“Yes, Malone can have my chair.  I mean to take his—­at the head of the table.”

The secretary started violently.  He could never quite accustom himself to the dauntless fashion with which his chief essayed the impossible—­and accomplished it.  Hamilton Burton’s fist came down savagely on the mahogany.  The smiling features of a moment ago had vanished and Bristoll was looking up into eyes that rained immeasurable wrath.

“They hate me, because they fear me!” The voice was not loud, but it was terrific in its intensity of anger.  “By the Almighty God in heaven, I mean to give them cause to hate me.  I mean to crush them to a pulp until nothing remains except the stench of their unmourned memory!” ...  Once more the timbre changed and with startling abruptness became quietly declarative.

“This morning, I received a confidential note from Carton.”

“The secretary of Coal and Ore?”

“The same.  I put him where he is—­he’s a valuable man—­and incidentally a member of my secret service.  Malone is calling in all the proxies he can control; he and his myrmidons.  He has not taken me into his confidence.  How would you construe that?”

“As you do.  He means to oust you.”

Burton nodded, then a naive smile twinkled in his eyes.  “What he is now beginning to do, I went to work on ten minutes after he left my office last spring.  Many transactions, some of them of huge proportions, which you did not understand, have since been completed in preparation for this moment.  On the floor of the Exchange my brokers have been ostentatiously idle, but others, not known to act for me, have been buying Coal and Ore.  They have pretty well gathered in the floating supply.”

“Hasn’t that been reported to Malone?”

The financier shook his head.  “Trading of that character is difficult to trace and is usually presumed to be marginal trading.  To disarm possible suspicion my recognized brokers have sold large blocks of Coal and Ore—­to my unrecognized brokers.  I seem to have been unloading—­while I was doing the reverse.  When the psychological moment comes, there will be a surprise—­and a raid upon the control.”

“Then you are ready for the issue.”

“No, not quite.”  Burton rose and took a turn or two across the floor.  He stopped before a small painting and spoke irrelevantly.  “I always liked Corot.  The man could paint, Carl.  He understood values.”  After this art criticism he returned to the desk and sat down again.  “No, I’m not ready yet.  I’ve done all that I could do by quiet preparation.  The issue now narrows to the hair balance which makes all fights crucial—­and interesting.  There’s a member of the state senate who holds a block I need, and there are two banks in town that hold others.  When I have that stock I shall be master of the situation—­and of Consolidated—­and Malone must take his orders from me.”

“And if you fail to get it?”