And now, keen on the track of this last great inspiration, the Billionaire strode to his revolving book-case, whirled it round and from its shelves jerked a thick volume, a smaller book and some pamphlets.
“Let’s have some facts!” said he, flinging them upon his desk, and seating himself before it in a costly chair of teak. “Once I get an outline of the facts and what I want to do, then my subordinates can carry out my plans. Before all, I must have facts!”
For half an hour he thumbed his references, noting all the salient points mentally, without taking a single note; for, so long as the drug still acted, his brain was an instrument of unsurpassed keenness and accuracy.
A sinister figure he made, as he sat there poring intently over the technical books before him, contrasting strangely with the beauty and the luxury of the office. On the mantel, over the fireplace of Carrara marble, ticked a Louis XIV clock, the price of which might have saved the lives of a thousand workingmen’s children during the last summer’s torment. Gold-woven tapestries from Rouen covered the walls, whereon hung etchings and rare prints. Old Flint’s office, indeed, had more the air of an art gallery than a place where grim plots and deals innumerable had been put through, lawmakers corrupted past counting, and the destinies of nations bent beneath his corded, lean and nervous hand. And now, as the Billionaire sat there thinking, smiling a smile that boded no good to the world, the soft spring air that had inspired his great plan still swayed the silken curtains.
Of a sudden, he slammed the big book shut, that he was studying, and rose to his feet with a hard laugh—the laugh that had presaged more than one calamity to mankind. Beneath the sweep of his mustache one caught the glint of a gold tooth, sharp and unpleasant.
A moment he stood there, keen, eager, dominant, his hands gripping the edge of the desk till the big knuckles whitened. He seemed the embodiment of harsh and unrelenting Power—power over men and things, over their laws and institutions; power which, like Alexander’s, sought only new worlds to conquer; power which found all metes and bounds too narrow.
“Power!” he whispered, as though to voice the inner inclining of the picture. “Life, air, breath—the very breath of the world in my hands—power absolutely, at last!”
CHAPTER II.
THE PARTNERS.
Then, as was his habit, translating ideas into immediate action, he strode 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 a flat and ugly face. A man precisely dressed, something of a fop, with just 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-hand man and confidant. Waldron, for some time affianced to his eldest daughter. Waldron the arch-corruptionist; Waldron, who never yet had been “caught with the goods,” but who had financed scores of industrial and political campaigns, with Flint’s money and his own; Waldron, the smooth, the suave, the perilous.
“What now?” asked he, fixing his pale blue eyes on the Billionaire’s face.
“Come in here, and I’ll tell you.”
“Right!” And Waldron, brushing an invisible speck of dust from the sleeve of his checked coat, strolled rather casually into the Billionaire’s office.
Flint closed the door.
“Well?” asked Waldron, with something of a drawl. “What’s the excitement?”
“See here,” began the great financier, stimulated by the drug. “We’ve been wasting our time, all these years, with our petty monopolies of beef and coal and transportation and all such trifles!”
“So?” And Waldron drew from his pocket a gold cigar-case, monogrammed with diamonds. “Trifles, eh?” He carefully chose a perfecto. “Perhaps; but we’ve managed to rub along, eh? Well, if these are trifles, what’s on?”
“Air!”
“Air?” Waldron’s match poised a moment, as with a slight widening of the pale 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 the Billionaire tartly. “You’ve got neither imagination nor—”
“Nor any fancy for wild-goose chases,” said Waldron, easily, as he sat down in the big leather chair. “Air? Hot air, Flint! No, no, it won’t do! Nothing to it nothing at all.”
For a moment the Billionaire regarded him with a look of intense irritation. 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 long minute; then Flint began again:
“Listen, now, and keep still! The idea came to me not an hour ago, this morning, looking over the city, here. We’ve got a finger on everything but the atmosphere, the most important thing of all. If we could control that—”
“Of course, I understand,” interrupted the other, blowing a ring of smoke. “Unlimited power and so on. Looks very nice, and all. Only, it can’t be done. Air’s too big, too fluid, too universal. Human powers can’t control it, any more than the ocean. Talk about monopolizing the Atlantic, if you will, Flint. But for heaven’s sake, drop—”
“Can’t be done, eh?” exclaimed Flint, warmly, sitting down on the desk-top and levelling a big-jointed forefinger at his partner. “That’s what every new idea has had to meet. It’s no argument! People scoffed at the idea of gas lighting when it was new. Called it ‘burning smoke,’ and made 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 to the 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 to introduce an amendment that part of the sum should be spent in surveying a railroad to the moon! And—”
“Granted,” put in Waldron, “that my objection is futile, just what’s your idea?”
