and have a conference with Winifred Willowby, but he could not be located. The two scientists were left to their own resources. Having no other plausible plan of action, they selected the small hotel for their next experiment. This time they set a hundred wire traps and caught several hundred living rats. These they subjected to every known experiment, and at the end were forced to acknowledge that all they had learned left them in ignorance as to why the rats came just for one night in such enormous numbers.

Two months later their employer sent for them. It appeared that he had just returned from Europe. He listened to their story, smiled kindly at their perplexity, suggested that they take a vacation and forget about rats for a while, paid all their bills, and discharged them. He even went so far as to say that he was uninterested in rats, that it had just been a passing hobby and that just at present he was working on other matters. So, he asked them to pass out of his life. But he and Carol Crawford went into the wilds of Pike County and did some experimenting on his own account.

Meantime, things were going from bad to worse in New York City. The rat racketeers were becoming bolder, and started to reach after larger game. There were rumors that the Pennsylvania Railroad was paying to protect its terminal and that the Interurban was being bled white to keep the rats out of the subway. Of course, much of this was rumor and none of it reached the newspapers, but there is no doubt about the fact that eight million people were becoming rat-conscious and rat-afraid. It was growing into a worth-while racket, and those behind it were rapidly acquiring more than riches; they were growing so powerful that they felt able to control the city government.

More than one business tried to resist and more than one business awoke to find that it owned nothing but ruins. Rat protection was worthless when the enemy came by the hundred thousand and even million. The only worth-while defense against the multitudinous enemy was the payment of the weekly tribute, small enough each week, but in the course of the year taking the profits from most of the firms compelled to pay. Within a year the average business in the city was working for the gangsters and content to, at least, be permitted to stay in business.

Then the racket was transferred to other cities, slowly and on a small scale at first; then more boldly. Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington began to feel the pressure. The profits were divided, but always the main share went to New York. For that was where the Big Boys were. And ruling the Big Boys was the Old Man, who was so little known and so seldom seen that his very existence was questioned by some of the smaller gangsters. No one knew how he had obtained his power, but no one was brave enough to deny it. The fact remained that he simply ruled; reigned like a Caesar; dictated like a Napoleon. From back-stage he pulled the wires to make his puppets dance.

It was this man who aroused the interest of Winifred Willowby. In other times, in former generations, in far-passed centuries, they might have ruled Rome together, or split it in two ways over their dying bodies. But in 1935 the short sword had been replaced by the ballot box and civil war by the primary election. Neither man had much that the other craved for, yet both prevented the other from the full enjoyment of life. But it was the blue-blooded patrician who at last gave in and secretly asked for an interview.

The conference was held on a fallen log on the shore of Porter's Pond in Pike County, Pa. Someone said that if Mark Hopkins sat on one end of a log and a student on the other end, it was a University; but, with Willowby on one end of the log and the Old Man on the other, it became nothing more than a conspiracy against the existence and the very life of the nation.

It was a strange sight, those two opposites on the log. The rich man, a little over five feet, barely a hundred pounds, with the body of a boy and the face