The Air Trust eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 313 pages of information about The Air Trust.

The Air Trust eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 313 pages of information about The Air Trust.

[Illustration:  “Can’t be done, Eh?” said Flint.]

“Granted,” put in Waldron, “that my objection is futile, just what’s your idea?”

“This!” And Flint stabbed at him with his forefinger, while the other financier regarded him with a fishily amused eye.  “Every human being in this world—­and there are 1,900,000,000 of them now!—­is breathing, on the average, 16 cubic feet of air every hour, or about 400 a day.  The total amount of oxygen actually absorbed in the 24 hours by each person, is about 17 cubic feet, or over 30 billions of cubic feet of oxygen, each day, in the entire world.  Get that?”

“Well?” drawled the other.

“Don’t you see?” snapped Flint, irritably.  “Imagine that we extract oxygen from the air.  Then—­”

“You might as well try to dip up the ocean with a spoon,” said Waldron, “as try to vitiate the atmosphere of the whole world, by any means whatsoever!  But even if you could, what then?”

“Look here!” exclaimed the Billionaire.  “It only needs a reduction of 10 per cent. in the atmospheric oxygen to make the air so bad that nobody can breathe it without discomfort and pain.  Take out any more and people will die!  We don’t have to monopolize all the oxygen, but only a very small fraction, and the world will come gasping to us, like so many fish out of water, falling over each other to buy!”

“Possibly.  But the details?”

“I haven’t worked them out yet, naturally.  I needn’t.  Herzog will take care of those.  He and his staff.  That’s what they’re for.  Shall we put it up to him?  What?  My God, man!  Think of the millions in it—­the billions!  The power!  The—­”

“Of course, of course!” interposed Waldron, calmly, eyeing his smoke.  “Don’t get excited, Flint.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  There may be something in this; possibly there may be the germ of an idea.  I don’t say it’s impossible.  It looks visionary to me; but then, as you well say, so has every new idea always looked.  Let me think, now; let me think.”

“Go ahead and think!” growled the Billionaire.  “Think and be hanged to you! I’m going to act!”

Waldron vouchsafed no reply, but merely eyed his partner with cold interest, as though he were some biological specimen under a lens, and smoked the while.

Flint, however, turned to his telephone and pulled it toward him, over the big sheet of plate glass.  Impatiently he took off the receiver and held it up to his ear.

“Hello, hello! 2438 John!” he exclaimed, in answer to the query of “Number, please?”

Silence, a moment, while Waldron slowly drew at his cigar and while the Billionaire tugged with impatience at his gray mustache.

“Hello!  That you, Herzog?”

* * * * *

“All right.  I want to see you at once.  Immediately, understand?”

* * * * *

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Project Gutenberg
The Air Trust from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.