What on earth could he want? Was he making a social call without announcement, as was the habit of his village days in the South? At this moment Bivens was the last man he wished to encounter, yet a meeting seemed inevitable. He stepped into the parlour and sat down with resignation to await his entrance.
To his amazement he heard the maid say:
"This way, sir, Dr. Woodman asks you to wait for him in the library."
So Bivens was calling on his arch enemy by appointment. Stuart replaced his hat on the rack and returned to his room, determined to await the outcome of this extraordinary visit. That its significance was sinister he couldn't doubt for a moment. Little could he dream how fateful for his future life was the message the little dark man bore. Stuart closed his door with a sensation of foreboding, sat down and tried to read.
On Dr. Woodman's entrance, Bivens rose to greet him with unusual animation and unmistakable good will.
When the doctor grasped the outstretched hand a more striking contrast could scarcely be imagined—the one big, bluff, jovial, sunny, powerful and straight of figure as he was always straight in speech and manners—the financier, small and weak in body, his movements sinuous, flexible, with eyes that never looked at the man he was talking to, yet always seemed to be taking in everything in the room—eyes unusually dark, yet seemingly full of piercing light as from hidden fires beneath.
"Well, Bivens, what can I do for you? I understand from your note that the matter is important."
"Of the gravest importance to us both, Doctor," he answered with a smile. "For a peculiar personal reason I want us to get together and settle our differences."
"Are there any differences between us? You go your way and I go mine. You run your business to suit yourself and I'll do the same. The world's big enough for us both——"
"That just the trouble," Bivens interrupted. "It isn't. We are entering a new era of combination, merger, coöperation."