"Sign that paper and get out of here!" he roared. "Throw me over, will you? I'll show you where you get off, you dirty hound! We'll have this paper signed and witnessed, and if you ever again try to knife me--Lord help you! Get busy!" Findlater, his brow streaming with perspiration, laid the paper on the desk and reached out trembling fingers for a pen. CHAPTER II Jimmy Wren looked with harassed eyes at Armstrong, who sat at his desk listlessly going over a report. "Reese," he broke out impulsively, "what the devil can I do? How can I help?" Armstrong looked up at him soberly. "Nothing, Jimmy, thanks," he answered in a flat voice. "You've not heard from Dorothy?" Armstrong shook his head. "No. She's in Evansville, and has opened her father's house there, I understand." Jimmy Wren was aware only of the troubled fact, and not of the details that lay behind Dorothy's desertion. Armstrong had closed Aircastle Point the day after she left, and was now in an uptown hotel. Reese Armstrong was still bewildered, dazed, by this private tragedy, which over-shadowed everything else. He could not spur himself to take any interest in the winding-up of the campaign, and accepted without question what was done by Holcomb and the others. Dorothy had returned no answer to his one implorant letter; this silence hurt more deeply than her words. A profound apathy was upon him. Somehow, he felt, Macgowan had been responsible for this final and crushing blow; but how, he was at a loss to know. His apathy was continually pierced by the thought of going to Indianapolis and wringing an explanation out of Slosson, yet he could not stir himself to the action. He had not the slightest idea what Slosson had implanted in Dorothy's mind. He could not imagine why she had been so insistent upon his guilt, how he had been so utterly damned in her eyes. He must face Slosson with nothing but surmise--and the heart was gone out of him. He knew it, as did those around him; but only Jimmy Wren knew that his domestic separation was the cause of it all. "Damn Slosson!" he burst forth despairingly. "If I had him here I'd choke the truth out of his--" He checked himself abruptly, with an effort. Jimmy Wren stared. "Slosson! The fellow on the old Food Products board? Why, I met him in Evansville. What's he got to do with this, Reese?" "Oh, nothing, Jimmy, nothing I can go into!" groaned Armstrong, flinging the paper in his hand across the desk. "Don't ask me, old man. It's hell, that's all." He reached for a cigar and lighted it, biting hard on the weed, his brow furrowed and lined by the stormy mood within.