“Nothing doing on that, old man!” interrupted “Tiger.”  “Have no fear.  The first move he makes, off to Sing Sing he goes, the way we jobbed Parker Hayes.  Slade and the Cosmos Agency can take care of him, all right, if he asserts himself!”

“Very likely,” answered Flint, who had now at last entirely recovered his sang-froid.  “But in that event, our work would be at a standstill.  No, Waldron, we mustn’t oppose this fellow.  Better let the check go through, if he has nerve enough to fill it out and cash it.  He won’t dare gouge very deep; and no matter what he takes, it won’t be a drop in the ocean, compared to the golden flood now almost within our grasp!”

Waldron pondered a moment, then nodded assent.

“All right.  Correct,” he finally answered.  “So then, we can dismiss that trifle from our minds.  Now, to work!  We’ve got the process we were after.  What next?”

“First of all,” answered the Billionaire, “we’ll let this Herzog understand that he’s to have a share in the results; that in this, as in everything so far, he’s merely a tool—­and that when tools lose their cutting edge we break ’em.  He’s a meek devil.  We can hold him easily enough.”

“Right.  And then?” asked Waldron.

“Then?  First of all, a good, big, wide-sweeping publicity campaign.  That must begin today, to prepare opinion for the forthcoming development of the new idea.”

“Henderson can handle that, all right,” said Wally, leaning forward in his chair.  “Give him the idea, and turn him loose, and he’ll get results.  A clever dog, that.  He and his press bureau, working through all the big dailies and many of the magazines, can turn this country upside down in six months.  Let him get on this job, and before you know it the public will be demanding, be fighting for a chance to subscribe to the new ventilating-service.  That part of it is easy!”

“Yes, you’re right,” replied Flint.  “We’ll see Henderson no later than this afternoon.  He and his writers can lay out a series of popular articles and advertisements, to be run as pure reading matter, with no distinguishing mark that they are ads, which will get the country—­the whole world, in fact—­coming our way.”

“Good,” the other assented.  “Meantime, we can begin installing oxygen machines on a big scale, a huge scale, to supply the demand that’s bound to arise.  Where do you think we’d best manufacture?  Herzog says water power is the correct thing.  We might use Niagara—­use some of the surplus power we already own there.”

“Niagara would do, very well,” answered Flint.  He had once more taken out his little morocco-covered note book, and was now jotting down some further memoranda.  “It’s a good location.  Pipe-lines could easily be extended, from it, to cover practically a quarter to a third of the United States.  Eventually we’ll put in another plant in Chicago, one in Denver and one on the Pacific Coast.  Then, in time, there must be distributing centers in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.  But for the present, we’ll begin with the Niagara plant.  After we get that under full operation, the others will develop in due course of time.”