"Leave that to me," returned Macgowan, with assurance. "Wren can give me all his letters and instructions to agents. I'll guarantee to satisfy the postal men in an hour's time. Then I'll take up the letter itself with Lewis and see what's back of it; I'll wire him at once, in fact. You'll do better to keep these things in the family, Reese, than to call in any outside help." Armstrong considered this, and found it good. That any breath of suspicion should be cast on his methods, angered him intensely; on the other hand, there was so obviously some inexplicable mistake involved that it behooved him to go slow. His business was founded upon confidence. The only way in which Consolidated could be attacked, the only way in which Armstrong himself could be attacked, was by attacking the confidence of the thousands of investors. That this letter from Seattle indicated any such attack, never for an instant occurred to him. "All right," he said at length. "Take care of it in your own way, Mac. Advise me at Evansville just what's behind this, or what's going on." Macgowan assented briefly, and seized his things. If he were to catch the Washington flyer that night, he had much to do. When he had departed, Jimmy Wren frowned and lighted a dead cigar. "Mac was sweating. All worked up; notice it? Hope he'll handle things right. I'm off to wire the coast. If I get any answers before you leave, I'll let you know." Armstrong found himself alone. Gradually his indignation died away. Nothing so stings the soul of a man as injustice, and the entire content of that Seattle letter was false to the core--falser even than Armstrong dreamed at the moment. It was not the threatened trouble which hurt, not the warning sent Macgowan, but the black falsity of the whole affair. Armstrong laughed at the thought of heading off the threatened inquiry. Any probe into the methods of Consolidated or of the Armstrong Company, would only result in exoneration. That the salesmen were misrepresenting Food Products was ridiculously untrue. Armstrong knew his salesmen. "Yet that letter worries me," thought Armstrong. "I wish now that I'd gone ahead and employed Dorns. Why the devil was Mac so worried over a Federal inquiry? We've nothing to fear from that end. Something queer about it all; I don't savvy it." At this moment he remembered the promise he had made to Dorothy. The thought disturbed him. That request had not been empty words. When she asked for his promise, she meant exactly what she said; perhaps, he reflected, that request of hers had some unguessed reason behind it.