The deeper the young lawyer probed into the mass of corruption Bivens had placed in his hands the more profound became his surprise. At first he was inclined to scout the whole story as an exaggeration invented in the fierce fight with financial foes.
It was incredible!
That men whose names were the synonyms of honesty and fair dealing, men entrusted with the management of companies whose assets represented the savings of millions of poor men, the sole defense of millions of helpless women and children—that these trusted leaders of the world were habitually prostituting their trusts for personal gain, staggered belief.
He delayed action and began a careful, patient, thorough investigation. As it proceeded, his amazement increased. He found that Bivens had only scratched the surface of the truth. He found that the system of fraud and chicanery had spread from the heads of the big companies until the whole business world was honeycombed with its corruption.
New York, the financial centre of the Nation, had gone mad with the insane passion for money at all hazards—by all means, fair or foul. The Nation was on the tidal wave of the most wonderful industrial boom in its history. The price of stocks had reached fabulous figures and still soared to greater heights. Millionaires were springing up, like mushrooms, in a night. Waiters at fashionable hotels, who hung on the chairs of rich guests with more than usual fawning, were boasting of fortunes made in a day. Broadway and Central Park and every avenue leading to the long stretches of good country roads flashed with hundreds of new automobiles, crowded with strange smiling faces.
Two months had passed since Bivens placed in the District Attorney\'s hands the document which was destined to make sad history in the annals of the metropolis. Stuart felt that the time had come to act. It was his solemn duty to the people.
He sat in his private office in one of the great skyscrapers down town holding in his hand a list of the men he was about to ask the Grand Jury to indict for crimes which would send them to prison, exile and dishonoured death. It was a glorious morning in May. The window was open and a soft wind was blowing from the south. The view of the blue expanse of the great harbour and towering hills of Staten Island in the distance was entrancing. The south wind filled his heart with memories of high ideals, and noble aspirations born in his own land of poverty and want.
His people in the South had known the real horrors of want, had fought the grim battle, won an honest living and kept their lives clean and strong. And just because they had, his heart was filled with a great pity as he read over and over again the illustrious names he was about to blacken with the stain of crime. He thought of women in sheltered homes up town whose necks would bend to the storm; of the anguish of old-fashioned fathers and mothers who could think no evil of their own, whose spirits would droop and die at the first breath of shame. He rose at last with calm decision.
"I\'ve got to do it—that\'s all. But before I do, I\'m going to know one or two things beyond the shadow of a doubt."
He seized his telephone and made an appointment to call at once on Bivens.
The financier extended his delicate hand and with a cordial smile led Stuart to a seat beside his desk. The only sign he betrayed of deep emotion was the ice-like coldness of his slender fingers.
"Well, Jim, you\'ve completed your very thorough investigation?"
"How did you know I was making a thorough investigation?"
Stuart looked at Bivens with a quick movement of surprise. The little man was gazing intently at the ceiling.
"I make it my business to know things which vitally interest me. You found my facts accurate?"
"Remarkably so."
"And you are ready to strike?"
The black eyes flashed.
"When I have confirmed some statements you have made in your story concerning the private life of these men. How do you know the accuracy of the facts you state in a single line, for instance, about the private life and habits of the president of a certain trust company?"
A cold smile played about Bivens\'s mouth for a moment.
"You don\'t suppose I would make a statement like that unless I know it to be true?"
"I found all your other facts correct. This I haven\'t been able to verify. You make it incidentally, as though it were a matter of slight importance. To my mind it\'s the key to the man\'s character and to every act of his life. How did you discover it?"
"Very simply."
Bivens walked to his door, opened it, looked outside, stepped to one of the great steel safes and drew its massive doors apart. He pulled a slip from a cabinet fitted with a card-case index, noted the number, replaced the card, opened another door and drew out a manuscript notebook of some three hundred pages of type-written matter. Each page was written without spacing and contained as many words as the average page of a printed novel. On the back of the morocco cover was printed in plain gold lettering:
"THE PRIVATE LIFE OF NO. 560."
He handed the volume to Stuart, closed the safe, and resumed his seat.
"You may take that book with you, Jim," he said quietly. "I trust to your honour not to reveal its contents except in the discharge of your sworn duty as an officer of the law. You will find in it the record of the distinguished president\'s private life for the past ten years without the omission of a single event of any importance."
Stuart glanced through the book with amazement.
"How did you come into possession of such facts?"
"No trouble at all," was the easy answer. "It only requires a little money and a little patience and a little care in selecting the right men for the right job. Any man in the business world who thinks he can do as he pleases in this town will wake some morning with a decided jolt. The war for financial supremacy has developed a secret service which approaches perfection. The secret service of armies is child\'s play compared to it.
"Not only do I systematically watch my employees until I know every crook and turn of their lives, but I watch with even greater care the heads of every rival firm in every department of the industrial world where my interests touch theirs.
"I not only watch the heads of firms, I watch their trusted assistants and confidential men. In that big safe a thousand secrets lie locked whose revelation would furnish matter enough to run the yellow journals for the next five years.
"Every man who holds a position of trust and puts his hands on money has his shadow. It\'s a question of business. The wholesaler must know the character of the retailer to whom he extends credit. A trust must know what its remaining independent rivals are doing, what business they are developing, what big orders they seek. I must know, and I must know accurately and fully what every enemy is doing, what he is thinking, with whom he drinks, where he spends his time and how he lives.
"Modern business is war, the fiercest and most cruel the world has ever known. It is of greater importance to a modern captain of industry to know the plans of his enemy than it ever was to the commanding general of an opposing army."
"I see," Stuart responded, thoughtfully.
"There are men down there in the street now," Bivens went on dreamily, "who are wearing silk hats to-day for whom the prison tailor is cutting a suit. I have their records in that silent little steel-clad room. It\'s a pitiful thing, but it\'s life. And, believe me, the realities of our every-day life here are more wonderful than the wildest romance the novelist can spin.
"Last year I had a man of genius at the head of one of my corporations. Not the slightest suspicion had ever been directed against him. But my men reported to me that he was supporting two establishments, besides the one he kept for his family, and that in those two secret orchards which he............