en with returning
consciousness, he tried to sit up. Dave helped him to a chair. Blood
flowed down his face, and, as he began to realize what had occurred, it
was joined with tears of pain, rage, humiliation.

"You got that one on me, Elden," he said, after awhile. "But it was a
coward's blow. You hit me when I wasn't looking. Very well. Two can
play at that game. I'll hit you when you're not looking . . . where
you don't expect it . . . where you can't hit back. You interfere with
me--you strike me--you that I took out of a thirty-dollar-a-week job
and made you all you are. I did it, Dave; gave you the money to start
with, coached you all the way. And you hit me . . . when I wasn't
looking." He spoke disjointedly; his throat was choked with
mortification and self-pity. "Very well. I know the stake you're
playing for. And--I'm going to spoil it."

He turned his swollen, bloody face to Dave's, and hatred stood up in
his eyes as he uttered the threat. "I'll hit you, Dave," he repeated,
"where you can't hit back."

"Thanks for the warning," said Elden. "So Irene Hardy is to be the
stake. All right; I'll sit in. And I'll win."

"You'll think you've won," returned Conward, leeringly. "And then
you'll find out that you didn't. I'll present her to you, Dave, like
that." He lifted a burnt match from an ash tray and held it before him.

Dave's impulse was to seize the thick, flabby throat in his hands and
choke it lifeless. With a resolute effort he turned to the telephone
and lifted the receiver.

"Send a car and a doctor to Conward & Elden's office," he said, when he
had got the desired number. "Mr. Conward has been hurt; fell against a
desk, or something. Nothing serious, but may need a stitch or two."
Then, turning to Conward, "It will depend on you whether this affair
gets to the public. On you, and Miss Wardin. Make your own
explanations. And as soon as you are able to be about our partnership
will be dissolved."

Conward was ready enough to adopt Dave's suggestion that their quarrel
should not come to the notice of the public, and Gladys Wardin
apparently kept her own counsel in the matter. In a time when firms
were going out of business without even the formality of an assignment,
and others were being absorbed by their competitors, the dissolution of
the Conward & Elden establishment occasioned no more than passing
notice. The explanation, "for business reasons," given to the
newspa