He stood behind his desk, facing the open door. Almost immediately the doorway was blocked by Dalrymple. George stared, trying to value the alteration in the man. The weak, rather handsome face was bold and contemptuous. Clearly he had come here for blows of his own choosing, and had just now borrowed courage from some illicit bar, but he had taken only enough, George gathered, to make him assured and not too calculating. He was clothed as if he had returned from an affair, with a flower in his buttonhole, and a top hat held in the hand with his stick and gloves. "Come in!" Dalrymple closed the door and advanced, smiling. Not for a moment did George's glance leave the other. He felt taut, hard to the point of brittleness. "It's fortunate you've come," he said, quietly. "I've just been trying to get hold of you." "Oh! Then Lambert's been here!" Dalrymple answered, jauntily. George nodded. "You've been crooked, Dalrymple. Now we'll have an accounting." Dalrymple laughed. "It's what I've come for; but first I advise you to hold your temper. It's late, but there are plenty of people still outside. Any more rough stuff and you'll spend the night in a cell, or under bail." "If you lived nine lives," George commented, "you'd never be able to intimidate me." Yet the other's manner troubled, and George's doubtful curiosity grew as he watched Dalrymple commence to draw the strings of the mask. Dalrymple put down his hat and cane, bent swiftly, placed the palms of his hands on the desk, stared at George, his face inflamed, his eyes choked with malicious exultation. "Your blackmail," he cried, "is knocked into a cocked hat. I married Sylvia half an hour ago." Before George's response he lost some of his colour, drew back warily; but George had no thought of attacking him; it was too late now. That was why he experienced a dreadful realization of defeat, for a moment let through a flickering impression of the need for violence, but--and Dalrymple couldn't be expected to understand that--violence against George Morton who had let this situation materialize, who experienced, tumbling about his head, the magnificent but incomplete efforts of many years. That sensation of boundless, imponderable wreckage crushing upon him sent him back to his chair where for a moment he sat, sunk down, stripped of his power and his will. And Dalrymple laughed, enjoying it. In George's overwhelmed brain that laughter started an awakening clamour. "What difference does the money make now?" Dalrymple jibed. "And she'll believe nothing else you may tell her, and violence would only make a laughing stock of you. It's done." "How was it done?" George whispered.