as ushered from the room, Walter Harkness also understood, and
he knew that this was no idle threat. He had heard ugly rumors of Herr
Schwartzmann and his methods. One man, he knew, had dared to oppose
him--and that man had gone suddenly insane. A touch of a needle, it
was whispered....

There had been other rumors; Schwartzmann got what he wanted; his
financial backing was enormous. And now he would bring his ruthless
methods to America. But there he needed the Harkness standing, the
reputation for probity--and Walter Harkness was grimly resolved that
they should never buy it from him. But the problem must be faced, and
the answer found, if answer there was, in twenty-four hours.

* * * * *

An amazing state of affairs in a modern world! He stood meditating
upon his situation in a great, high-ceilinged room. A bed stood in a
corner, and other furniture marked the room as belonging to an earlier
time. Even mechanical weather-control was wanting; one must open the
windows, Harkness found, to get cooling air.

He stood at the open window and saw storm clouds blowing up swiftly. They
blotted the stars from the night sky; they swept black and ominous
overhead, and seemed to touch the giant trees that whipped their branches
in the wind. But he was thinking not at all of the storm, and only of the
fact that this room where he stood must be directly above the one where
Schwartzmann was seated. Schwartzmann--who would put an end to his life as
casually as he would bring down a squirrel from one of those trees!

And again he thought: "Twenty-four hours!... Why hours? Why not
minutes?... Whatever must be done he must do now. And might made
right: it was the only way to meet this unscrupulous foreign
scoundrel."

A wind-tossed branch lashed at him. On the ground below he saw the man
who had brought him, posting another as a guard. They glanced up at
his window. There would be no escape there.

And yet the branch seemed beckoning. He caught it when again it
whipped toward him, and, without any definite plan, he lashed it fast
with a velvet cord from the window drapes.

But his thoughts came back to the room. He snatched suddenly at the
covers of the bed. What were the sheets?--fabric as old-fashioned as
the room, or were they cellulex? The touch of the soft fabric
reassured him: it was as soft as though woven of spider's web, and
strong as fibres of steel.

It took all of his strength to ri