While this tempest endured the nervous-looking man took a chair and sat silent. His attitude was hunched up and he chewed on his unlighted cigar, while his restless gaze traveled here, there, everywhere. On casual glance one might have overlooked him as negligible, thereby falling gravely into error. The giant and the slight man had this kinship, that in the workings of great finance they were mainspring and balance wheel, and at their prompting many divisions of the world's industrial armies marched or marked time. Suddenly J.J. Malone fell silent, and then Hamilton Burton spoke. He spoke with a surprising calm for one of his uncompromising arrogance. Perhaps it accorded with his whim to chill his words with icy insolence that they might cut the more and point the greater contrast when he chose to unleash his own hot wrath. "You sent for me, Malone. I declined to come to you. Then you came to me. As yet you have shown no reason for the visit except to swear around my office like a drunken and abusive pirate. If you have nothing for temperate discussion, I will now say good-day to you. Take with you the honors of war, sir. You have outcussed me. I acknowledge your superiority in billingsgate--"--he paused and for an instant his voice mounted, as he added--"and in nothing else!" "Have you reached so secure a stage, then, that you can defy and insult Harrison and myself? Are you prepared to declare war on the entire world of finance?" Now Malone spoke with regained composure, but an ominous undernote of threat. "Let's have done with pretense. In so far as any individuals can make or break--we can. When you came, an unlicked cub, into the world of large affairs it was through us you made the alliances upon which your success is built. However great you conceive yourself to be, 'Consolidated' still recognizes in us its active heads." Hamilton Burton replied with a smile of unruffled calm. "You say I came to you. Many men have come to you, only to go away again with empty hands." "You did not." "No. You took me to your hearts--but why? Was it because you pitied me? Has pity or gentle courtesy ever yet prevented 'Consolidated' from crucifying a victim? You conceded me my seat at your directorates only because you were compelled to recognize my value there. You lifted me from the ranks to the general staff of finance because of unescapable conviction that I inherently belonged among you; that I should take my place there as an ally or an enemy. You had a suspicion then of what I _knew_ before I ever saw a city--that I could not be stopped."