with himself on his way home. He left the
car at the public garage, and walked, whistling blithely, to his small
bachelor apartment. He was a self-indulgent man, and his rooms were
comfortable to the point of luxury. In the sitting room was a desk, as
clean and orderly as Doyle's was untidy. Having put on his dressing gown
he went to it, and with a sheet of paper before him sat for some time
thinking.

He found his work irksome at times. True, it had its interest. He was
the liaison between organized labor, which was conservative in the main,
and the radical element, both in and out of the organization. He played
a double game, and his work was always the same, to fan the discontent
latently smoldering in every man's soul into a flame. And to do this he
had not Doyle's fanaticism. Personally, Louis Akers found the world a
pretty good place. He hated the rich because they had more than he had,
but he scorned the poor because they had less. And he liked the feeling
of power he had when, on the platform, men swayed to his words like
wheat to a wind.

Personal ambition was his fetish, as power was Anthony Cardew's.
Sometimes he walked past the exclusive city clubs, and he dreamed of a
time when he, too, would have the entree to them. But time was passing.
He was thirty-three years old when Jim Doyle crossed his path, and the
clubs were as far away as ever. It was Doyle who found the weak place
in his armor, and who taught him that when one could not rise it was
possible to pull others down.

But it was Woslosky, the Americanized Pole; who had put the thing in a
more appealing form.

"Our friend Doyle to the contrary," he said cynically, "we cannot hope
to contend against the inevitable. The few will always govern the many,
in the end. It will be the old cycle, autocracy, anarchy, and then
democracy; but out of this last comes always the one man who crowns
himself or is crowned. One of the people. You, or myself, it may be."

The Pole had smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

Akers did not go to work immediately. He sat for some time, a cigarette
in his hand, his eyes slightly narrowed. He believed that he could marry
Lily Cardew. It would take time and all his skill, but he believed he
could do it. His mind wandered to Lily herself, her youth and charm, her
soft red mouth, the feel of her warm young body in his arms. He brought
himself up sharply. Where would such a marriage take him?

He pondered the question pro an