There began to be strange new stirrings in the world. Money! From the land which was its home and place of abode it leaned over cross the wide seas, and made potent whisperings in the ears of the countries where money is despised and held vulgar. They all listened. The particular potency lay in the fact that the money was so big, which took away tremendously from its despicableness and its vulgarity.

A black-bearded Grand Duke from the wide land of the frozen seas humbled himself to plain Ivan Strolesky at the sound of that whisper, and hurried westward. A high dignitary of an empire upon which the sun never sets, hid his title under a plebeian nom de plume, and stalked stolidly away westward to that whisper of despised American money. From the land of fashion, from the land of toys, from the land of art and music, from the land of cherry blossoms, from the land of the drowsing drug, from the land of the flashing jewels, from the lands of the burning sands and the lands of the midnight sun, there came the highest of power; and they all, light and swarth, and bearded and smooth, and large and small, and robed and trousered, centred toward the city of strong men, and, one by one, presented themselves, in turn, to a grave and silent kinky-haired old darky by the name of Ephraim.

One motive alone had dragged them over sterile plains and snowy mountains and bounding seas; the magic whisper of Money!

Through Ephraim they came to the stocky, square-standing, square-faced chess player who was called Allison. They found him pleasant, agreeable, but hardly of their class. He was so forceful as to be necessarily more or less crude, and he had an unpleasant fashion of waving aside all the decent little pretences about money. That was the fault of this whole rude country, where luxury had been brought to the greatest refinement ever known in the history of the world; it was so devoted to money, and the cultured gentlemen did their best to get all they could.

To Ivan Strolesky Allison was frank and friendly, for there was something in the big Russian which was different from these others, so he hastened to have business out of the way.

“Here are your lines,” he said, spreading down a map which had been brought up-to-date by hand. “The ones I want are checked in blue. The others I do not care for.”

The Grand Duke looked them over with a keen eye.

“I am rather disappointed,” he confessed in excellent English. “I had understood that you wished to control our entire railway system.”

“I do,” assented Allison; “but I don’t wish to pay out money for them all. If I can acquire the lines I have marked, the others will be controlled quite easily from the fact that I shall have the only outlet.”

The Grand Duke, who had played poker in America and fan-tan in China and roulette in Monte Carlo, and all the other games throughout the world, smiled with his impressive big eyes, and put his hand up under his beard.

“The matter then seems to resolve itself into a question of price,” he commented.

“No; protection,” responded Allison. “If I were buying these railroads outright, I should expect my property interests to be guarded, even if I had to appeal to international equity; but I am not.”

“No,” admitted the Grand Duke. “They can not be purchased.”

“The proposition resolves itself then into a matter of virtual commercial seizure,” Allison pointed out.

The Grand Duke, still with his hand in his beard, chuckled, as he regarded Allison amusedly.

“I shall not mind if you call it piracy,” he observed. “We, in Russia, must collect our revenues as we can, and we are nearly as frank as Americans about it. Returning to your matter of protection. I shall admit that the only agreement upon which we can secure what you want, would not hold in international equity; and, in consequence, the only protection I can give you is my personal word that you will not be molested in anything which you wish to do, providing it is pleasant to myself and those I represent.”

“Then we’ll make it an annual payment,” decided Allison, putting away some figures he had prepared. “We’ll make it a sliding scale, increasing each year with the earnings.”

The Grand Duke considered that proposition gravely, and offered an amendment.

“After the first year,” he said. “We shall begin with a large bonus, however.”

Allison again put out of his mind certain figures he had prepared to suggest. Apparently the Grand Duke needed a large supply of immediate cash, and the annual payments thereafter would need to be decreased accordingly, with still another percentage deducted for profit on the Duke’s necessities.

“Let us first discuss the bonus,” proposed Allison, and quite amicably they went into the arrangement, whereby Ivan Strolesky filched the only valuable railroad lines in his country from the control of its present graft-ridden possessors, and handed it over to the International Transportation Company.

“By the way,” said Allison. “How soon can we obtain possession?”

Ivan Strolesky put his hand in his beard again, and reflected.

“There is only one man who stands in the way,” he calculated. “He will be removed immediately upon my return.”

There was something so uncanny about this that even the practical and the direct Allison was shocked for an instant, and then he laughed.

“We have still much to learn from your country,” he courteously confessed.

When Ivan Strolesky had gone, Allison went to his globe and drew a bright red line across the land of the frozen seas.

There came a famous diplomat, a heavy blonde man with a red face and big spectacles and a high, wide, round forehead.

“I do not know what you want,” said the visitor, regarding Allison with a stolid stare. “I have come to see.”

