walls were covered with rich brown leather fastened with
leather-covered nails and every piece of woodwork in the floor,
wainscoting, beams and panels as well as the furniture, was of solid
dark red vermilion wood from the heart of a South American forest.

From the panelling on the inside wall huge doors of a safe stood open,
showing the entrance to a steel vault from which a noiseless electric
elevator led to the storage vaults five stories below the surface of
the ground. The dark panelling, the massive furniture, and the rich
leather-covered walls with their heavy ceilings, all accented the weird
effects of the millions of gleaming coin and gorgeously tinted stocks
and bonds. The huge table seemed to fill and crowd the entire room and
the wall of gold to be pushing itself against the ceiling.

Bivens approached the table softly and reverently, as a priest
approaches the High Altar, and touched the gold with the tips of his
slender little fingers.

"In romances, Jim, remorse always crushes and kills the rich man----"

Bivens paused and smiled.

"But in life, never! He laughs and grows fat. I haven't reached the fat
period yet because I've just begun----"

"You've just begun?" Stuart interrupted, laughingly.

"Yes, you'll understand what I mean before I've finished the day's
work."

"But why?" the young lawyer asked passionately. "Such a purpose seems
to me in view of this stunning revelation the sheerest insanity. Life,
the one priceless thing we possess, is too short. And what lies beyond
the six feet of earth we don't know."

"That's because you're an unbeliever, Jim."

There could be no mistaking the seriousness with which Bivens spoke.
Yet Stuart laughed in spite of his effort to control the impulse.

"On the other hand, Cal," he answered, with mischievous banter, "if
your little heaven and your little hell in which you seem to take so
much comfort are true, so much the worse. I can see you shovelling coal
through all eternity----"

"But I happen to be going to the other place," Bivens broke in,
good-naturedly.

Stuart looked at the pile of gold a moment and then at Bivens and said
slowly:

"Well, if you do get there, Cal, there's one thing certain, the angels
will all have to sleep with their pocket-books under their pillows."

Bivens's eyes sparkled and a smile played about the hard lines of his
mouth. In spite of its doubtful nature he enjoyed the tribute to his
financial genius beneath the