One can therefore only faintly conjecture Mr. Wintermuth's surprise and genuine anguish upon receiving, one bright April morning, a communication in German, which, being translated by Mr. Otto Bartels with something more than his customary stolidity, proved to read, stripped of all superfluous verbiage, substantially as follows: "The managing director of the Karlsruhe, in accordance with the conditions of the contract, hereby gives six months' notice of the termination of the reinsurance arrangements now existing between the Karlsruhe and the Guardian." When, the following day, Smith returned, Mr. Wintermuth's first greeting was silently to hand him this letter. The younger man, with a little assistance from the President's recollection of Bartels's translation, managed to decipher the tangled German, and sat for a long minute without speaking. "Why do you suppose they're canceling? And why didn't we get this through their London managers, I wonder?--they're the people we've done business with for the last ten years," he said at length. "What difference does it make?" "None, perhaps. Still, it strikes me as rather odd. Almost as though some one had planned that this should look as though it emanated from a point less in touch with William Street than London is." "Then you think--?" "Who else could it be but O'Connor? And these German underwriters are perfect babes in the wood--they're just idiotic enough to cancel a profitable contract merely to take on an experimental one with a bigger premium income in its place. Now, nobody outside the office knew the conditions of our contract with the Karlsruhe--except O'Connor. No, there's no question about it. He probably offered them a little better commission arrangement and a bigger business--and they fell for it." "Very likely that is so," agreed Mr. Wintermuth. "The only question now is: what can we do?" Smith continued. "Schroeder has been dead six years. And I don't know the present managing director at all; I've never even seen this man that signed the letter." "It would have done us no good if you had known him," said the younger man, slowly. "This is a cut and dried affair. All we can do now is to look for another treaty. We must try to get a contract as good as the one we have with the Karlsruhe." "I'm afraid we can never do it," the President responded. "Perhaps not--and again, perhaps we can. Still, I admit it won't be easy." He fell thoughtfully silent. "Cuyler tells me he's lost another broker--Spencer and Carrick have begun to drop their expirations with us," remarked Mr. Wintermuth, with an irrelevance that was more apparent than real. "Does he think the Salamander's getting them?" Smith inquired, his eyes narrowing. The older man nodded. The other rose from his chair.