“I merely wish to chat international politics,” returned Allison. “There is an old-time feud between you and your neighbours to the west.”

“That is history,” replied the visitor noncommittally. “We are now at peace.”

“Never peace,” denied Allison. “There will never be friendship between phlegmatism and mercurialism. You might rest for centuries with your neighbours to the west, but rest is not peace.”

“Excuse me, but what do you mean?” and the visitor stared stolidly.

“In your affairs of mutual relationship with the land to the west, there are not less than a dozen causes upon which war could be started without difficulty,” went on Allison. “In fact, you require perpetual diplomacy to prevent war with that country.”

The visitor locked his thick fingers quietly together and kept on stolidly staring.

“I hear what you say,” he admitted.

“You are about to have a war,” Allison advised him.

“I do not believe so,” and the visitor ponderously shook his head.

“I am sorry to correct you, but you yourself will bring it about. You will make, within a month, an unfortunate error of diplomatic judgment, and your old strip of disputed territory will be alive with soldiers immediately.”

“No, it is not true,” and the visitor went so far, in his emphasis, as to unlock his fingers and rest one hand on the back of the other.

“I think I am a very fair prophet,” said Allison easily. “I have made money by my prophecy. I have more money at my command at the present time than any man in the world, than any government; wealth beyond handling in mere currency. It can only be conveyed by means of checks. Let me show you how easy it is to write them,” and drawing a blank book to him, he wrote a check, and signed his name, and filled out the stub, and tore it out, and handed it to the visitor for inspection. The visitor was properly pleased with Allison’s ease in penmanship.

“I see,” was the comment, and the check was handed back. He drew his straight-crowned derby towards him.

“I have made a mistake,” said Allison. “I have left off a cipher,” and correcting this omission with a new check, he tore up the first one.

“I see,” commented the visitor, and put the second check in his pocket.

That had required considerable outlay, but when Allison was alone, he went over to his globe and made another long red mark.

A neat waisted man, with a goatee of carefully selected hairs and a luxuriant black moustache, called on Allison, and laid down his hat and his stick and his gloves, in a neat little pile, with separate jerks. He jerked out a cigarette, he jerked out a match, and jerkily lit the former with the latter.

“I am here,” he said.

“I am able to give you some important diplomatic news,” Allison advised him. “Your country is about to have a war with your ancient enemy to the east. It will be declared within a month.”

“It will be finished in a week,” prophesied the neat waisted caller, his active eyes lighting with pleasure.

“Possibly,” admitted Allison. “I understand that your country is not in the best of financial conditions to undertake a war, particularly with that ancient enemy.”

“The banking system of my country is patriotic,” returned the caller. “Its only important banks are controlled under one system. I am the head of that system. I am a patriot!” and he tapped himself upon the breast with deep and sincere feeling.

“How much revenue does your position yield you personally?”

A shade of sadness crossed the brow of the neat waisted caller.

“It does not yield you this much,” and Allison pushed toward him a little slip of paper on which were inscribed some figures.

The caller’s eyes widened as they read the sum. He smiled. He shrugged his shoulders. He pushed back the slip of paper.

“It is droll,” he laughed, and his laugh was nervous. He drew the slip of paper towards him again with a jerky little motion, then pushed it back once more.

“If your banking system found it impossible to be patriotic, your government would be compelled to raise money through other means. It would not withdraw from the war.”

“Never!” and the neat waisted caller once more touched himself on the breast.

“It would be compelled to negotiate a loan. If other governments, through some understanding among their bankers, found it difficult to provide this loan, your government would find it necessary to release its ownership, or at least its control, of its most valuable commercial possession.”

The caller, who had followed Allison’s progressive statement with interest, gave a quick little nod of his head.

“That most valuable commercial possession,” went on Allison, “is the state railways. You were convinced by my agent that there is a new and powerful force in the world, or you would not be here. Suppose I point out that it is possible to so cramp your banking system that you could not help your country, if you would; suppose I show you that, in the end, your ancient enemy will lose its identity, while your country remains intact; suppose I show you that the course I have proposed is the only way open which will save your country from annihilation? What then?”

The neat waisted caller, with the first slow motion he had used since he came into the room, drew the slip of paper towards him again.

There followed another banker, a ruddy-faced man whose heavy features were utterly incapable of emotion; and he sat at Allison’s table in thick-jowled solidity.

“There are about to begin international movements of the utmost importance,” Allison told him. “There is a war scheduled for next month, which is likely to embroil the whole of Europe.”

The banking gentleman nodded his head almost imperceptibly.

“Mr. Chisholm advised me that your sources of information are authentic,” he stated. “What you tell me is most deplorable.”

