"This way, sir, Dr. Woodman asks you to wait for him in the library." So Bivens was calling on his arch enemy by appointment. Stuart replaced his hat on the rack and returned to his room, determined to await the outcome of this extraordinary visit. That its significance was sinister he couldn't doubt for a moment. Little could he dream how fateful for his future life was the message the little dark man bore. Stuart closed his door with a sensation of foreboding, sat down and tried to read. On Dr. Woodman's entrance, Bivens rose to greet him with unusual animation and unmistakable good will. When the doctor grasped the outstretched hand a more striking contrast could scarcely be imagined--the one big, bluff, jovial, sunny, powerful and straight of figure as he was always straight in speech and manners--the financier, small and weak in body, his movements sinuous, flexible, with eyes that never looked at the man he was talking to, yet always seemed to be taking in everything in the room--eyes unusually dark, yet seemingly full of piercing light as from hidden fires beneath. "Well, Bivens, what can I do for you? I understand from your note that the matter is important." "Of the gravest importance to us both, Doctor," he answered with a smile. "For a peculiar personal reason I want us to get together and settle our differences." "Are there any differences between us? You go your way and I go mine. You run your business to suit yourself and I'll do the same. The world's big enough for us both----" "That just the trouble," Bivens interrupted. "It isn't. We are entering a new era of combination, merger, cooperation." "Compulsory cooperation!" the doctor laughed. "It may be so at last," the little man said soberly. "Certainly the old idea of competition is played out. We no longer believe that business men should try to cut each other's throats." "Oh, I see," sneered the doctor, "they should get together, corral their customers, and cut their throats. That certainly is better for business, but how about the customers?" "Business is business," was the grim answer. "For beasts of the field, yes--but for men?" "Still, you must recognize the fact that the drug trade is a business enterprise, not a charity organization." "Even so, still I happen to know that within a stone's throw of my store swarms a population of a quarter of a million human beings so poor that only three hundred of them ever have access to a bathroom. The death rate of the children is 254 in a thousand. It should be about 20 in a thousand, if normal. I don't want any higher profits out of my customers. If I've got to fight I'd rather fight the trade than fight the people. I choose the lesser evil." "But I don't ask you to do evil." "You ask me to enter with you into a criminal conspiracy to suppress freedom of trade, and use fraud and violence if necessary to win----" "Fraud and violence?" Bivens interrupted, smilingly.