The Argosy, Vol. 81, No. 4 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

588 rest. of the season he could get his time as soon as he’s through billing the cars we’ve loaded this morning.” He chuckled some more. Most men in his position would have chuckled. It was just ten days since a committee of creditors had told him he must settle by the first of June or they would put him in bankruptcy. It was just sixty days since the foreign agent for whom the fifteen thousand Roller- ton cars had been designed and built had reneged in the order. To get that near the bread-line and then to have the opening agencies make five thousand sales and another foreign agent take the ten thousand cars for better than the original contract price was material for several chuckles. Certainly he was not going to stop chuckling for the blood in the eye or the wrath in the voice of a mere agent than whom, since he could not possibly fill half the orders coming, few things could be more useless in his businéss. ~ “Oh, you think it’s a joke, do you?” raged Orton. “I tell you I want those cars. Mr. Tibbers here told me I would get de- livery as quickly as freights could make it. And I’m going to get it.” “T said,” Tibbers here put in, “‘so long as _ the cars lasted.” “And that they would last all summer and half the winter,’ Orton reminded him. “Of course, that was merely a mistaken prediction on my part,” the manager stated, smiling with his boss. = “Mistaken prediction, eh? Well, that mistake will cost you some money if I don’t get the cars to fulfil the prediction. If you people are fools enough to let go the chance to put your car on the map—to let that chance go in order to grab a war order for a few dollars in one season—” The sentence was getting away from him in his excitement, and his voice arose ac- cordingly: “If you’re that sort of fool con- cern, I’m here to tell you that you can’t make the same sort of fool of me. I took the agency and I’ve sold the cars, and I’m going to have them, I tell you. And I’m going to have enough to fill future orders.” But he merely amused the two. Reoller- ton’s chuckle grew more pronounced. “Didn’t I just tell you, Mr. Orton,” the president of the company spoke with mock- ing suavity, “that all the cars in the place are at your command? Can I do more than THE ARGOSY. to tell you to take any car you see that you want?” Orton was physically exhausted; he shook with rage at the mockery. “Laugh, if you like,” he snarled. “We'll see who'll laugh in a court, though, before I’m through with you.” And he turned on his heel and stalked out at the door. The talk of courts was bluff, and he knew it. It appeared that they knew it, too, since they had kept on laughing. Just once Orton had tried to beat a company in court, and he would wait long before trying it again. He was ruined. Yesterday morning he would not have considered any difficulty with a motor-car company a serious mat- ter. It had always been too easy to find some other company’s agency. But the Rollerton cars, with immediate delivery, had meant a fortune for him. Now they meant little or nothing. And he had made of himself a bigger fool than the com- pany was making of him by getting engaged to a girl he could not marry without the fortune. He felt a wave of desperate anger which might have set him hurling bricks through the factory’s windows had the idea occurred to him. He walked blindly out of the wait- ing-room. He stopped only when he real- ized that he had turned the wrong way. He was in the vast assembling room, where, six weeks ago, he had seen long rows of Rollerton Sixes rubbing hubs and run- boards. It was as empty now as it had been full then. CHAPTER VI. BACK TO EARTH.. HALF way down the big, empty room’s length a youth was raising a huge dust with a broom. At its far end stood a dingy desk with another man writing as fast as he could. To the right was a wide door opening on a long platform, beside which stood a row of freight-cars. On the cars stood Rollerton Sixes, three to the car. Hardy Orton might be blind with rage when the last ray of hope’s light had been extinguished. He was not too blind to see a ray. ‘Help yourself to any car you see,” Rol- lerton had laughingly bidden him. Also he Gomichoo SS (E@)