The bare facts followed, with a history of Forshay's career, his social connections, an account of his marriage, city house, and country house. "But after all am I responsible?" he said to himself miserably, and though he returned always to the premise that he had been an innocent participant, he began to be obsessed with the spreading sense of ruin which such victories could occasion. Forshay would not have blamed him, perhaps, for Forshay had played the game to the limit of the law and asked no favors. It was not that which profoundly troubled him and awoke the long dormant ethical sense. Had Drake figured out just what his conclusions would be and the effect on the public from allowing him to proceed blindly on a wrong start? In a word, had Drake deliberately used him to mislead others, knowing that after the success of Indiana Smelter his prospective son-in-law would be credited with inside information? He did not as yet answer these questions in the affirmative; to do so meant a decision subversive of all his newly acquired sense of success. But though he still denied the accusations, they would not be thus answered, constantly returning. At the offices it was as though the dead man were lying in wait. A sense of fright possessed him with the opening of the door. The girl at the telephone greeted him with swollen eyes, swollen with hysterical weeping; the stenographers moved noiselessly, hushed by the indefinable sense of the supernatural. The brass plate on the door--W. O. Forshay--seemed to him something inexpressibly grim and horrible. He had the feeling which the others showed in their roving glances, as though that plate hid something, as though there was something behind his door, waiting. He went into the inner offices, at a sudden summons. Hauk was at the table, gazing out of the window; Flaspoller worrying and fussing in the center of the rug, switching aimlessly back and forth. Bojo nodded silently on entering. "You saw?" said Hauk with a jerk of his head. "Yes. Horrible!" Flaspoller broke out: "Not a cent in the world. God knows how much the firm will have to make good. Thirty-five, forty, forty-five thousand, maybe more. Oh, we're stuck all right." "Do you mean to say," said Bojo slowly, "that he left nothing--no property?" "Oh, a house perhaps--mortgaged, of course; and then do we know what else he owes? No. A hell of a hole we've got in with your Pittsburgh & New Orleans." "That's not quite fair," said Bojo quietly. "I did give you a tip on Indiana Smelter and you made money on that. I never said anything about Pittsburgh & New Orleans. I distinctly refused to. You drew your own conclusions." "That's a good joke," said Flaspoller with a contemptuous laugh. "What do you mean?" said Bojo, flushing angrily.