“This!” And Flint stabbed at him with his forefinger, while the other financier regarded him with a fishily amused eye. “Every human being in this world—and there are 1,900,000,000 of them now!—is breathing, on the average, 16 cubic feet of air every hour, or about 400 a day. The total 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 extract oxygen 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 means whatsoever! But even if you could, what then?”
“Look here!” exclaimed the Billionaire. “It only needs a reduction of 10 per cent. in the atmospheric oxygen to make the air so bad that nobody can breathe it without discomfort and pain. Take out any more and people will die! We don’t have to monopolize all the oxygen, but only a very small fraction, and the world will come gasping to us, like so many fish out 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 ta
ke care of those. He and his staff. That’s what they’re for. Shall we put it up to him? What? My God, man! Think of the millions in it—the billions! 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 be something in this; possibly there may be the germ of an idea. I don’t say it’s impossible. It looks visionary to me; but then, as you well say, so has every new idea always looked. Let me think, now; let me think.”
“Go ahead and think!” growled the Billionaire. “Think and be hanged to you! I’m going to act!”
Waldron vouchsafed no reply, but merely eyed his partner with cold interest, as though he were some biological specimen under a lens, and smoked the while.
Flint, however, turned to his telephone and pulled it toward him, over the big sheet of plate glass. Impatiently he took off the receiver and held 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 the Billionaire 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 extraction from 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 telephone away again, then turned to his still reflecting partner, who had now hoisted his patent leather boots to the window sill and seemed absorbed in regarding their gloss through a blue veil of nicotine.
“Herzog,” announced the Billionaire, “will be here in ten minutes, and we’ll get down to business.”
“So?” languidly commented the immaculate Waldron. “Well, much as I’d like to flatter your astuteness, Flint, I’m bound to say you’re barking up a false trail, this time! Beef, yes. Steel, yes. Railroads, steamships, coal, iron, wheat, yes. All tangible, all concrete, all susceptible of being weighed, measured, put in figures, fenced and bounded, legislated about and so on and so forth. But air—!”
He snapped his manicured fingers, to show his well-considered contempt for 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 at the calm and placid one. Then, furtively opening his desk drawer, he once more sought the little vial and took two more pellets—an action which Waldron, without moving his head, complacently observed in a heavily-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 the coming of the practical scientist, the proletarian, on whom they both, at last analysis, had to rely for most of their results.
CHAPTER III.
THE BAITING OF HERZOG.
Herzog was not long in arriving. To be summoned in haste by Isaac Flint, and to delay, was unthinkable. For eighteen years the chemist had lickspittled to the Billionaire. Keen though his mind was, his character and stamina were those of a jellyfish; and when the Master took snuff, as the saying is, Herzog never failed to sneeze.
He therefore appeared, now, in some ten minutes—a fat, rubicund, spectacled man, with a cast in his left eye and two fingers missing, to remind him of early days in experimental work on explosives. Under his arm he carried several tomes and pamphlets; and so, bowing first to one financier, then to the other, he stood there on the threshold, awaiting his masters’ pleasure.
“Come in, Herzog,” directed Flint. “Got some material there on liquid air, and nitrogen, and so on?”
“Yes, sir. Just what is it you want, sir?”
“Sit down, and I’ll tell you,”—for the chemist, hat in hand, ventured not to seat himself unbidden in presence of these plutocrats.
Herzog, murmuring thanks for Flint’s gracious permission, deposited his derby on top of the revolving book-case, sat down tentatively on the edge of a chair and clutched his books as though they had been so many shields against the redoubted power of his masters.
“See here, Herzog,” Flint fired at him, without any preliminaries or beating around the bush, “what do you know about the practical side of extracting nitrogen from atmospheric air? Or extracting oxygen, in liquid form? Can it be done—that is, on a commercial basis?”
“Why, no, sir—yes, that is—perhaps. I mean—”
“What the devil do you mean?” snapped Flint, while Waldron smiled maliciously as he smoked. “Yes, or no? I don’t pay you to muddle things. I pay you to know, and to tell me! Get that? Now, how about it?”
