he shook her head and in the moon-bath her face
flashed into a luminous smile. "I am working up that wrath," she assured
him. "I am preparing to be terribly angry with you tomorrow."

"And until tomorrow?"

"Until tomorrow I am very happy. Good-night."

"Tomorrow is always--tomorrow, dearest--" he said, "Good-night."

* * * * *

A many-sided man was J.J. Malone, with a nature as brilliant and as
capable of flashing varying lights from its facets as a diamond--and
when need be as hard as a diamond. Had he lived in feudal times other
barons would have said, "Where Malone sits there is the head of the
table," and the monarch himself would have taken thought before
provoking his wrath. In these days of alleged intolerance for tyrants he
dispensed with the fanfare of trumpets and the tossing of flambeaux. The
door of his office in a gray shaft-like building down-town bore the
simple inscription, "American Transportation Co., President's Office."

Many men to whom the mighty money leverage of "Consolidated" was a
familiar story had heard of J.J. Malone only in the casual sense. Yet
the oligarchy had been built and rendered, supposedly, impregnable from
the conceptions of his constructive brain. Concentration of power into
one vast unit had been "Consolidated's" triumph--and his realized dream.
Always the master tactician had been he who unobtrusively wore the title
of president of "American Transportation." To others he had relinquished
title roles, but, unseen, he had set and managed the stage. Hamilton
Burton had been taught at Malone's knee, but Hamilton Burton was young
and hot with vitality, aflame with ambition. From Malone himself he had
absorbed the principle, "Never forget that today's ally may be
tomorrow's enemy. Be prepared to use him--or crush him." In secret
Burton had been building to that end, and only he himself knew the full
reserve force of his resources.

"You are about the only man in the Street, sir," declared young Bristoll
one morning, in a burst of admiration, as he and his chief sat together
over their coffee, "to whom J.J. Malone seems willing to grant an
equality of status."

Hamilton Burton smiled.

"That is true just now, Carl," he replied. "It can not always remain
true."

"Why?"

"Our young Minister of Finance sees the present in just proportions,"
laughed Burton. "But his vision has not yet mastered the horizons of the
future."

Carl flushed. He k