He found himself promptly served with a sheriff's attachment notice. Suit for two millions in damages—a new suit—had been filed against the Armstrong Company by Findlater, on trumped-up charges of fraud, deceit, slander. Almost at the same moment he was summoned to the telephone, to hear the furious voice of Wren. The offices, bank accounts, mail receipts, files—all were tied up by the attachment.
Further, unless Armstrong's note for ten thousand dollars, held by Consolidated, were paid in cash by noon of the following day, the security for that note would be sold, promptly at noon, at the weekly auction sales in Vesey Street.
Then Armstrong remembered the thing he had forgotten—the renewal of this loan, which had come due. Food Products had not been heard from in regard to it.
"Get in touch with Mansfield at once," he told Jimmy Wren. "The suit is only an excuse to tie us up so we can't get the cash to meet this note. They got the attachment because we're a foreign corporation, and Mansfield will get it released in a day or two. You attend to that. I'm going to have my hands full raising ten thousand in cash."
He made light of it to Dorothy, assuaged her alarm and indignation, pointed out the utter absurdity of the charges, and packed her off to dress for dinner and opera. But he remained staring into the fire, his face set in drawn lines.
Crafty Macgowan! This blow had driven home. The morning papers, hungry for news from this financial battle, would headline the filing of this suit.
With everything tied up by the attachment, it was impossible for Armstrong to raise the money necessary to meet that note. But that was not the worst of it. Macgowan did not want the ten thousand in cash; he had filed this suit, had played his cards, so that Armstrong could not possibly pay the money. What Macgowan wanted was the security, the Food Products notes for twenty-five thousand dollars! That was the stake Macgowan would win at noon to-morrow.
"He'll have his fingers hooked into Food Products," thought Armstrong bitterly. "He may try to throw the company into receivership—no telling what he'll do! And unless I show up at the auction rooms by noon, he wins."
How to get that money? His imagination pictured what would meet him as he went from bank to bank, asking for ten thousand in cash—without security! Macgowan would see to it that news of this suit and attachment filled all the morning papers. Everywhere he went, Armstrong would be faced by that news.
He would be charged publicly with fraud, branded in all eyes as a perjurer and trickster; the whole financial district would be ringing with the news. No matter how baseless the charge, it would clang against him like a death-knell. It would be dismissed soon enough, after serving its purpose; even so, lies have nine lives, and the story of the charge would go further than news of the dismissal.