So, Armstrong faltered. How could he fight, after all? He was alone, powerless, stripped of all connection with Consolidated. He had even agreed to sell his stock to Macgowan; unless he broke this agreement, he had nothing to fight with. A struggle now would mean battle to the death, without quarter; a battle of lies and deceit and powerfully entrenched men against one man who had nothing at his back. Nothing? Ah! This one man had behind him the faith of sixteen thousand people. Was that a little thing? "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed ... nothing shall be impossible!"
Suddenly Armstrong rose to his feet, laughed almost happily, and glanced at his watch. He crossed the room to the wall telephone.
Three minutes later he had declared war.
CHAPTER IV
Late in the afternoon of this same fateful Wednesday, Armstrong sat across the desk from that hard-jawed, hard-eyed old man, head of the Dorns Detective Agency, and told his story.
From the walls around looked down the pictured features of princes and artists, men of wealth or dignity, distinguished folk in all walks of life. These pictures were inscribed to the hard-eyed old man behind the desk—Robert Dorns. Some of them he had protected, some of them he had saved, some of them he had merely served. For this man, whose name had been famous for a generation past, life had no illusions whatever; the husks of pretense were stripped away before that bitter eye of his, and he perceived only realities.
Behind that powerful, almost brutal, face was a head of intellectual power. In that brain reposed secrets unguessed, facts which, if revealed, would menace and shake the structure of politics and finance. This man would never have the satisfaction of writing his memoirs; for his memoirs, if written, would betray the world.
Armstrong was in this office for an hour. In that hour, he accomplished the greatest feat of his career—a feat which few other men could have duplicated. In the face of every cynical doubt and mistrust which must have attacked his listener, he "sold" Robert Dorns, absolutely and beyond cavil. He used no appeals, made no arguments, until he had told his story. Dorns, chewing on a cigar, said not a word until Armstrong had finished. Then:
"Going through with it for the sake of the investors, huh? Who's paying the cost of the fight—if you win?"