A world of fierce bitterness lay in the final words, and the man listening realised the enormity of the offence, as this man saw it.  But he was left puzzled.

“But you would have—­bought this Sachigo?” he said, said.

Hellbeam’s eyes were again turned to the window.

“Oh, yes,” he said.  “I would have bought.  It would bring me to meet this man.  It is that I ask.  That only.  My hands would close upon him.  And I would see the blood sweat of his heart ooze under them.”

Hellbeam had finished.  Peterman understood that.  The passion had passed out of his eyes and the veins of his forehead were no longer distended.  He remained gazing at the window.

For some moments the younger man made no attempt to intrude further.  He had little desire to, anyway.  Without scruple himself, he still found little pleasure in probing the heart of this man, who was so powerful in his own destiny.  That which he had witnessed had served only to show him the delicacy of his own position.  He knew that the story had been told for one reason only.  It was to convince him, for the sake of his own wellbeing in the Skandinavia, that he must make no mistake in the warfare he must wage against the people of Sachigo.  It was for him to wage the battle with every faculty that was in him; and any failure of his would mean disaster for himself.  This was no commercial warfare.  It was the insane purpose of a monomaniac.

In those silent moments Elas Peterman thought with a rapidity inspired by the urgency he felt to be driving him.  And the fertility of his imagination served him unfailingly.  Oh yes.  Necessity was driving.  But so, too, was his own personal feelings.  He saw in the position that this man had revealed an advantage to himself he had never looked for.  With the necessary money forthcoming, and no directors to concern himself with, literally a free hand, he could employ a power which, in these days of unrest and hatred between capital and labour, would be well-nigh overwhelming.  The morality of it, the ultimate consequence of it mattered nothing.  The smashing of Sachigo would mean the smashing of Bull Sternford.  And he saw a way whereby the smashing of Bull Sternford could be achieved through—­

His mind focused itself, as it was bound to do, upon this thing as it affected his own desires.  He, too, was a passionate hater, for all Hellbeam’s denial.  His thought leapt at once to Nancy McDonald and the man who had thrust himself between him and his desires.  Whatever insane hatred lay behind Hellbeam’s purpose, it was not one whit more insensate than Elas Peterman’s feelings against the man who had come down from Sachigo at Nancy’s bidding.

Suddenly he looked up and glanced at the man occupying the chair that was his.  Hellbeam was still gazing at the window, pre-occupied with his own thoughts.