n at a sleeper in a burning house.

"Naturally," said I, unruffled, apparently. "What can we do about it?"

"We must do something!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, we must," I admitted. "For instance, we must keep cool,
especially when two or three dozen people are watching us. Also, you
must go and attend to your usual routine."

"What are you going to do?" he cried. "For God's sake, Matt, don't
keep me in suspense."

"Go to your desk," I commanded. And he quieted down and went. I hadn't
been schooling him in the fire drill for fifteen years in vain.

I went up the street and into the great banking and brokerage house of
Galloway & Co. I made my way through the small army of guards, behind
which the old beast of prey was intrenched, and into his private den.
There he sat, at a small, plain table, in the middle of a room without
any article of furniture in it but his table and his chair. On the
table was a small inkstand, perfectly clean, a steel pen, equally
clean, on the rest attached to it. And that was all--not a letter, not
a scrap of paper, not a sign of work or an intention to work. It might
have been the desk of a man who did nothing; in fact, it was the desk
of a man who had so much to do that his only hope of escape from being
overwhelmed was to dispatch and clear away each matter the instant it
was presented to him. Many things could be read in the powerful form,
bolt upright in that stiff chair, and in the cynical, masterful old
face. But to me the chief quality there revealed was that quality of
qualities, decision--the greatest power a man can have, except only
courage. And old James Galloway had both.

He respected Roebuck; Roebuck feared him. Roebuck did have some sort
of a conscience, distorted though it was, and the dictator of
savageries Galloway would have scorned to commit. Galloway had no
professions of conscience--beyond such small glozing of hypocrisy as
any man must put on if he wishes to be intrusted with the money of a
public that associates professions of religion and appearances of
respectability with honesty. Roebuck's passion was wealth--to see the
millions heap up and up. Galloway had that passion, too--I have yet to
meet the millionaire who is not avaricious and even stingy. But
Galloway's chief passion was power--to handle men as a junk merchant
handles rags, to plan and lead campaigns of conquest with his golden
legions, and to distribute the spoils like an autocrat who is careless
how th