In Chap­ter Twen­ty-Four of “The Choco­late War,” Broth­er Leon urgent­ly con­tacts Archie regard­ing the fail­ing choco­late sale, express­ing his anx­i­ety over the sit­u­a­tion. Despite Archie’s ini­tial instinct to respond defen­sive­ly, he cau­tious­ly ques­tions Leon about the extent of the prob­lem, which Leon describes as dire. The sale is more than halfway over, yet half of the choco­lates remain unsold, results indi­cat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant drop in momen­tum. Leon accus­es Archie of not being effec­tive, although Archie admires his relent­less demeanor under pres­sure.

Ear­li­er that day, Archie had received con­cern­ing infor­ma­tion from Bri­an Cochran, Leon’s book­keep­er, who revealed that Leon was in a pre­car­i­ous posi­tion regard­ing the school’s finances. Cochran had lis­tened in on a tense dis­cus­sion between Leon and Broth­er Jacques, where Jacques accused Leon of mis­us­ing school funds and being “overex­tend­ed” finan­cial­ly. The men­tion of twen­ty thou­sand box­es of choco­lates paid for with ques­tion­able funds raised alarms about Leon’s mis­man­age­ment.

Leon resumes the con­ver­sa­tion by remind­ing Archie of the influ­ence he sup­pos­ed­ly has over his peers, sug­gest­ing that Archie’s mis­cal­cu­la­tions have led to this deba­cle, par­tic­u­lar­ly ref­er­enc­ing Renault’s refusal to par­tic­i­pate in the sale. Archie reflects on this chal­lenge but then attempts to shift focus away from blame. He high­lights the broad­er problem—students are fatigued by recur­ring sales efforts, ref­er­enc­ing inef­fec­tive strate­gies from the pre­vi­ous year’s sale.

When Leon’s frus­tra­tion peaks, he under­scores the urgency by demand­ing that Archie get Renault to com­ply with sell­ing the choco­lates. He warns that if the sale fails, Archie and the Vig­ils will also face con­se­quences. This rev­e­la­tion empha­sizes the high stakes of the sit­u­a­tion, ignit­ing Archie’s inner con­flict. Ulti­mate­ly, Leon’s threat hangs heavy as he abrupt­ly ends the call, leav­ing Archie con­front­ed with both the urgency and com­plex­i­ty of the impend­ing cri­sis.