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The two men—Warren Rand, the human riddle of two hemispheres, and John Glynde, his scarcely less famous secretary—leaned across the green baize-covered table until their heads almost met. They both wore the new headpieces and receivers designed to lessen the roar of the great engine which drove the plane. The sheet of paper in front of the latter was covered with figures and calculations, which he had apparently just brought to an end. He thrust a drawing pin through it for security and steadied himself by gripping at the side of the table as the powerful machine ploughed its way through an unexpected air pocket. He peered steadily into his companion’s face, and, notwithstanding his own insignificant appearance and thin, reedy voice, there was something curiously impressive in his solemnly spoken words.

“You are the richest man in the world, Warren Rand,” he announced.

“I always expected to be,” was the cool reply. “The only question is whether I am rich enough for my purpose.”

“With your holdings of newspapers, you practically control the Press of the world,” John Glynde continued.

Warren Rand, the man with the roughly hewn, brooding face of an intellectual satyr, frowned gloomily.

“Not yet,” he grunted. “You don’t know as much about newspapers, John, as you do about money. That will come, though—it must come.”

“What do you expect to get out of it all?” the smaller man asked curiously, taking off his thin, gold-rimmed spectacles and wiping them with meticulous care. “So far, you don’t seem to get as much from life as other men. You are probably the most hated individual in the world. Every one with whom you permit yourself to exchange a word fawns upon you, and no one tells you the truth if they can help it. You haven’t a single friend, it costs us a small fortune every year to save you from being assassinated. Where does your pull come?”

Warren Rand made no immediate reply, but steadying himself carefully, leaned back in his chair. Obliquely through the window, he could see in front a dull, red haze, which might have been the rolling torrent of some huge conflagration. The glow of it mounted upwards, gaining in clarity and substance at every moment. Opposite to him, John Glynde gathered his papers together with the mechanical exactitude of a trained man of affairs.

“Power!” the latter muttered, half soliloquising, half addressing his vis-à-vis. “What’s the use of that except to pander to your vanity, to breed hate? Which of your senses can you gratify by knowing that you could drive your crowbar into the flywheel of the world if it pleased you? What’s it all about, Warren Rand—the urge and the sweat, and the clamorous strain of it all?”

Warren Rand turned away from the window and looked at his secretary. The latter, diminutive alike in physique and features, met his employer’s fierce but passive scrutiny without flinching. He was a man of insignificant appearance, with flaxen hair streaked with grey, shrewd eyes rather deeply set, a negligible chin, and a mouth whose lips were generally a little thrust outwards.

“I wonder,” Warren Rand speculated, “whether any employer in the world ever permitted himself the luxury of such a secretary as you?”

John Glynde ignored the satire and elected to take the question seriously.

“Not many men could afford one,” he observed. “You are paying me a hundred thousand dollars a year, at which price I am extraordinarily cheap. If you had left me alone where I was, I should have been president of my bank before now, chairman of the Country Club, and commodore of the West Bay Sailing Club. Instead of serving a corporation, I chose to serve you. You may dispute it as often as you like, but the task I set myself out to accomplish I have accomplished. I have put you in the most dangerous position any human being could occupy. You are the richest man in the world.”

The mighty machine throbbed and rushed onwards into the darkness—onward toward the wall of misty fire. Once again they were caught in an air pocket, and the whole structure shook with convulsions, whilst it seemed that the mahogany panels of the saloon were being torn asunder. Filmy wisps of the cloud through which they mounted stole mysteriously into the interior. They were enveloped in it as though in a fog.

“I made only one condition when I gave up my own career to boost yours,” John Glynde continued. “You know what it was. I insisted that when the time came for me to ask you the question, towards what goal we were driving, what was behind all this huge, dynamic force, you should answer me as man to man. Already you can neither use your money nor wield your power; yet the piston rods are still beating.”

“Wait for a few more months before you ask your question,” the other demanded. “All that I can tell you at this moment is that we are not beating the air. The organisation which you have helped me to build up has its purpose and its future. Both will be clear enough to you when the time comes to strike the first blow.”

The door of the saloon was suddenly opened and closed. A young man entered with a despatch.

“In Number Three code, sir, from London,” he announced.

Warren Rand waved it towards his companion, who opened a despatch box by his side and drew out a long, Morocco-bound volume. In something under a minute, he wrote out a transcription of the message in a clear, clerkly hand and passed it across the table:

Our agent, occupying responsible position in premier London newspaper, Daily Sun, reports editorial by Harold Nickols now going into type disapproving transference Disarmament Conference to Geneva and adopting hostile tone towards discussion of Peace Pact stop article further supports reception of Postinoff and Vitznow if discussions prove of practical value.

Warren Rand waved the messenger away. He pointed to a small locked ledger which lay upon the table.

“This man Harold Nickols?”

“I can tell you from memory,” Glynde replied. “Fifty-three years old, club man, widower, opinionated, inaccessible.”

His Chief glanced at his watch.

“What time shall we be in Croydon?” he enquired of an official who was passing through.

“Half-past-seven, sir,” the latter answered. “Barely twenty minutes, that is.”

Warren Rand gazed for a moment or two thoughtfully at the great carpet of lights which seemed moving upwards. Then he drew a cigar from his pocket and, regardless of the strenuous rules of every airship line in the world, lit it. His action was arbitrary, but usual. The plane was his; the two pilots, the mechanics, and very much John Glynde were the bondsmen of his will.