The Air Trust | Page 5

stabbed at him with his forefinger, while the other
financier regarded him with a fishily amused eye. "Every human being
in this world--and there are 1,900,000,000 of them now!--is breathing,
on the average, 16 cubic feet of air every hour, or about 400 a day. The
total amount of oxygen actually absorbed in the 24 hours by each
person, is about 17 cubic feet, or over 30 billions of cubic feet of
oxygen, each day, in the entire world. Get that?"
"Well?" drawled the other.
"Don't you see?" snapped Flint, irritably. "Imagine that we extract
oxygen from the air. Then--"
"You might as well try to dip up the ocean with a spoon," said Waldron,
"as try to vitiate the atmosphere of the whole world, by any means
whatsoever! But even if you could, what then?"
"Look here!" exclaimed the Billionaire. "It only needs a reduction of 10
per cent. in the atmospheric oxygen to make the air so bad that nobody
can breathe it without discomfort and pain. Take out any more and
people will die! We don't have to monopolize all the oxygen, but only a
very small fraction, and the world will come gasping to us, like so

many fish out of water, falling over each other to buy!"
"Possibly. But the details?"
"I haven't worked them out yet, naturally. I needn't. Herzog will take
care of those. He and his staff. That's what they're for. Shall we put it
up to him? What? My God, man! Think of the millions in it--the
billions! The power! The--"
"Of course, of course!" interposed Waldron, calmly, eyeing his smoke.
"Don't get excited, Flint. Rome wasn't built in a day. There may be
something in this; possibly there may be the germ of an idea. I don't say
it's impossible. It looks visionary to me; but then, as you well say, so
has every new idea always looked. Let me think, now; let me think."
"Go ahead and think!" growled the Billionaire. "Think and be hanged
to you! I'm going to act!"
Waldron vouchsafed no reply, but merely eyed his partner with cold
interest, as though he were some biological specimen under a lens, and
smoked the while.
Flint, however, turned to his telephone and pulled it toward him, over
the big sheet of plate glass. Impatiently he took off the receiver and
held it up to his ear.
"Hello, hello! 2438 John!" he exclaimed, in answer to the query of
"Number, please?"
Silence, a moment, while Waldron slowly drew at his cigar and while
the Billionaire tugged with impatience at his gray mustache.
"Hello! That you, Herzog?"
* * * * *
"All right. I want to see you at once. Immediately, understand?"
* * * * *

"Very well. And say, Herzog!"
"Bring whatever literature you have on liquid air, nitrogen extraction
from the atmosphere, and so on. Understand? And come at once!"
* * * * *
"That's all! Good-bye!"
Smiling dourly, with satisfaction, he hung up and shoved the telephone
away again, then turned to his still reflecting partner, who had now
hoisted his patent leather boots to the window sill and seemed absorbed
in regarding their gloss through a blue veil of nicotine.
"Herzog," announced the Billionaire, "will be here in ten minutes, and
we'll get down to business."
"So?" languidly commented the immaculate Waldron. "Well, much as
I'd like to flatter your astuteness, Flint, I'm bound to say you're barking
up a false trail, this time! Beef, yes. Steel, yes. Railroads, steamships,
coal, iron, wheat, yes. All tangible, all concrete, all susceptible of being
weighed, measured, put in figures, fenced and bounded, legislated
about and so on and so forth. But air--!"
He snapped his manicured fingers, to show his well-considered
contempt for the Billionaire's scheme, and, throwing away his
smoked-out cigar, chose a fresh one.
Flint made no reply, but with an angry grunt flung a look of scorn at the
calm and placid one. Then, furtively opening his desk drawer, he once
more sought the little vial and took two more pellets--an action which
Waldron, without moving his head, complacently observed in a
heavily-bevelled mirror that hung between the windows.
"Air," murmured Waldron, suavely. "Hot air, Flint?"
No answer, save another grunt and the slamming of the desk-drawer.
And thus, in silence, the two men, masters of the world, awaited the

coming of the practical scientist, the proletarian, on whom they both, at
last analysis, had to rely for most of their results.
CHAPTER III.
THE BAITING OF HERZOG.
Herzog was not long in arriving. To be summoned in haste by Isaac
Flint, and to delay, was unthinkable. For eighteen years the chemist had
lickspittled to the Billionaire. Keen though his mind was, his character
and stamina were those of a jellyfish; and when the