I  
The information given by the ex-director in regard to the whereabouts of Charles Halsey was substantially, if not circumstantially, correct. He had, indeed, done the most unlikely thing. He had taken up his abode, for the time at least, at the very place to which he might have seemed least apt to return; that is to say, the home of his father-in-law, John Rawn.
 
Many things moved Halsey to this action. In the first place, having ended his labors, he found no reason for any pretense of continuing them. Again, although he fully intended to bring divorce proceedings, and fully intended to leave the city, he was unwilling to depart without seeing once more his wife and their child, because news came to him of the little cripple's serious and continued illness. In point of fact, Grace Halsey, unhappy, morose, and now jealously suspicious, had brooded over her unfortunate situation in life until she also really was ill. Halsey grieved over this, in spite of all. As to the little hunchback, Laura, she had known only illness all her life; and Halsey, father after all, felt some foreboding which made him unready to leave for yet a time.
 
Halsey, in spite of his own bitterness of soul, realized that Rawn himself was well-nigh crazed by the business situation, and his conscience misgave him when he reflected upon the sudden consequences of his own acts. His sense of business honor and of personal justice told him he owed even so unreasonable a man as Rawn some sort of definite accounting for his own stewardship, unwelcome as another meeting between them must be to both.
 
Lastly, it may be added, Virginia Rawn had sent for him.
 
When he received her message he spent a night resolving that he would not go, that he would never again see either her or Grace; never again would set foot on ground belonging to John Rawn, come what could, let be lost what any of them all might lose. In the morning he changed his resolution. By evening of the next day he was at Graystone Hall.
 
To his surprise, he found it not immediately necessary to patch a peace with the master of Graystone Hall, for Rawn was absent. The great mansion seemed strangely and suddenly changed. An air of anxiety hung over all, the place was oddly silent. The servants went slipshod about their duties, and their mistress did not chide them. Swift disintegration of the domestic machine seemed to threaten; mysterious danger seemed to menace the very structure itself, long of so bold and indomitable front. Halsey still hesitated—and still remained.
 
 
 
 
II
 
Rawn customarily divided his time between the operating headquarters in the western city and the general offices in the eastern capital, but now he had found it needful immediately to transfer all his activities to the latter scene. He did not know of his wife's invitation to Halsey, for he had started from his office, without even advising her of his intention, and even without conversation with her by telephone. He telegraphed from the train, stating that he had been called East on urgent matters. After that, no word at all came from him. It was not known when he would return. Halsey could only wait. In truth, he was little better than a man gone mad himself, and Rawn was worse than such.
 
Gradually, day by day, hour by hour, the terrible strain of this suddenly developed situation began to show its effects upon Rawn. He slept but little after his arrival in the East, showed himself more and more untidy in personal habits; and lastly, began to seek the false strength of intoxicating drink. His demeanor in his relations with his urbane associates daily lost its usual arrogance. John Rawn, late dictator, became explanatory, conciliatory—a change of mind which had visible physical tokens. His eye became weaker and more watery, his shoulders more drooped, his voice more quavering, his address less abrupt and domineering.
 
John Rawn was a broken man, and began to show it. Wherefore his late friends exulted. The wolves, ranged in circle, lick their chops when the wounded bull totters upon his uncertain legs. Certain large financial figures in the eastern city licked their chops, and smiled grimly, wolfishly, in contemplation of John Rawn as he tottered.
 
 
 
 
III
 
Yet Rawn himself could get no direct proof of the identity of those now secretly assailing him. At the directors' meetings of the International he was received politely and respectfully—with too much politeness and respect, as he felt, although himself unlike the man once wont to rule there with an iron hand. He did not dare tell them of Halsey's defection, could not doubt that they already knew of it; but he met no queries regarding that or anything else in the conduct of the western factory's business. No one seemed to know that the most important of all their factories was closed, after a tedious term spent in incompletion. His associates all were as polite as himself, indeed, more so; as ready as himself to discuss gravely and earnestly any detail of the business which now, as all politely agreed, seemed "somewhat involved," or "somewhat delayed." No one offered any criticism of the executive.
 
But, what was far more deadly to him, the market seemed most onerously and cruelly oppressive upon the outside i............