Fred swung back to his office. Kendrick must have been gossiping with a vengeance! What would the insurance offices on the street think when they received their checks direct from the Hilmer company? It was insulting! And now he would have to trail about collecting his commissions instead of merely withholding them from the remittance that should have been put in his hand. Still, on second thought, he did feel relieved to know that the matter wouldn't drag on any longer--that he wouldn't have to ask Brauer to hold off with his bank deposit another moment. He waited until after the noon hour to begin the collection of his commissions. Hilmer's cashier had promised to send his messenger around to the different companies before eleven o'clock. He went into the first office with an assumption of buoyance. The cashier looked down at him through quizzical spectacles. Yes, the Hilmer premium was in, but he was very sorry--he couldn't pay Starratt & Co. anything. "Why?" Fred demanded, hotly. Because the Insurance Broker's Exchange had sent out a circular asking the companies to withhold any commissions due that firm until certain charges of rebating were investigated further and disproved. Fred fled to the Exchange. The secretary was out, but his stenographer confirmed the circular. Fred went back to his office to think things over. Again he was tempted to repudiate the Brauer check at the bank and let Brauer do his worst. But he drew back from such a course with his usual repugnance. He saw now that all his high-flown theory about standing on his own feet was the merest sophistry. So far, he was nothing but the product of Hilmer's puzzling benevolence. One jam in the wheel and everything halted. He thought the whole matter out. He was still what Hilmer had intimated on the night of that disturbing dinner party--a creature with a back bent by continual bowing and scraping--a full-grown man with standards inherited instead of acquired. Why didn't he go around to the office of Ford, Wetherbee & Co. and beat up his nasty little ex-partner? Why didn't he meet Kendrick's gumshoe activities with equal stealth? It should have been possible to snare Kendrick if one had the guts. And why accept a gratuity from Hilmer in the shape of two thousand dollars more or less for commissions on business that one never really had earned the right to? He began to suspect that Hilmer had instructed his cashier to pay the companies direct. It was probably his patron's way of forcing home the idea that the commissions _were_ a gratuity. No doubt even now he was chuckling at the spectacle of Starratt running about the street picking up the doles. He decided, once and for all, that he wouldn't go on being an object of satirical charity. He wouldn't refuse the Hilmer business, but he would put it on the proper basis. He would put a proposition squarely up to Hilmer whereby Hilmer would become a definite partner in the firm--Hilmer, Starratt & Co., to be exact.