CHAPTER II
Jimmy Wren looked with harassed eyes at Armstrong, who sat at his desk listlessly going over a report.
"Reese," he broke out impulsively, "what the devil can I do? How can I help?"
Armstrong looked up at him soberly.
"Nothing, Jimmy, thanks," he answered in a flat voice.
"You've not heard from Dorothy?"
Armstrong shook his head. "No. She's in Evansville, and has opened her father's house there, I understand."
Jimmy Wren was aware only of the troubled fact, and not of the details that lay behind Dorothy's desertion. Armstrong had closed Aircastle Point the day after she left, and was now in an uptown hotel.
Reese Armstrong was still bewildered, dazed, by this private tragedy, which over-shadowed everything else. He could not spur himself to take any interest in the winding-up of the campaign, and accepted without question what was done by Holcomb and the others. Dorothy had returned no answer to his one implorant letter; this silence hurt more deeply than her words.
A profound apathy was upon him. Somehow, he felt, Macgowan had been responsible for this final and crushing blow; but how, he was at a loss to know. His apathy was continually pierced by the thought of going to Indianapolis and wringing an explanation out of Slosson, yet he could not stir himself to the action. He had not the slightest idea what Slosson had implanted in Dorothy's mind. He could not imagine why she had been so insistent upon his guilt, how he had been so utterly damned in her eyes. He must face Slosson with nothing but surmise—and the heart was gone out of him. He knew it, as did those around him; but only Jimmy Wren knew that his domestic separation was the cause of it all.
"Damn Slosson!" he burst forth despairingly. "If I had him here I'd choke the truth out of his—"
He checked himself abruptly, with an effort. Jimmy Wren stared.
"Slosson! The fellow on the old Food Products board? Why, I met him in Evansville. What's he got to do with this, Reese?"
"Oh, nothing, Jimmy, nothing I can go into!" groaned Armstrong, flinging the paper in his hand across the desk. "Don't ask me, old man. It's hell, that's all."
He reached for a cigar and lighted it, biting hard on the weed, his brow furrowed and lined by the stormy mood within.
Armstrong had ceased to evince interest in the various suits and legal activities; their issue or rather lack of issue now mattered nothing to him. What did matter was Dorothy's accusation. Upon what had she based her arraignment? She must have acted after deliberate thought, with apparently firm grounds. He could only lay hold upon the obsession that he had robbed her father of Food Products; any other surmise could only appear weak and unsatisfactory. He had been tempted to cable the Demings to come home and help straighten the thing out—
"Look here, Reese!" broke in the voice of Jimmy Wren again. Wren seated himself on one corner of the desk and lowered his voice to a confidential pitch. The warm geniality of his features, however, was obviously an attempt, an effort, and could not quite disguise the anxiety in his eyes as he regarded Armstrong.
"If you're not doing anything to-night," he went on, "s'pose you let me take you uptown and meet a friend of mine, will you? This is just between you and me, Reese. I'd like to have you meet her—haven't mentioned it before, because we've all been so infernally balled up with this campaign."
Armstrong smiled slightly at him. "What, Jimmy! Are you hooked at last?"
"Not yet, but I'd like to be! You come along with me to-night, Reese, and we'll have a bit of real music that'll take the edge off your nerves. Come on, now, will you? Or wait—this is Saturday! I'll call her up, and we may run up there this afternoon, and all have dinner and a show later on. What say?"
Armstrong hesitated. Although he was well enough aware that this proposal was made to provide some distraction for him, he knew that he needed the distraction. Besides, he was curious about Jimmy Wren's very secret love affair.
"You've kept quiet about her, Jimmy—why?"
"Well, she wanted me to," admitted Jimmy Wren, reddening a bit. "You see, she doesn't go in for gay life and all that sploshy stuff—to tell the truth, she's given me a lot of help these days—well, it's just that she understands, see? We're not engaged yet or anything like that; she just lets me come around, and we have some music, and talk. You'd have to know her to understand, Reese."
Armstrong's lips twitched; this took him back to college days. He was upon the point of accepting Jimmy's invitation, when the telephone rang. He pulled forward the instrument.
"Armstrong? This is Todrank speaking."
Todrank was his banker, not a warm personal friend, but a man of wide influence and connections. His interest in the fight on Findlater and Macgowan had been keen and tense, because Todrank was a man who never relented unto an enemy. And, at some period in the past, Todrank and Lawrence Macgowan had been bitter enemies. Macgowan might have, probably had, forgotten this fact, but with Todrank there was no past tense. If he liked Armstrong, it was largely because he hated Macgowan.
