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 t