Stuart had scarcely passed the door when he stopped, struck dumb with amazement. In the centre of the great office was a sight that held him spellbound. An immense vermilion wood table six feet wide and fifty feet in length filled the centre. On it the wizard had placed his fortune of ninety millions of dollars. Twenty millions were in gold its heavy weight sustained by extra stanchions. The coin, apparently all new from the National mint, was carefully arranged around the edges of the table in a solid bulwark two feet high. Behind this gleaming yellow pile of gold he had placed his stocks and bonds--each pile showing on its top layer the rich green, gold or purple colours of its issue, each pile marked with a tag which showed its total amount. The effect was stunning. The whole scheme of decorations of the immense room lent itself to the effects the financier had sought to produce. The walls were covered with rich brown leather fastened with leather-covered nails and every piece of woodwork in the floor, wainscoting, beams and panels as well as the furniture, was of solid dark red vermilion wood from the heart of a South American forest. From the panelling on the inside wall huge doors of a safe stood open, showing the entrance to a steel vault from which a noiseless electric elevator led to the storage vaults five stories below the surface of the ground. The dark panelling, the massive furniture, and the rich leather-covered walls with their heavy ceilings, all accented the weird effects of the millions of gleaming coin and gorgeously tinted stocks and bonds. The huge table seemed to fill and crowd the entire room and the wall of gold to be pushing itself against the ceiling. Bivens approached the table softly and reverently, as a priest approaches the High Altar, and touched the gold with the tips of his slender little fingers. "In romances, Jim, remorse always crushes and kills the rich man----" Bivens paused and smiled. "But in life, never! He laughs and grows fat. I haven't reached the fat period yet because I've just begun----" "You've just begun?" Stuart interrupted, laughingly. "Yes, you'll understand what I mean before I've finished the day's work." "But why?" the young lawyer asked passionately. "Such a purpose seems to me in view of this stunning revelation the sheerest insanity. Life, the one priceless thing we possess, is too short. And what lies beyond the six feet of earth we don't know." "That's because you're an unbeliever, Jim." There could be no mistaking the seriousness with which Bivens spoke. Yet Stuart laughed in spite of his effort to control the impulse. "On the other hand, Cal," he answered, with mischievous banter, "if your little heaven and your little hell in which you seem to take so much comfort are true, so much the worse. I can see you shovelling coal through all eternity----" "But I happen to be going to the other place," Bivens broke in, good-naturedly.