Well, I have an appointment with Mr. Bivens at this hour."

"Really!" the reporter gasped. "Then for heaven's sake give me a chance
at you five minutes before the other fellows. Remember now, I saw you
first!"

He was still pleading when Stuart smilingly drew away and followed one
of Bivens's secretaries.

He passed rapidly through a labyrinth of outer offices, each entrance
guarded by a detective who eyed him with keen scrutiny as he passed.

Bivens came forward to greet him with outstretched hands.

"I needn't say I'm glad to see you, Jim. How do you like my new
quarters?"

"Absolutely stunning. I had no idea you cultivated such ceremonial
splendours in your business."

"Yes, I like it," the financier admitted thoughtfully. "I don't mind
confessing to you on the sly that it was Nan's idea, at first, but I
took to it like a duck to water. And the more I see of it the better I
like it."

Bivens stood warming himself before a cheerful blaze of logs while he
spoke and Stuart had quietly taken a seat and watched him with growing
interest.

In spite of his contempt for the mere possession of money, in spite of
his traditional contempt for Bivens's antecedents, character and
business methods he found himself unconsciously paying homage to the
power the little dark swarthy figure to-day incarnated.

He was struck too with the fact that remarkable changes had taken place
in his physical appearance during the past ten years of his reign as a
financial potentate. Into his features had grown an undoubted dignity.
His mouth had grown harder, colder, and more cruel and more significant
of power. His eyes had sunk back deeper into his high forehead and
sparkled with fiercer light. He had become more difficult of approach
and carried himself with quiet conscious pride.

Stuart was scarcely prepared for the hearty, old-fashioned cordial way
in which he went about the business for which he had asked him to come.

"I'm glad you like it, Jim," he added after a pause.

"It's magnificent."

"Glad," he repeated, "because you're going to come in here with me."

The lawyer lifted his brows and suppressed a smile.

"Oh, you needn't smile," Bivens went on good-naturedly. "It's as fixed
as fate. You are the only man in New York who can do the work I've laid
out and you've got to come. The swine who made up your convention the
other day knew what they were about when they turned you down. You were
too big a man for the job the