“Well, sir—hm!—the fact is,” and the unfortunate chemist blinked through his glasses with extreme uneasiness, “the fact of the matter is that the processes involved haven’t been really perfected, as yet. Beginnings have been made, but no large-scale work has been done, so far. Still, the principle—”
“Is sound?”
“Yes, sir. I imagine—”
“Cut that! You aren’t paid for imagining!” interrupted the Billionaire, stabbing at him with that characteristic gesture. “Just what do you know about it? No technicalities, mind! Essentials, that’s all, and in a few words!”
“Well, sir,” answered Herzog, plucking up a little courage under this pointed goading, “so far as the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen goes, more progress has been made in England and Scandinavia, than here. They’re working on it, over there, to obtain cheap and plentiful fertilizer from the air. Nitrogen can be obtained from the air, even now, and made into fertilizers even cheaper than the Chili saltpeter. Oxygen is liberated as a by-product, and—”
“Oh, it is, eh? And could it be saved? In liquid form for instance?”
“I think so, sir. The Siemens & Halske interests, in Germany, are doing it already, on a limited scale. In Norway and Austria, nitrogen has been manufactured from air, for some years.”
“On a paying, commercial basis?” demanded Flint, while Waldron, now a trifle less scornful, seemed to listen with more interest as his eyes rested on the rotund form of the scientist.
“Yes, sir, quite so,” answered Herzog. “It’s commercially feasible, though not a very profitable business at best. The gas is utilized in chemical combination with a substantial base, and—”
“No matter about that, just yet,” interrupted Flint. “We can have details later. Do you know of any such business as yet, in the United States?”
“Well, sir, there’s a plant building at Great Falls, South Carolina, for the purpose. It is to run by waterpower and will develop 5000 H.P.”
“Hear that, Waldron?” demanded the Billionaire. “It’s already beginning even here! But not one of these plants is working for what I see as the prime possibility. No imagination, no grasp on the subject! No wonder most inventors and scientists die poor! They incubate ideas and then lack the warmth to hatch them into general application. It takes men like us, Wally—practical men—to turn the trick!” He spoke a bit rapidly, almost feverishly, under the influence of the subtle drug. “Now if we take hold of this game, why, we can shake the world as it has never yet been shaken! Eh, Waldron? What do you think now?”
Waldron only grunted, non-committally. Flint with a hard glance at his unresponsive partner, once more turned to Herzog.
“See here, now,” directed he. “What’s the best process now in use?”
“For what, sir?” ventured the timid chemist.
“For the simultaneous production of nitrogen and oxygen, from the atmosphere!”
“Well, sir,” he answered, deprecatingly, as though taking a great liberty even in informing his master on a point the master had expressly asked about, �
��there are three processes. But all operate only on a small scale.”
“Who ever told you I wanted to work on a large scale?” demanded Flint, savagely.
“I—er—inferred—beg pardon, sir—I—” And Herzog quite lost himself and floundered hopelessly, while his mismated eyes wandered about the room as though seeking the assurance he so sadly lacked.
“Confine yourself to answering what I ask you,” directed Flint, crisply. “You’re not paid to infer. You’re paid to answer questions on chemistry, and to get results. Remember that!”
“Yes, sir,” meekly answered the chemist, while Waldron smiled with cynical amusement. He enjoyed nothing so delightedly as any grilling of an employee, whether miner, railroad man, clerk, ship’s captain or what-not. This baiting, by Flint, was a rare treat to him.
“Go on,” commanded the Billionaire, in a badgering tone. “What are the processes?” He eyed Herzog as though the man had been an ox, a dog or even some inanimate object, coldly and with narrow-lidded condescension. To him, in truth, men were no more than Shelley’s “plow or sword or spade” for his own purpose—things to serve him and to be ruled—or broken—as best served his ends. “Go on! Tell me what you know; and no more!”
“Yes, sir,” ventured Herzog. “There are three processes to extract nitrogen and oxygen from air. One is by means of what the German scientists call Kalkstickstoff, between calcium carbide and nitrogen, and the reaction-symbols are—”
“No matter,” Flint waived him, promptly. “I don’t care for formulas or details. What I want is results and general principles. Any other way to extract these substances, in commercial quantities, from the air we breathe?”
“Two others. But one of these operates at a prohibitive cost. The other—”
“Yes, yes. What is it?” Flint slid off the edge of the table and walked over to Herzog; stood there in front of him, and bored down at him with eager eyes, the pupils contracted by morphine, but very bright. “What’s the best way?”
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