Yet to Slosson this imperturbable calm was terrible; behind it, he sensed an inexorable and frightful force which was moving to crush him. Despite his guilty conscience he did not entirely comprehend what was coming next. His own wretched blunders, the abject breakdown they had caused in Williams, his exposure at the hands of Jimmy Wren--all had left him confused and helpless. Behind his remnants of effrontery, he was conscious that he faced prison. All the fabric of his strutting and posturing had been stripped away. He beheld himself as these other people beheld him, and the reality staggered him. "When I was away in Wilmington," said Armstrong, watching him closely, "you came one morning to my home. Suppose you relate what passed between you and Mrs. Armstrong." A sudden pallor crept across the face of Slosson. According to the code by which men of his caliber lived and moved, he saw himself facing a retribution of swift and brutal personal violence--a bullet, perhaps. He knew no other code. Then, as he hesitated, Dorothy spoke quietly. "I can tell you, Reese." Armstrong turned to her. He was conscious of a sense of relief in her manner, a gladness that everything at last was coming open before them. She went on, without heat: "He came with a pretended warning for you, Reese. He had learned, he said, about this case of Tom Windsor's and wanted to warn you. Now I know that he lied to me. Also, he told me that you had robbed my father, that you had planned long ahead of time to take Food Products away from him--oh, it was so cleverly done, Reese! I was completely taken in. I had been led to suspect the Food Products affair, from little things--it was Macgowan all the time, making me think so! I believe now that it was all a terrible lie, Reese. Well, after Slosson went away, I called Jimmy Wren at Wilmington. He admitted that he had been in Evansville a month before our wedding--" Armstrong nodded, no trace of any emotion marring the even calm of his features. "Yes, Jimmy was there. We knew that Food Products was going under. Jimmy was observing the general conduct of things at the plant, and I was trying to formulate some method of saving the company." "According to Slosson," and Dorothy looked squarely at the man, "Jimmy was then making arrangements with the directors to take the company out of father's hands!" Armstrong laughed. "And according to Macgowan, Jimmy was then arranging to issue the stock, acting as a go-between from me to the old directors. Well, Pete? How about it?" Under their gaze, Slosson whitened still further, wet his lips, could not answer. His whole cosmos of artifice and peacock lies had crashed down about him. No longer was he a fine arbiter of destiny, one whose subtle genius could control things around--but a petty trickster, unmasked, facing retribution. One could see the horror of this exposure, the bitter physical fear of Armstrong, working in his brain.