The Root of Evil

by Jr. Thomas Dixon

The look silenced the speaker. The little man knew instinctively that Stuart was at that moment weighing his own life and character by the merciless standard he had set up for others. Judged by conventional laws he had nothing to fear. He was a faithful member of his church. He gave liberally to its work and gave generously to a hundred worthy charities. He loved his wife with old-fashioned loyalty and tenderness and grieved that she was childless. He stood by his friends and fought his enemies, asking no quarter and giving none.

Yet in his heart of hearts he knew that, judged in the great white light of the Eternal when all things hidden shall be revealed, he could not stand blameless. He knew that while he had kept within the letter of the law, his genius consisted in the skill with which he had learned to divert other men's earnings into his own coffers.

And deep down in the depths of his memory there lay one particular deed which lent colour to all that followed. He knew that however loftily he might discourse at present about "character," "honour," "integrity," and "fair dealing," he had stolen the formula from his big-hearted employer with which he had laid the foundation of his fortune. It was the first half-million that came hard. It was this first half-million that bore the stain of shame. He had justified it with fine sophistry until he counted himself a benefactor to Woodman, but the grim fact stood out in his memory with growing clearness as his millions piled up with each succeeding year.

His other questionable acts on which the fate of millions had often hung he had no difficulty in justifying. Business was war. In war it was fair to deceive, to march in the night, to attack when least suspected, to strike to kill, to destroy and lay waste the fairest countries and starve your enemy into submission.

All this had flashed through Bivens's imagination when Stuart smiled, and in spite of his conscious dignity and power, he had fallen silent. The smile had made him nervous. He wondered vaguely what was in the mind of the tall quiet man that provoked a smile at such a serious moment.

He wondered particularly whether the lawyer could have suspected his hobby, for he had one of the most curious—a collection of historic material on the origin of American fortunes. The origin of his own had early made Bivens suspect that all great fortunes which had mounted into millions, like his own, may have been built in their first foundations on fraud. He wondered if Stuart had by any accident stumbled on this information. Even if he had he could not understand his real motive in such an investigation, and yet the lazy smile with which he looked up from that record was disconcerting.

Bivens waited for him to speak. The moment was one big with fate. Stuart was about to reach a decision that would make history. No one knew so well its importance as the keen intellect that gleamed behind the little black eyes watching with tireless patience.

Bivens was the one odd man in a thousand who knew that big events were not to be found in earthquakes, tornadoes and battles. He had long since learned that the events which shake the world are always found in the silent hours when the soul of a single man says, "I will!"

Below he could hear the roar of the city's life. On the Curb brokers were shouting their wares with their accustomed gusto. On the floor of the Exchange the tide of business ebbed and flowed with the fierce pulse of an apparently exhaustless strength. Men bought and sold with no fear of to-morrow. Yet a single word from the lips of the tall, clean-shaven young officer of the law and a storm would break which might tear from the foundations institutions on whose solidity modern civilization seemed to rest.

The silence at length became suffocating to Bivens. He moistened his lips and drew his smooth fingers softly over his silky beard.