t you call me Buck. You don't seem to have any sense,
and, besides, it ISN'T good for my stomach. I know better. What do YOU
know about my stomach, anyhow? Just looking at sloop like that makes me
sick."

A little while after this the Chinaman cleared away the dessert and
brought in coffee and cigars. The whiskey bottle and the syphon of
soda-water reappeared. The men eased themselves in their places, pushing
back from the table, lighting their cigars, talking of the beginning
of the rains and the prospects of a rise in wheat. Broderson began an
elaborate mental calculation, trying to settle in his mind the exact
date of his visit to Ukiah, and Osterman did sleight-of-hand tricks with
bread pills. But Princess Nathalie, the cat, was uneasy. Annixter was
occupying her own particular chair in which she slept every night. She
could not go to sleep, but spied upon him continually, watching his
every movement with her lambent, yellow eyes, clear as amber.

Then, at length, Magnus, who was at the head of the table, moved in his
place, assuming a certain magisterial attitude. "Well, gentlemen," he
observed, "I have lost my case against the railroad, the grain-rate
case. Ulsteen decided against me, and now I hear rumours to the effect
that rates for the hauling of grain are to be advanced."

When Magnus had finished, there was a moment's silence, each member of
the group maintaining his attitude of attention and interest. It was
Harran who first spoke.

"S. Behrman manipulated the whole affair. There's a big deal of some
kind in the air, and if there is, we all know who is back of it; S.
Behrman, of course, but who's back of him? It's Shelgrim."

Shelgrim! The name fell squarely in the midst of the conversation,
abrupt, grave, sombre, big with suggestion, pregnant with huge
associations. No one in the group who was not familiar with it; no one,
for that matter, in the county, the State, the whole reach of the West,
the entire Union, that did not entertain convictions as to the man who
carried it; a giant figure in the end-of-the-century finance, a product
of circumstance, an inevitable result of conditions, characteristic,
typical, symbolic of ungovernable forces. In the New Movement, the New
Finance, the reorganisation of capital, the amalgamation of powers,
the consolidation of enormous enterprises--no one individual was more
constantly in the eye of the world; no one was more hated, more dreaded,
no one more compelling