By this time the fight between Findlater and the Protective Association was not only public property but was being keenly followed by banking circles and kindred interests. Among all these there was a cynically lucid understanding of the real issue; it was no secret to them that the struggle lay between looters and honest men. Yet they looked on with a phlegmatic acuity; it was to them only another battle wherein the dreamer would probably lose to the clever fighter who knew how to hit foul and hard. Armstrong knew this. He felt that he knew exactly how to appraise the spoken word from his bankers, his friends, his acquaintances. In this he was wrong; he was still too conscious of himself and his campaign, and it tended to give him a false view. A man is at his best only when he can forget himself. His best work is done only when his "office clothes" are forgotten. On this eventful Monday, Armstrong was taken unawares, in a moment of self-consciousness. He took the day off, for it was his birthday, and spent it quietly at home with Dorothy before going into the city in the evening for _Lohengrin_. Before a blazing log fire in the wide hearth of the living room that afternoon, he was recounting to Dorothy the prospects for the final few weeks of the campaign; he had given up hope of ousting Findlater and Macgowan before the annual meeting. Then, in the gathering dusk, a caller arrived, a stranger. Armstrong had the man shown in. He found himself promptly served with a sheriff's attachment notice. Suit for two millions in damages--a new suit--had been filed against the Armstrong Company by Findlater, on trumped-up charges of fraud, deceit, slander. Almost at the same moment he was summoned to the telephone, to hear the furious voice of Wren. The offices, bank accounts, mail receipts, files--all were tied up by the attachment. Further, unless Armstrong's note for ten thousand dollars, held by Consolidated, were paid in cash by noon of the following day, the security for that note would be sold, promptly at noon, at the weekly auction sales in Vesey Street. Then Armstrong remembered the thing he had forgotten--the renewal of this loan, which had come due. Food Products had not been heard from in regard to it. "Get in touch with Mansfield at once," he told Jimmy Wren. "The suit is only an excuse to tie us up so we can't get the cash to meet this note. They got the attachment because we're a foreign corporation, and Mansfield will get it released in a day or two. You attend to that. I'm going to have my hands full raising ten thousand in cash." He made light of it to Dorothy, assuaged her alarm and indignation, pointed out the utter absurdity of the charges, and packed her off to dress for dinner and opera. But he remained staring into the fire, his face set in drawn lines. Crafty Macgowan! This blow had driven home. The morning papers, hungry for news from this financial battle, would headline the filing of this suit.