And yet, he had! Curse them! The brats would have grown up to oppose the vested privileges of the rich! They, too, would have become anarchists and rioters, bent on leveling the huge industrial fabric which such as he had so laboriously erected under the legal protection afforded their sacred rights! He had done well to remove them now! And the great captains of industry would thank him for the example he had thus fearlessly set!
To think of Avon was for him now to think in terms of blood. And yet his carnal soul hourly wrestled sore with thoughts of a wholly different stamp; with those strange emotions which he had felt when in Carmen’s presence; with those unfamiliar sentiments which, had he not fought them back so bitterly, might have made him anew, and––
But the remembrance maddened him. His face grew black, and his mouth poured forth a torrent of foul imprecations and threats upon her and upon those who stood with her. His rage towered again. He smote the desk with his great fist. He fumed, he frothed, he hurled reason from its throne, and bade the Furies again become his counselors.
Upon the desk before him lay the mortgage papers which Hitt had signed. He had bought the mortgage from the bank which had loaned the Express the money. He would crush that sheet now, crush it until the ink dripped black from its emasculated pages! And when it fell into his hands, he would turn it into the yellowest of sensational journals, and hoot the memory of its present staff from ocean to ocean!
Then, his head sunk upon his breast, he fell to wondering if he might not secure a mortgage upon the Beaubien cottage, and turn its occupants into the street. Ah, what a power was money! It was the lever by which he moved the world, and clubbed its dull-witted inhabitants into servile obeisance! Who could stand against him––
That girl!
He sprang to his feet and called Hood. That obedient lackey hastened into his master’s presence.
“The Ketchim trial?” snarled Ames.
“Called for this week, sir,” replied Hood, glad that the announcement could not possibly offend his superior.