It was then three o'clock. At not later than a quarter to four Mr. O'Connor had definitely determined that unless the report of the conflagration's extent had been exaggerated beyond all human connection with the facts, the Salamander had sustained a loss in Boston which was considerably greater than its resources would permit it to pay. In other words, if the printed account were even remotely true, the Salamander was, as the phrase has it, insolvent. To put it even more shortly, the company was ruined. Facing this fact and its string of entailed consequences, the man most directly interested was silent so long that his youthful assistant became nervous. "Pretty bad loss, ain't it?" he asked sympathetically. O'Connor looked at him unseeingly. In his busy mind he was running through an imaginary calculation. It was somewhat as follows: Salamander's net liability in the section of Boston presumably destroyed, $600,000--Salamander's net surplus available for payment of losses, $400,000. Inevitably the problem ended: Salamander's impairment of capital, $200,000. And the fire was still burning. Boston could be rebuilt, but could the Salamander? He turned on the clerk beside him with the savage and melodramatic gesture of an irritated musical comedy star, and the boy recoiled before him. "That's all. You can go home," he said curtly. Two minutes later he was left alone in the silent office. At the best of times there was in the nature of Mr. Edward Eggleston Murch not overmuch genuine urbanity. Urbanity of the surface he had, of course; he called on it at need in very much the same way that he called on his stenographer. But of true courtesy or consideration Mr. Murch's makeup was singularly and flawlessly free. On the contrary he could, on occasion, summon to his face a congealment and to his eye a steely gleam which nobody admired but which all respected. Ordinarily this was either for his inferiors, or for those unfortunates who had come to cross purposes with him, or for those who had made blunders costly to him that his most glacial manner was reserved; but every one about the Salamander office knew of it, either by hearsay or by actual experience. Mr. O'Connor was removed from all danger of running counter to the Salamander's leading stockholder, so long as the company continued to make money. But what might now happen, Mr. O'Connor did not care to consider--and yet the topic engrossed his attention so deeply that darkness surprised him still adrift on the waters of this sea of doubt. Not until the swift winter nightfall recalled him to himself did he remember the world around him; and when at last he groped his way down the long flights of dusky stairs to the street, his was the slow and inelastic step of a beaten man.