"You know Windsor," went on Slosson's voice. "You know there's nothing loose or crooked about him. From something he said to me on the train, I gathered that he was coming to New York to see Macgowan. Probably he has been appointed special investigator into this Food Products affair, and Macgowan will lay those affidavits before him. If Tom Windsor thought his own brother guilty, he'd land him behind the bars!" Dorothy caught her breath. For a moment everything went black before her; she recovered to find Slosson gripping her arm, his face frightened, contrite. "Oh--I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he cried out. In his voice was a touch of real sincerity. "I should never have told you--" "Please--go," she whispered faintly. Slosson regarded her for a moment with a dejected and mournful air, then he took his hat and went to the door. There, he turned. "Forgive me, Dot! There was no other way--" She did not respond. She did not even see him go. After a time she found herself at the telephone, calling the Wilmington office. Presently Jimmy's voice came to her. "Tell me, please!" She wondered at the cool steadiness of her own tone. All her brain was in a mad tumult. "Tell me--were you in Evansville about a month before Reese and I were married? Were you making arrangements then, gathering information and all, for that Food Products reorganization?" "Why, sure!" came the surprised answer. "I didn't know that any one knew of it, but I was on the job all right. Why?" "All right--good-by." Dorothy hung up the receiver. The warning which she was supposed to deliver had been stricken out of her mind. Trembling, she dropped her face in her hands. "True--it's all true!" she moaned. "Oh--Reese! And I would have stuck to you through everything--" CHAPTER X From the moment when Lawrence Macgowan, as secretary of Consolidated Securities, called the annual meeting to order, a sense of impending drama filled the auditorium. The Gayety Theater! What irony in the name! Here was a struggle for more than life and death, a titanic combat between looters and looted. Every one knew that the issue lay between Armstrong and Macgowan; the batteries of lawyers and advisers and experts and friends were but incidentals of the stage setting. The life of Consolidated was at stake--now this outward and visible symbol of sixteen thousand investors would either be saved to its owners, or would be despoiled and bled white. From the start, Macgowan let himself go full sweep, in all his real nature. Arbitrary, domineering, a sneering viciousness in eyes and voice, he ruled the meeting with a hand of iron. Save for his own little group, the hundreds of people around were enemies; they hated, feared, distrusted him--and were helpless before him.