"Good-afternoon, Mr. Cuyler," said the President, amiably, but the local secretary with a glum face stopped him. "Well, we've lost O'Brien," he said. "What's that?" demanded the other. "Lost O'Brien? What do you mean? Not O'Brien of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street?" "That's the man. The best branch manager we ever had--the man we kept when the Exchange made us close all our branch offices but one. Well, he's thrown us." "Thrown us! O'Brien? Why, he's been with us for fifteen years! Tell me about this at once, sir." "There's nothing to tell, or nothing much," replied the local secretary, bitterly. "The business he's been giving us has been dropping off,--we haven't got a new risk out of him in a month and we've been losing a lot of our renewals,--and yesterday Charlie saw his placer going into the Salamander office with a bundle of binders." "The Salamander? O'Connor!" "Yes, sir, O'Connor. So to-day I went around to the restaurant where he eats when he comes down town. He was there." "O'Brien, you mean? Well, what did he say?" "He said," replied Cuyler, slowly, "that he had no complaint to make of the way we'd treated him, but that the Salamander was offering him facilities which we didn't offer him, and he felt obliged to do something for them." "He means they're paying him excess brokerage or something of that sort," said Mr. Wintermuth, acidly. "Yes, I suppose so, but of course that's a thing you can't say unless you're in a position to prove it. Anyhow, he's gone--and about twenty thousand dollars worth of preferred business with a thirty per cent loss ratio for ten years has gone with him." The President rose and walked up and down his office. This was bringing the fight to his very door, with a vengeance. "What can we do about it?" he said, stopping in front of Cuyler and fixing on that dismayed person a vaguely furious gaze. "I don't know. I suppose we'll have to hunt around and dig up another branch manager in O'Brien's place. It'll take a lot of hunting, though. You don't pick up a business like that every day in the week." The President could make no better suggestion, and in this instance he did not call the Vice-President into conference. "Do the best you can, then," he said shortly; "and let me know how you're getting along."