Briggs lifted his eyebrows. “Two thirty-five? Is that all? I thought we were sure of five hundred at least. Oh, well!” “Things ought to begin to hum soon,” said Guy, rising to give up the seat at the desk. As Briggs took the chair, Michael appeared at the door. “There’s a messenger outside with a letter, sir. He says he was told to give it to you yourself, and to wait for an answer.” “Tell him to come in. You’d better take a rest, Farley,” said Briggs. “Don’t you newspaper men ever get tired?” Farley smiled. “Not when there’s a little excitement in the air.” A moment later a messenger followed Michael into the room. He was a man of nearly forty, and his uniform gave him an air of youth that his deeply lined face and his figure denied. He looked about aimlessly. “Congressman Briggs?” he said. “Yes.” Briggs extended his hand. “Hello! from the Citizens’ Club,” he exclaimed, as he looked at the envelope. “What’s this?” He glanced over the letter. “It’s from Griswold. Listen to this, will you? ‘We have been talking over that outrageous libel about you that appeared in the _Chronicle_ this morning, and we think that you ought to take some notice of it. It is too serious to be passed over. We hear that it also appeared in the papers in Boston, Chicago and Washington.’ Here, you read the rest, Farley.” Farley read, with Guy looking over his shoulder. When he had finished, he passed the letter back to Briggs. No one spoke. At last Farley glanced at the uniformed figure. “The messenger is waiting,” he said to Briggs. Briggs swung in his chair and faced the desk. “Sit down here, Guy, and write what I dictate. ‘Frazer Griswold, Esquire, the Citizens’ Club, Fifth Avenue, New York. My dear Griswold: I see nothing in the article you mention that requires a reply. If I knew the writer, I’d pay him the compliment of thrashing him within an inch of his life.’ Give that to the stenographer. Get her to run it off on the typewriter, and I’ll sign it.” “Respectfully yours?” Guy asked, busily writing. Douglas Briggs smiled faintly. “Yes, very respectfully.” As Guy left the room, Farley asked: “Any idea who did it, Mr. Briggs? Someone down in Washington, of course.” “I think I know who did it,” Briggs replied, quietly. “Who?” “No one we can get back at.” “A woman?” Briggs ran his fingers through his hair. He took a long breath. “Yes,” he said, wearily. “Don’t you remember Miss Wing? She was at my wife’s ball last Spring.” “Yes,” Farley replied. “She was disgruntled because she’d been put into a side room for supper with the rest of us newspaper people. Can that have been the reason?” “No; she had a better reason. But that supper arrangement was a blunder, wasn’t it? I’ve heard from that a dozen times since. And Mrs. Briggs and I knew nothing about it till the supper was all over.” “But she was a friend of West’s,” Farley went on. “He came to her rescue at the ball, I remember. He used to put himself out to do her favors.”