"Do you know anything about Tom Windsor," he went on, "assistant attorney general of Indiana?"
"No," said Armstrong. "I think I've met him in Evansville. A tall, lean-jawed chap?"
"Yep. He's a friend of mine; straight as a string and can't be reached. He was in to see me yesterday. Didn't know that I knew you, and asked questions. You'll regard this as confidential?"
"Absolutely," returned Armstrong. He made a gesture, and Jimmy Wren closed the door.
"Didn't you market a stock issue of the Deming Food Products Company, around the end of last year?"
"Most of the issue, yes. It's a subsidiary of Consolidated Securities. Why?"
"Windsor intimated that there'd been something crooked about that stock—"
"Oh, that's all old stuff," cut in Armstrong wearily. "You know all about it. Macgowan has tried to get indictments—"
"Wake up, Armstrong!" snapped the banker curtly. "This is something else again—something different! Windsor swears that Macgowan has nothing to do with it—doesn't even know Mac by sight. Get this man right, or you'll make the mistake of your life! He's so straight that he'll fall over backward some day. And he's hot on your trail."
Armstrong's curiosity was slightly stirred, no more.
"Let him go as far as he likes. I've nothing to hide. He can come around here and go through the books if he likes."
Todrank uttered a disgusted oath.
"Damn it, that's just what he won't do! That's why I'm trying to warn you! He isn't going, either—he's gone! He appears to have a hatful of the most damning evidence against you. I don't know what it is, but if Tom Windsor thinks you're a crook—then look out. He's stubborn as the devil. I believe that Macgowan is in it somewhere, although Windsor laughed at the idea. I gave him the inside stuff on your fight, and he merely showed his teeth.
"You wake up, now!" went on the banker earnestly. "This is serious. I gathered that the license to market the stock was gained under false pretenses—"
Armstrong was stirred at last. "That was arranged by the former company. I only took over the issue and marketed it."
"Well, there's a nigger in the woodpile somewhere. Windsor thinks you're the nigger; I'm suspecting Macgowan of some hidden stuff. This is no fake, now; you can't afford to let it go through. If Windsor once gets action in the courts, he'll shove till hell freezes over, because he's absolutely honest. He's a fanatic in this respect, the most dangerous sort! He's got the goods, or he'd never talk as he did to me."
"Why, confound it," burst out Armstrong, roused at last, "it's rankly impossible that he could have anything on me!"
"You fool, don't you know Macgowan yet?" roared the banker angrily. "Listen here! Windsor mentioned another thing. He's been offered a ten-thousand-dollar job here in town, with the firm of Milligan, Milligan, Hoyt & Brainard; a corporation law firm, fair to middling but nothing extra. The opening takes effect in about four months; it came to him through Western sources entirely. Personally, I smell Macgowan in the whole game. So far as I know, though, that firm has no connection with Mac, so it's a wild guess."
"Where can I get in touch with Windsor?" said Armstrong.
Todrank laughed. The laugh was hard, sharp.
"You'll have your job cut out to get in touch with him! That lad wants facts, not personalities. He figures that the whole crowd of you are a gang of cut-throat financial crooks, and wants to keep away from you."
"But it's absurd!" cried Armstrong.
"Sure. Our jail system is absurd too, but the fact doesn't empty Sing Sing," came the caustic reply. "You act, and act quick! I know Tom Windsor, and he's the only and original leader of the bloodhound chorus, once he gets after a crook. And he really thinks you're one. Don't mention my name to him."
"All right, Todrank, and many thanks. Is Windsor in town?"
"He's at the Pennsylvania, or was. No telling now; he's a vigorous young devil."
"Good. Thanks again."
"Good luck!"
Todrank rang off.
Armstrong began to pace up and down, wrestling with this information. He found himself lifted out of his lethargy, found the old hot anger running and leaping again, found the apathetic and muffling impotency stripped suddenly away. The very mystery of this new blow roused him to fight. In what way could he be reached for any illicit operation of Food Products? He knew of none; yet Todrank had supplied the hint, and he knew better than to disregard the warning. He turned, and found Jimmy Wren staring at him from the corner. Abruptly, memory wakened within him.
"Say, Jimmy—why, what's the matter?"
Wren laughed aloud. "Nothing, only you look waked up! Good news?"
