Nor was this the sum of Caleb’s warm weather activities. There were other deals less widely blazoned, yet quite as remunerative; deals that plunged so far beneath the surface of practical politics as to emerge black with the mire of the bottom. But it was gold-bearing mud, and Caleb knew the secret of assaying it. These submerged ventures brought at odd hours to the stuffy private office a succession of slum-dwellers; even as the mergers brought, at other hours, the Pompton Avenue element. Long were the conferences and deeply was the Underworld stirred thereby. Thus, in the maze of hovels “across the tracks,” as well as along the hill boulevards, did Caleb Conover cause unwonted activity of a sort, during the stifling days of dust. Caine, remaining in town, more to glean in the path of Conover’s sickle than to look after the interests of his own newspaper, was moved to admiring envy. The Steeloid deal which a few months earlier had meant so much for both himself and Conover, was now but a side issue with the latter; a mere detail whose ultimate fate could not materially affect his fast multiplying wealth. The campaign which for years had been Caleb’s objective, was carried through now with a rush and daring that led onlookers, who knew not how long-devised was each seemingly wild move, to catch their breath and wonder when the crash would come. But the crash did not come. It would not come. Conover could have told them that, had he in these hot weeks of ceaseless rush possessed the leisure and will to explain his lightning moves. Blacarda, too,--emerging from retirement with scarred face, a useless left arm and a heart black with mingled dread, deathless hatred and an obsessed craving for revenge,--Blacarda noted his foe’s sudden triumph and yearned to the depths of his semi-Semitic soul to turn in some way the Fighter’s flank. But, for the moment, he was helpless. He could but set into motion such few schemes of his own as seemed feasible; and begin a course of underground counterplanning, whose progress was by no means rapid enough to ease the hate that mastered him. Meantime, he kept out of the Fighter’s way. For, even yet, his wrecked nerves thrilled treacherously at fear of physical nearness to the brute who had broken him. To Caine’s casual warning anent Blacarda, Caleb gave no heed whatever. He had conquered the man once. Should the need arise, he could do so again. In the meantime he had no time to waste in following his victim’s crawling movements. Great was Caleb Conover. He was fighting. He had always been fighting. Just now, battle was as the breath of his nostrils. For he was waging a winning fight; warring and winning on a scale to which he had never before been able to attain. And the militant bulldog part of him was strangely elate.