"That was a shrewd suspicion of yours," Fosdick went on. "And I ought to have heeded it. How did you happen to hit on it?"
Armstrong shrugged his shoulders.
"Just a guess, eh? I thought maybe you knew who was back of these fellows."
"Who is back of them?" asked Armstrong—a mere colorless, uninterested inquiry.
"Our friends of the Universal Life," replied Fosdick, assuming that Armstrong's question was an admission that he did not know. "They've plotted with some of the old Galloway crowd in our directory to throw me out and get control." Fosdick marched round and round the room, puffing furiously at his cigar. "They think they've bought the governor away from me," he presently resumed. "They think—and he thinks—he'll order the attorney-general to entertain the complaints of that damned committee." Here Fosdick paused and laughed—a harsh noise, a gleaming of discolored, jagged teeth through heavy fringe of mustache. "I've sent Morris up to Albany to see him. When he finds out I've got a certain canceled check with his name on the back of it, I guess—I rather guess—he'll get down on that big belly of his and come crawling back to me. I've sent Morris up there to show him the knout."
"Isn't that rather—raw?" said Armstrong, still stolid.
"Of course it's raw. But that's the way to deal with fellows like him—with most fellows, nowadays." And Fosdick resumed his march. Armstrong sat—stolid, waiting, matching the fingers of his big, ruddy hands.
"Well, what do you think?" demanded his master, pausing, a note of irritated command in his voice.
Armstrong shrugged his shoulders. A disinterested observer might have begun to suspect that he was leading Fosdick on; but Fosdick, bent upon the game, had no such suspicion.
"I want your opinion. That's why I sent for you," he cried impatiently.