“Quite,” agreed Allison. “I am informed that the company you represent and manage has the practical direction of the entire banking system of Europe, with the exception of one country. Besides this, you have powerful interests, amounting very nearly to a monopoly, in Egypt, in India, in Australia, and in a dozen other quarters of the globe.”

“You seem to be accurately informed,” admitted the banking gentleman, studying interestedly the glowing coals in Allison’s fireplace.

“If I can show you how a certain attitude towards the international complications which are about to ensue will be of immense advantage to your banking system, as well as to the interests I represent, I have no doubt that we can come to a very definite understanding.”

The solidly jowled banking gentleman studied the glowing coals for two minutes.

“I should be interested in learning the exact details,” he finally suggested.

Allison drew some sheets of paper from an indexed file, and spread them before the financier. It was largely a matter of credits in the beginning, extensions here, curtailments there, and all on a scale so gigantic that both gentlemen went over every item with the imaginative minds of poets. In every line there was a vista of vast empires, of toppling thrones, of altered boundaries, of such an endless and shifting panorama of governmental forces, that the minds of men less inured to the contemplation of commercial and political revolutions might have grown fagged. On the third page, the solid banking gentleman, who had not made a nervous motion since his grandfather was a boy, looked up with a start.

“Why, this affects my own country!” he exclaimed. “It affects our enormous shipping interests, our great transportation lines, our commercial ramifications in all parts of the globe! It cripples us on the land and wipes us from the sea! It even affects my own government!”

“Quite true,” admitted Allison. “However, I beg you to take notice that, with the international complications now about to set in, your government has reached its logical moment of disintegration. Your colonies and dependencies are only waiting for your startlingly shrunken naval and land forces to be embroiled in the first war which will concentrate your fighting strength in one spot. When that occurs, you will have revolutions on your hands in a dozen quarters of the globe, so scattered that you can not possibly reach them. India will go first, for she thirsts for more than independence. She wants blood. Your other colonies will follow, and your great shipping interests, your transportation lines, your commercial ramifications in all parts of the globe, will be crushed and crumbled, for the foundation upon which they rest has long ago fallen into decay. Your country! Your country is already on the way to be crippled on the land and swept from the sea! I know the forces which are at work; the mightiest forces which have ever dawned on the world; the forces of twentieth century organised commerce!”

The banking gentleman drew a long breath.

“What you predict may not come to pass,” he maintained, although the secret information which had brought him to Allison had prepared him to take every statement seriously.

“I can show you proofs! The war which is to be started next month is only the keystone of the political arch of the entire eastern hemisphere. There are a dozen wars, each bigger than the other, slated to follow, if needed, like the pressing of a row of electric buttons. Knowing these things as you shall, it is only a question of whether you will be with me on the crest, or in the hollow.”

The caller moistened his lips, and turned his gaze finally from the glowing coals to Allison’s face.

“Show me everything you know,” he demanded.

They sat together until morning, and they traversed the world; and, when that visitor had gone, Allison gave his globe a contemptuous whirl.

The balance of them were but matters of detail. With a certain prideful arrogance, of which he himself was aware, he reflected that now he could almost leave these minor powers and potentates and dignitaries to a secretary, but nevertheless he saw them all. One by one they betrayed their countrymen, their governments, their ideals and their consciences, and all for the commodity to which Allison had but to add another cipher when it was not enough! It was not that there were none but traitors in the world, but that Allison’s agents had selected the proper men. Moreover, Allison was able to show them a sceptre of resistless might; the combined money, and power, and control, and wide-reaching arms of the seven greatest monopolies the world had ever known! There was no strength of resistance in any man after he had been brought, face to face, with this new giant.

It was in the grey of one morning, when Allison was through with his last enforced collaborator, and, walking over to his globe, he twirled it slowly. It was lined and streaked and crossed, over all its surface now, with red, and it was the following of this intricate web which brought back to him the triumph of his achievement. He had harnessed the world, and now he had but to drive it. That was the next step, and he clenched his fist to feel the sheer physical strength of his muscles, as if it were with this very hand that he would do the driving.

Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he went back into his study, and drew from a drawer the photograph of a young and beautiful girl, who seemed to look up at him, out of an oval face wreathed with waving brown hair, and set with beautifully curved lips which twitched at the corners in a half sarcastic smile, from two brown eyes, deep and glowing and fraught with an intense attractiveness. Every morning he had looked at this photograph, the priceless crown of his achievement, the glittering jewel to set in the head of his sceptre, the beautiful medallion of his valour!

“Only a little longer, Gail,” he told her with a smile, and then he saluted the photograph. “Gail, the maker of maps!” he said.