The Air Trust | Page 7

the
room as though seeking the assurance he so sadly lacked.
"Confine yourself to answering what I ask you," directed Flint, crisply.
"You're not paid to infer. You're paid to answer questions on chemistry,
and to get results. Remember that!"
"Yes, sir," meekly answered the chemist, while Waldron smiled with
cynical amusement. He enjoyed nothing so delightedly as any grilling
of an employee, whether miner, railroad man, clerk, ship's captain or
what-not. This baiting, by Flint, was a rare treat to him.
"Go on," commanded the Billionaire, in a badgering tone. "What are
the processes?" He eyed Herzog as though the man had been an ox, a
dog or even some inanimate object, coldly and with narrow-lidded
condescension. To him, in truth, men were no more than Shelley's
"plow or sword or spade" for his own purpose--things to serve him and
to be ruled--or broken--as best served his ends. "Go on! Tell me what
you know; and no more!"
"Yes, sir," ventured Herzog. "There are three processes to extract
nitrogen and oxygen from air. One is by means of what the German
scientists call Kalkstickstoff, between calcium carbide and nitrogen, and
the reaction-symbols are--"
"No matter," Flint waived him, promptly. "I don't care for formulas or
details. What I want is results and general principles. Any other way to
extract these substances, in commercial quantities, from the air we
breathe?"
"Two others. But one of these operates at a prohibitive cost. The
other--"
"Yes, yes. What is it?" Flint slid off the edge of the table and walked
over to Herzog; stood there in front of him, and bored down at him
with eager eyes, the pupils contracted by morphine, but very bright.
"What's the best way?"

"With the electric arc, sir," answered the chemist, mopping his brow.
This grilling method reminded him of what he had heard of "Third
Degree" torments. "That's the best method, sir."
"Now in use, anywhere?"
"In Notodden, Norway. They have firebrick furnaces, you understand,
sir, with an alternating current of 5000 volts between water-cooled
copper electrodes. The resulting arc is spread by powerful
electro-magnets, so." And he illustrated with his eight acid-stained
fingers. "Spread out like a disk or sphere of flame, of electric fire, you
see."
"Yes, and what then?" demanded Flint, while his partner, forgetting
now to smile, sat there by the window scrutinizing him. One saw, now,
the terribly keen and prehensile intellect at work under the mask of
assumed foppishness and jesting indifference--the quality, for the most
part masked, which had earned Waldron the nickname of "Tiger" in
Wall Street.
"What then?" repeated Flint, once more levelling that potent forefinger
at the sweating Herzog.
"Well, sir, that gives a large reactive surface, through which the air is
driven by powerful rotary fans. At the high temperature of the electric
arc in air, the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen dissociate into their
atoms. The air comes out of the arc, charged with about one per cent. of
nitric oxide, and after that--"
"Jump the details, idiot! Can't you move faster than a paralytic snail?
What's the final result?"
"The result is, sir," answered Herzog, meek and cowed under this
harrying, "that calcium nitrate is produced, a very excellent fertilizer.
It's a form of nitrogen, you see, directly obtained from air."
"At what cost?"

"One ton of fixed nitrogen in that form costs about $150 or $160."
"Indeed?" commented Flint. "The same amount, combined in Chile
saltpeter, comes to--?"
"A little over $300, sir."
"Hear that, Wally?" exclaimed the Billionaire, turning to his now
interested associate. "Even if this idea never goes a step farther, there's
a gold mine in just the production of fertilizer from air! But, after all,
that will only be a by-product. It's the oxygen we're after, and must
have!"
He faced Herzog again.
"Is any oxygen liberated, during the process?" he demanded.
"At one stage, yes, sir. But in the present process, it is absorbed, also."
Flint's eyebrows contracted nervously. For a moment he stood thinking,
while Herzog eyed him with trepidation, and Waldron, almost
forgetting to smoke, waited developments with interest. The Billionaire,
however, wasted but scant time in consideration. It was not money now,
he lusted for, but power. Money was, to him, no longer any great
desideratum. At most, it could now mean no more to him than a figure
on a check-book or a page of statistics in his private memoranda. But
power, unlimited, indisputable power over the whole earth and the
fulness thereof, power which none might dispute, power before which
all humanity must bow--God! the lust of it now gripped and shook his
soul.
Paling a little, but with eyes ablaze, he faced the anxious scientist.
"Herzog! See here!"
"Yes, sir?"
"I've got a job for you, understand?"

"Yes, sir. What is it?"
"A