He picked up the chair from which she fled. It was heavy and he used it to smash other furniture. Then he began to beat out the glass which shut off the other private rooms which adjoined the main office. In that process he brought the terrified Craig into view. He dropped the chair, reached in, and dragged Craig over the sill of the compartment. "This has been coming to you on the Noda waters! I'm glad you're here now to get it!" He held the Three C's director helpless in utter dismay, at the full length of a left arm, and pummeled him senseless with a right fist. Then he dragged him to the door of the chief's office and flung him across the two men who were stirring. "It's a fifty-fifty wreck--this office and me--pretty nigh total!" He walked out. Youth, strength, and an incentive which did not animate the others, had enabled him to prevail. Mern and Crowley struggled weakly from under the man who was pinning them down. "I'll get word to the cops," stuttered Crowley, holding his hand to his battered and bleeding lips. "Wait till Craig comes to!" protested Mern. "He may want us to hush the thing. He has been hollering for soft pedal all the time. He seems bad! Get a doctor!" The physician who came confirmed Mern's opinion as to the condition of the field director; Craig himself was querulously emphatic on the point when he had been brought to consciousness. But he insisted on postponing consideration of the proper action to take in Latisan's case until he had time to forget his aches and compose his thoughts. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Early the next morning glaziers, carpenters, and telephone repair men monopolized the Vose-Mern offices to the exclusion of regular business. The chief had told his office force to stay away for the day. He had found one chair that was whole, and he sat and watched the "after the storm" effect gradually disappear. Mern's thoughts were as much in disorder as the interior he was surveying. Instead of feeling lively enmity in the case of Latisan, he was admitting to himself that he rather admired the young wildcat from the woods. At any rate, Latisan had accepted at face value Mern's repeated dictum that if the other fellow could get Mern while Mern was set on getting the fellow, there would be no grudges. Latisan's come-back, the chief reflected, was crude work, but it was characteristically after the style of the men of the open; and the wreck of an office was less disastrous than the wreck of a man's prospects and his very soul. Mern was not a bit of a sentimentalist, but he could see the situation vaguely from Latisan's standpoint. And he realized that there was still something behind it all which he had not come at. He was roused from his ponderings by the crunching of feet on broken glass, and looked up and beheld Latisan. Halted just inside the door of the main office was a policeman in uniform. And the officer, well known by Mern, caught the chief's eye and winked.