pleasure by
studied indifference. Both magnates felt relieved when she withdrew.
They had other and larger matters under way than any dealing with the
amenities of life.

Until past midnight the session in the study lasted, under the soft glow
of the Billionaire's reading-light. And many choice cigars were smoked,
many sheets of paper covered with diagrams and calculations, many vast
schemes of conquest expanded, ere the two masters said good-night and
separated.

At the very hour of Waldron's leave-taking, another man was pondering
deeply, studying the problem from quite another angle, and--no less
earnestly, than the two magnates--laying careful plans.

This man, sturdy, well-built and keen, smoked an old briar as he
worked. A flannel shirt, open at the throat, showed a well-sinewed neck
and powerful chest. Under the inverted cone of a shaded incandescent in
his room, at the electricians' quarters of the Oakwood Heights
enclosure, one could see the deep lines of thought and careful study
crease his high and prominent brow.

From time to time he gazed out through the open window, off toward the
whispering lines of surf on the eastern shores of Staten Island--the
surf forever talking, forever striving to give its mystic message to the
unheeding ear of man. And as he gazed, his blue eyes narrowed with the
intensity of his thought. Once, as though some sudden understanding had
come to him, he smote the pine table with a corded fist, and swore below
his breath.

It was past two in the morning when he finally rose, stretched, yawned
and made ready for sleep on his hard iron bunk.

"Can it be?" he muttered, as he undressed. "Can it be possible, or am I
dreaming? No--this is no dream! This is reality; and thank God, I
understand."

Then, before he extinguished his light, he took from the table the
material he had been studying over, and put it beneath his pillow, where
he could guard it safe till morning.

The thing he thus protected was none other than a small note-book,
filled with diagrams, jottings and calculations, and bound in red
morocco covers.

That night, at Englewood--in the Billionaire's home and in the
workman's simple room at Oakwood Heights--history was being made.

The outcome, tragic and terrible, who could have foreseen?

CHAPTER IX.

DISCHARGED.

Almost all the following morning, working at his bench in the
electro-chemical laboratories of the great Oakwood Heights plant,
Gabriel