"But in reality you demand justice of me?"
"I have put myself in your power. I have refused and still refuse to believe that you can treat me with such bitter cruelty as to refuse to recognize my claim. I have waked at last to find myself helpless. The shock of it has crushed me. I've always felt rich in the love of my country, in the consciousness that I did my part to save the Union. Its growing wealth I have rejoiced in as my own. There has never been a moment in my life up to this hour that I have envied any man the possession of his millions. In the fight I have made on you, I have been trying to strike for the freedom of the individual man against what seemed to me to be the crushing slavery of soulless machinery."
The little financier lifted his shapely hand with a commanding gesture and the speaker paused.
"Come to the point, Woodman, what is in your mind when you say that I am your debtor?"
"Simply that I have always known that your formula for that drink was a prescription which I compounded years ago and which you often filled for me when I was busy. As a physician I could not patent such a thing. You had as much right to patent it as any one else."
"In other words," Bivens interrupted coldly, "you inform me that you have always known that I stole from your prescription counter the formula which gave me my first fortune, and for that reason every dollar I possess to-day is branded with the finger print of a thief; and you, the upright physician, held by the old code of honour which makes your profession a fraternity of ancient chivalry, come now with your hat in hand and ask me for a share of this tainted money."
"Bivens," the doctor protested with dignity, "you know that I have made no such wild accusation against you. In our contest I have never stooped to personalities. I have always felt that the inherent justice of my cause was based on principle. But I'm an old man to-night. The sands of life are running low. I'm down and out. The one being I love supremely is in peril. I can't fight."
Bivens turned with sudden fury and faced his visitor, every mask of restraint thrown to the winds. His little bead-eyes flashed with the venom of a snake coiled to strike. He stood close to the doctor and looked up at his tall massive figure, stretching his own diminutive form in a desperate effort to stand on a level with his enemy.
The doctor's face grew suddenly pale and his form rigid as the two men stood holding each other's gaze for a moment without words.
The financier began to speak with slow venomous energy: