his dream of universal power.

He summoned Waldron and Herzog for another conference and together they
feverishly planned to put the works under defense, until such time as
troops could be got through to them.

The plant regiment was mustered and the Cosmos mercenaries and scabs
were made ready. The machine-guns were unlimbered for action and large
quantities of ammunition were delivered to them and to the aerial-bomb
guns, as nightfall lowered. Herzog set eight hundred men to work
covering all the tanks possible, with wire netting of heavy steel. The
search-lights were all ordered into use; steam and electrical
connections were made, the air-fleet was manned, and everything was done
that unlimited wealth and bitter hate of the Workers could suggest.

With curses on the fog, which hid the upper air from view, the old man
now stood at one of the west windows of his inner office--the office on
the top floor of the main Administration Building, overlooking nearly
the whole Plant.

"Damn the weather!" he snarled, his gold teeth glinting. "In addition to
all this mist from the Falls, there's a regular cloud-bank settling
down, tonight! Under cover of it, what may not happen? Nothing could
have been worse, Waldron. Though we shall soon control the air, that
won't be enough, so long as fogs and mists escape us. Our next
problem--hello! Now what the devil's _that_?"

"What's what?" retorted Waldron, testily. He had been drinking rather
more heavily than usual, that day, both because of the dull weather and
because the Falls invariably got on his nerves, during his brief
sojourns there. Away from New York and his favorite haunts, Waldron was
lost. "What's what?" he repeated with an ugly look. "This roaring,
glaring, trembling place gives me--"

"That! That light in the sky!" cried Flint, excitedly pointing. "See?
No--it's gone now! But it looked like--like a rocket! A signal, of some
kind, thrown from an aeroplane! A--"

Waldron laughed harshly.

"Seeing things, eh?" he sneered, coming across to the window, himself,
and peering out. "_I_ don't see anything! Nothing here to worry about,
Flint. With all these walls and guns, and netting, and air-ships and a
private army and all, what more do you want? Not getting nervous in your
old age, are you, eh?" he gibed bitterly. "Or is your conscience
beginning to wake up, as the graveyard becomes more a probability
than--"

"Enough!" Flint snapped at him. "When you drink, Wald