"No. More bad news. That party for this afternoon is all off, Jimmy; thanks just the same. Do you remember when you came to Evansville, the day before Christmas?"
"You bet I do," said Wren, blinking.
"You told me about an irregularity in the issue of Food Products stock. What was it?"
"Why, the Deming directors could never have marketed that stock issue under the blue sky laws if they'd revealed the actual condition of the company. They falsified it."
Armstrong nodded. "Yes, that's what I remember. It was all their doing? It had no connection with us at all?"
"Not a shadow," said Wren confidently. "Not even Macgowan could make that stick on us."
"So Mansfield said. He should know. I'll call him up—"
"He's in Albany."
"Judge Holcomb around?"
"Yes."
"Well, you keep quiet about this." Armstrong rose. "It may all come to nothing, as usual."
He went to the office used by the committee of the Protective Association, where he found Judge Holcomb. The latter gave Armstrong a keen glance, and smiled.
"Congratulations, my boy! You look yourself—got your fighting clothes on again?"
"Lord, I must have been moping around here like a wet hen! Judge, I'm trying to run down something. Did you ever hear of a downtown law firm by the name of Milligan, Milligan, Hoyt & Brainard?"
The old judge leaned back.
"Did I ever hear of them? I did, to my sorrow. Haven't I ever told you about the time that Macgowan's law firm hooked me hard and fast?"
Armstrong thrilled suddenly. "But that firm isn't his—"
"That firm," said Judge Holcomb with decision, "is the one that handled my case for me. On the other side of the case was Macgowan's firm. And Macgowan was a very silent but active partner in Milligan et cetera! Oh, yes, they hooked me."
"Can you prove that statement?" demanded Armstrong sharply.
"I cannot. As we know to our cost, any one who can obtain definite evidence against Lawrence Macgowan is a miracle worker. Still, a number of attorneys are convinced of the fact."
"All right, thanks." Armstrong nodded and rose. "I may see you later about it."
Returning to his own office, he summoned his secretary. Already a keen exultation was thrilling inside of him; already he felt that at last he was going to score a point against Macgowan. This Windsor would never suspect that he was being bribed, that Macgowan had any connection with the legal firm offering him a job. Armstrong accepted Todrank's estimate of Windsor implicitly, knowing that it would be accurate.
He gave his secretary Windsor's name and asked her to call him at the Pennsylvania and make an appointment for that afternoon. She left on her errand. Armstrong sat for a space in silence, eagerly awaiting a call. None came. Presently the secretary returned.
"Did you get him?"
She hesitated. "I—yes, I got him, but—"
"Well?"
"He said that he was leaving for Indianapolis in half an hour and had no time for—for crooks. He said the only appointment he would make with you was before a Federal judge, and that he'd make this appointment in his own good time. I'm sorry, sir—"
"Never mind." Armstrong shrugged. "Get Mr. Dorns on the wire if you can."
He reflected rapidly. The situation was undoubtedly serious. Windsor would never have given such a message unless he had some incriminatory evidence—yet what could he have?
The telephone rang. Armstrong picked up the receiver.
"Hello, Dorns? Oh, pretty well, thanks! Something very important has just come up. I must get to Indianapolis Monday morning sure—I'll catch a late train to-night. When I get there I'll want help. Can you put me in touch with your agent there?"
"Better'n that," responded Dorns quickly. "I've got to be in Chicago next Saturday. I can spare a few days in Indianapolis. But can't you catch that train at five this afternoon?"
"Yes."
"Good. That gives us a clear night's sleep in a bed before Monday wakes up. Same old fight, is it?"
"Yes, only something new this time. A fighting chance to put the enemy down and out. Bully for you, Dorns! I'll get that five o'clock train."
"All right. You get the reservations—I'll meet you at the gate five minutes before the train goes. I'm busy. So long."
Armstrong turned from the telephone. The thought of Dorothy leaped into his mind with a swiftly searching pang; he could not conquer it. After all, Indianapolis was so close to Evansville! He had no definite reason for seeing Tom Windsor, other than to demand a hearing. Perhaps, despite warnings, he would not have bothered about going except that—
"Maybe I'm a fool," he thought moodily. "I wonder if I've let this Windsor menace impress me too strongly—because of Evansville? It's not too late to change my mind—no, I'll go!"
It did not occur to him that this urge and pull of spiritual forces, this compellant thought of Dorothy, might have any connection with practical things. Men are slow to believe in guardian angels.