Ray Cummings

“ How those millions would squirm as they saw death coming upon them! The supreme power of Groff at last demonstrated to its ultimate. Queer that he had never thought of this logical climax to his great career—not until that little incident a year ago when this young couple had caused him to envisage it.
He was telling them now what he had done.... The little depots all over the earth, compressed with caged bacteria. Little time-bombs—all to explode within thirty minutes of this present instant. The women and children, the aged, would die first. ”

“ For all his life he had worked and schemed and fought to make himself a power. The richest, most powerful man in the world—he had attained it. They had called him cruel, in his youth, with his ruthless business methods. ”

“ But the polluted air, the contagion spreading everywhere—in a week, a month, the swift and deadly bacteria would leave no one alive.
"You—are going to do this to us?" young Jac murmured at last.
"Why not? It is my destiny." Never had Groff felt so quiet and comfortable a thrill as now; and this was only the beginning. "Others before me have tried their little conquests," he said with his grim smile. "Men who wanted power, and got it, just in a small way and for a little while. ”

“ The man who owned everything. Pride swelled him again as he thought of that poor little fool who had only wanted to make himself the titular leader of the earth, and in his own fatuous conceit had written it all down in his little book. ”