Pay him and he’ll never show up again!”

The four were on their feet facing Edmond, who still sat smiling.

“Bohn’s right!” said Hoffman. “Radio-active lead—there isn’t any such thing! It’s a fraud!”

Thwaites opened his mouth, and then remained silent. The four angry men stood staring vindictively at the curious being who faced them still with his smile of cold contempt. There was a moment of pause bitter with hatred.

“I congratulate you, Mr. Bohn,” said Edmond, his voice and expression unaltered. “Your deductions are admirable, but have the one flaw of being incorrect.” He drew from his pocket a little disc as large as a silver dollar, wrapped in a dull-glinting lead-foil; he tossed this before the group, where it dropped on the table with a leaden thump.

“There is a two-ounce disc of A-lead. If it contains radium, its value will be considerably greater than your ten thousand dollar payment. I leave it as a token of good faith, gentlemen; it cost me perhaps three dollars.”

He glanced at Bohn, who was unwrapping the foil about the piece with fury in his blue eyes.

“You may perform any tests you wish on this material, Mr. Bohn, but handle it gingerly. It bums—like radium!”

Edmond rose.

“I do not require your check at once, but will expect it within a week, at which time I will submit my contract for your signatures. During the interim, Mr. Bohn and Mr. Hoffman may call at my home,” he indicated his card, which still lay on the table, “for instructions in the method and some of the principles underlying the preparation of activated lead. They will perceive that the cost of manufacture is surprisingly low.”

“Why only some of the principles?” asked Bohn, glowering.

“Those that you can comprehend,” said Edmond, turning to the door. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

He departed, hearing with amusement the crescendo of excited and angry voices issuing from the closing door. The voice of the president—“What was that man? Did you see his hands?”

CHAPTER III

MARKET

EDMOND stepped out of the building into the late afternoon sun that flashed at him from the windshields of ten thousand west-bound vehicles. He shaded his eyes for a moment, then crossed Adams Street and continued south, merging for the moment into the stream of living beings that eddied around and between the canyon-forming buildings.

“This river flows its own. way, bound by laws as definite and predictable as those that govern flowing water,” he reflected. “Mankind in the mass is a simple and controllable thing, like a peaceful river; it is only in the individual that there is a little fire of independence.”

He entered the lobby of a great white skyscraper. Disregarding the clicking of the elevator starters, he mounted the stairs to the second floor, turning into the customer’s room of his brokers. The market was long since closed; he was alone in a room of vacant chairs save for several clerks casting up the final quotations, and an old man sweeping scraps and cigarette butts into a central pile. The translux was dark, but a ticker still clicked out its story of “bid-and-asked”; no one watched it as its yellow ribbon flowed endlessly into a waste-basket.

Edmond walked over to the far end of the room, where a smaller board carried the Curb quotations. A casual glance was sufficient; Stoddard & Co. had closed just below twenty, for a fractional loss from the preceding day. He stood for a few moments recapitulating his readily available resources—he found no need ever for written accounts—and walked over to the desk, to a clerk who had handled his occasional previous transactions. He nodded as the man greeted him by name.

“You may buy me five thousand Stoddard at twenty,” he said.

“Five thousand, Mr. Hall? Do you think it advisable to speculate for that amount? Stoddard’s only an independent, you know.”

“I am not speculating,” said Edmond.

“But the company has never paid a dividend.”

“I require the stock for a particular reason.”

The clerk scribbled on a blank order: “5000 Sdd. @ 20 O.B., N. Y. Curb,” and passed it to him.