“What now?” asked he, fixing his pale blue eyes on the Billionaire’s face.

“Come in here, and I’ll tell you.”

“Right!” And Waldron, brushing an invisible speck of dust from the sleeve of his checked coat, strolled rather casually into the Billionaire’s office.

Flint closed the door.

“Well?” asked Waldron, with something of a drawl.  “What’s the excitement?”

“See here,” began the great financier, stimulated by the drug.  “We’ve been wasting our time, all these years, with our petty monopolies of beef and coal and transportation and all such trifles!”

“So?” And Waldron drew from his pocket a gold cigar-case, monogrammed with diamonds.  “Trifles, eh?” He carefully chose a perfecto.  “Perhaps; but we’ve managed to rub along, eh?  Well, if these are trifles, what’s on?”

“Air!”

“Air?” Waldron’s match poised a moment, as with a slight widening of the pale blue eyes he surveyed his partner.  “Why—­er—­what do you mean, Flint?”

“The Air Trust!”

“Eh?” And Waldron lighted his cigar.

“A monopoly of breathing privileges!”

“Ha!  Ha!” Waldron’s laugh was as mirthful as a grave-yard raven’s croak.  “Nothing to it, old man.  Forget it, and stick to—­”

“Of course!  I might have expected as much from you!” retorted the Billionaire tartly.  “You’ve got neither imagination nor—­”

“Nor any fancy for wild-goose chases,” said Waldron, easily, as he sat down in the big leather chair.  “Air?  Hot air, Flint!  No, no, it won’t do!  Nothing to it nothing at all.”

For a moment the Billionaire regarded him with a look of intense irritation.  His thin lips moved, as though to emit some caustic answer; but he managed to keep silence.  The two men looked at each other, a long minute; then Flint began again: 

“Listen, now, and keep still!  The idea came to me not an hour ago, this morning, looking over the city, here.  We’ve got a finger on everything but the atmosphere, the most important thing of all.  If we could control that—­”

“Of course, I understand,” interrupted the other, blowing a ring of smoke.  “Unlimited power and so on.  Looks very nice, and all.  Only, it can’t be done.  Air’s too big, too fluid, too universal.  Human powers can’t control it, any more than the ocean.  Talk about monopolizing the Atlantic, if you will, Flint.  But for heaven’s sake, drop—­”

“Can’t be done, eh?” exclaimed Flint, warmly, sitting down on the desk-top and levelling a big-jointed forefinger at his partner.  “That’s what every new idea has had to meet.  It’s no argument!  People scoffed at the idea of gas lighting when it was new.  Called it ‘burning smoke,’ and made merry over it.  That was as recently as 1832.  But ten years later, gas-illumination was in full sway.

“Electric lighting met the same objection.  And remember the objection to the telephone?  When Congress, in 1843, granted Morse an appropriation of $30,000 to run the first telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington, one would-be humorist in that supremely intelligent body tried to introduce an amendment that part of the sum should be spent in surveying a railroad to the moon!  And—­”