once more
reviewing all the causes and circumstances of the great battle of which
for the last eighteen months he had been witness.

All at once he paused, his eye caught by a sign affixed to the wall just
inside the street entrance of a huge office building, and smitten with
an idea, stood for an instant motionless, upon the sidewalk, his eyes
wide, his fists shut tight.

The building contained the General Office of the Pacific and
Southwestern Railroad. Large though it was, it nevertheless, was not
pretentious, and during his visits to the city, Presley must have passed
it, unheeding, many times.

But for all that it was the stronghold of the enemy--the centre of all
that vast ramifying system of arteries that drained the life-blood
of the State; the nucleus of the web in which so many lives, so many
fortunes, so many destinies had been enmeshed. From this place--so he
told himself--had emanated that policy of extortion, oppression and
injustice that little by little had shouldered the ranchers from their
rights, till, their backs to the wall, exasperated and despairing they
had turned and fought and died. From here had come the orders to S.
Behrman, to Cyrus Ruggles and to Genslinger, the orders that had brought
Dyke to a prison, that had killed Annixter, that had ruined Magnus, that
had corrupted Lyman. Here was the keep of the castle, and here, behind
one of those many windows, in one of those many offices, his hand upon
the levers of his mighty engine, sat the master, Shelgrim himself.

Instantly, upon the realisation of this fact an ungovernable desire
seized upon Presley, an inordinate curiosity. Why not see, face to face,
the man whose power was so vast, whose will was so resistless, whose
potency for evil so limitless, the man who for so long and so
hopelessly they had all been fighting. By reputation he knew him to
be approachable; why should he not then approach him? Presley took his
resolution in both hands. If he failed to act upon this impulse, he knew
he would never act at all. His heart beating, his breath coming short,
he entered the building, and in a few moments found himself seated in an
ante-room, his eyes fixed with hypnotic intensity upon the frosted pane
of an adjoining door, whereon in gold letters was inscribed the word,
"PRESIDENT."

In the end, Presley had been surprised to find that Shelgrim was still
in. It was already very late, after six o'clock, and the other offices
in the buildi