“Quite true,” admitted Allison. “However, I beg you to take notice that, with the international complications now about to set in, your government has reached its logical moment of disintegration. Your colonies and dependencies are only waiting for your startlingly shrunken naval and land forces to be embroiled in the first war which will concentrate your fighting strength in one spot. When that occurs, you will have revolutions on your hands in a dozen quarters of the globe, so scattered that you can not possibly reach them. India will go first, for she thirsts for more than independence. She wants blood. Your other colonies will follow, and your great shipping interests, your transportation lines, your commercial ramifications in all parts of the globe, will be crushed and crumbled, for the foundation upon which they rest has long ago fallen into decay. Your country! Your country is already on the way to be crippled on the land and swept from the sea! I know the forces which are at work; the mightiest forces which have ever dawned on the world; the forces of twentieth century organised commerce!”
The banking gentleman drew a long breath.
“What you predict may not come to pass,” he maintained, although the secret information which had brought him to Allison had prepared him to take every statement seriously.
“I can show you proofs! The war which is to be started next month is only the keystone of the political arch of the entire eastern hemisphere. There are a dozen wars, each bigger than the other, slated to follow, if needed, like the pressing of a row of electric buttons. Knowing these things as you shall, it is only a question of whether you will be with me on the crest, or in the hollow.”
The caller moistened his lips, and turned his gaze finally from the glowing coals to Allison’s face.
“Show me everything you know,” he demanded.
They sat together until morning, and they traversed the world; and, when that visitor had gone, Allison gave his globe a contemptuous whirl.
The balance of them were but matters of detail. With a certain prideful arrogance, of which he himself was aware, he reflected that now he could almost leave these minor powers and potentates and dignitaries to a secretary, but nevertheless he saw them all. One by one they betrayed their countrymen, their governments, their ideals and their consciences, and all for the commodity to which Allison had but to add another cipher when it was not enough! It was not that there were none but traitors in the world, but that Allison’s agents had selected the proper men. Moreover, Allison was able to show them a sceptre of resistless might; the combined money, and power, and control, and wide-reaching arms of the seven greatest monopolies the world had ever known! There was no strength of resistance in any man after he had been brought, face to face, with this new giant.
It was in the grey of one morning, when Allison was through with his last enforced collaborator, and, walking over to his globe, he twirled it slowly. It was lined and streaked and crossed, over all its surface now, with red, and it was the following of this intricate web which brought back to him the triumph of his achievement. He had harnessed the world, and now he had but to drive it. That was the next step, and he clenched his fist to feel the sheer physical strength of his muscles, as if it were with this very hand that he would do the driving.
Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he went back into his study, and drew from a drawer the photograph of a young and beautiful girl, who seemed to look up at him, out of an oval face wreathed with waving brown hair, and set with beautifully curved lips which twitched at the corners in a half sarcastic smile, from two brown eyes, deep and glowing and fraught with an intense attractiveness. Every morning he had looked at this photograph, the priceless crown of his achievement, the glittering jewel to set in the head of his sceptre, the beautiful medallion of his valour!