their gloss through a blue veil of nicotine.
"Herzog," announced the Billionaire, "will be here in ten minutes, andwe'll get down to business."
"So?" languidly commented the immaculate Waldron. "Well, much as I'dlike to flatter your astuteness, Flint, I'm bound to say you're barkingup a false trail, this time! Beef, yes. Steel, yes. Railroads,steamships, coal, iron, wheat, yes. All tangible, all concrete, allsusceptible of being weighed, measured, put in figures, fenced andbounded, legislated about and so on and so forth. But _air_--!"
He snapped his manicured fingers, to show his well-considered contemptfor the Billionaire's scheme, and, throwing away his smoked
-out cigar,chose a fresh one.
Flint made no reply, but with an angry grunt flung a look of scorn atthe calm and placid one. Then, furtively opening his desk drawer, heonce more sought the little vial and took two more pellets--an actionwhich Waldron, without moving his head, complacently observed in aheavily-bevelled mirror that hung between the windows.
"Air," murmured Waldron, suavely. "Hot air, Flint?"
No answer, save another grunt and the slamming of the desk-drawer.
And thus, in silence, the two men, masters of the world, awaited thecoming of the practical scientist, the proletarian, on whom they both,at last analysis, had to rely for most of their results.
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