enough, went up and congratulated him on the new political alliance. In the confusion, Winifred Willowby slipped out of the room and no one noticed his absence.

But some one did notice the sideboard and started to sample the bottles. Soon everyone was drinking a little. But the Old Man did not drink. He just sat there, moodily chewing his cigar and wondering how much of the fifty million he could keep for his share.

Nobody saw the first rat. It dropped from behind the picture and ran under a chair. The next rat did the same. Perhaps fifty rats were in the room before their presence was noticed. By that time they were coming faster, by the dozen, by the hundred. That was different. One rat in a large room meant nothing. A hundred, five hundred in the same room could mean almost anything.

And now they were literally pouring out from back of the picture. A cursing man pulled it to the floor and there was a large hole in the wall, two feet in diameter, and out of that hole the rats were pouring, big brown, hungry rats, dropping to the floor and starting to hunt for food. The puzzled men jumped up on top the chairs; the rats stood on their hind legs and looked at the large chunks of food with black beady, binoculars. The Old Man just sat there, chewing his cigar and cursing. He knew what it all meant seconds before anyone else.

A number of the most fearful men made a dash for the elevator. They were driven back by a torrent of rats climbing up the elevator shaft. Then fear came—and panic. With gun and heel, and broken chairs for clubs, they started in to kill rats, and for every one they killed, a hundred fastened to them with chisel teeth. To make it worse, the lights went out, and they were there in the dark, with mutilation as a beginning and death as an ending, and still the rats poured into the room, up the elevator shaft and out of the hole in the wall.

The Old Man walked across the room, kicking the struggling bodies of his followers out of his pathway. Rats ran up his legs and tried to bite his hands, his face; he swept them off him as a tiger would wipe ants off his fur; at last he came to the window. There was the city of New York in front of him, the city of a million twinkling lights, the tomb of a billion dead hopes; the Morgue of a Nation, covered by laughing, painted faces. He raised the sash and sat on the sill.

"Damn Willowby!" he said. "What a fool I was. But I am going to die clean. No rat is going to send me to Hell!"

And then he dropped.

In the room the struggle kept on—for an hour and then two. At last the screaming ceased, and the only sound was the gnawing of the rats, the crunching of their teeth and their satisfied, little squeaks of pleasure.

The next morning Winifred Willowby called on the Chief of the Secret Service of New York. With him were several men from Washington.

"I want to tell you something," he said. "A large group of men borrowed my office to have a meeting last night. They wanted privacy and secrecy and they had heard of my place in the Empire Trust Building. So I loaned them the entire floor for the night. But my janitors tell me that something terrible happened. An army of rats invaded the place, as they have been doing with other places in the city, and literally ate every man there; that is, all except one, a fellow by the name of Consuelo, and he preferred to jump out of a window and die clean on the pavement."

"Consuelo?" asked the Chief. "Not the Old Man? Not that Consuelo?"

"I think that is the one. Here is a list of the men who were there. I thought you might like to look it over before you gave it to the papers."

The Chief took the list and read it, puzzled.

"Do you mean these men were there last night?"

"I understand so."

"And now they are dead?"

"I think so. Of course, that is for the coroner to say."

"Do you know who these men were?"

"I suppose they were business associates of Consuelo. At least, that is what he told