Smith went. Mr. O'Connor was in his room, busily engaged at his desk; the table beside him was heaped high with papers and books, which was an unusual sight, for O'Connor was a methodical man and the room was customarily bare of litter. The General Agent walked thoughtfully over to the other side of the office, and glanced through the President's door. Mr. Wintermuth was walking up and down, his hands behind him and his face a little flushed. Smith hesitated, then deliberately opened the door and entered. "Good morning, sir. I have--" he began, but his chief, with an expression in which anger was still the predominant characteristic, said abruptly:-- "Do you know what has happened?" "No, sir, I do not." "Mr. O'Connor has tendered his resignation, as Vice-President of the Guardian!" Smith stood still a long minute without answering, and then he saw suddenly and clearly all that for so many weeks the darkness had hidden from him. "And did you accept his resignation, sir?" he asked at last. The President turned swiftly to face the question. "He tendered his resignation as of December thirty-first. I told him his resignation was accepted as of nine-forty-five this morning. And I told him to pack up his stuff and get out of here and never show himself in the Guardian office again." CHAPTER XIII In the course of his extended career Mr. Wintermuth had been called upon to face many serious and unexpected crises. Conflagrations; rate wars; eruptions of idiotic and ruinous legislation adopted by state senates and assemblies composed of meddlesome agriculturalists, saloon keepers, impractical young lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians;--all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port in safety. In fact, he had done this with such aplomb that long ago he had dismissed from his mind such a thing as the possibility of a wave insurmountable. In his first flush of anger against O'Connor's betrayal--for by Mr. Wintermuth the action of his Vice-President could not otherwise be regarded--he had but one thought, and that was to make O'Connor's act recoil upon his own head. At that time, however, he was still in ignorance of the full scope of the betrayal, and when the element of bitter personal resentment had largely faded out, his pride and dignity reasserted themselves and bade him choose a different course. Let O'Connor go his way--inevitably justice would overtake him. After all, the first duty was to the company, and the first thing to be done was to fill O'Connor's place.