Flint nodded.  “Yes,” he answered.  “I’ve never yet failed to bring Kate to reason and good common-sense, when I’ve set out to.  This will be no exception.  My word and my counsel possess the greatest weight with her.  She’ll listen and be advised, I’m sure.  So have no uneasiness,” he concluded, holding out his hand to his partner.  “Leave everything to me.  You’ll see, it will all come right, in the end.”

“Tiger” shook his hand, cordially.

“I haven’t words to thank you!” he exclaimed, with as much emotion as he could simulate from a perfectly cold heart and calculating soul.

“Don’t try to,” the Billionaire replied, with seeming benevolence.  “All the thanks I want, Wally, is to patch up this little difficulty and reunite two—­that is—­two loving, sympathetic hearts!”

“You old hypocrite!” Waldron thought, eyeing him.  “All you want of me, if anything, is to keep me as your partner, because you know you’re growing old and losing your grip, and I’m still in the game with all four claws!  Paternal philanthropist you are—­I don’t think!”

Wally was dead right.

“I can’t lose this man,” the Billionaire was thinking.  “Whether or no, Kate has got to marry him.  This Air Trust business demands a strong, a quick, a perfectly unscrupulous hand.  And no outsider will do.  My partner has got to be my son-in-law.  Love be damned!  Romantic slush can go to Hell!  Kate will marry him—­she’s got to—­or I’ll know the reason why!

“Though, after all,” he soothed his conscience, as Waldron stood up, walked to the window and stood gazing out as he smoked, “after all, Wally will make her as happy, I fancy, as any man.  He’s a fine figure in the world, commanding, heavily propertied, energetic and successful, also of the finest family connections.  Yes, a husband any woman might admire and be proud of.  Certainly, the only son-in-law for me.  Even if she can’t idolize and worship him, as some fool women think they must, a man, she can respect and be respected with him.  And with him she can take the highest position in the land, without a qualm as to his competence and manner.  Beside all that, what’s love?  Love?  Bah!”

With which philosophy, he too arose, went back into his own office, and returned to the dictating of some very private letters to Slade, the Cosmos Detective Agency manager, in re the ferreting-out and jailing or deporting of all Socialists and labor leaders at Niagara.  This preparatory work on the ground of the huge new Air Trust plant, he deemed most essential.  The Cosmos people, scenting a big contract, had fostered his belief, and now, already, the work was well under way.  Subterranean methods were still sufficing; but, should these fail, others lay in the background.

Flint smiled a grim, vulturine smile as he read over the finished letters of instruction, a few minutes later.