e
feeling that you can absolutely rely on him."

"Send him up to me," John P. repeated--and when John P. issued a fiat
like that, even his son did not dispute it.

And Thompson was duly sent up. He did not go back to the shop on the top
floor where for six months he had been an eager student, where he had
learned something of the labor of creation--for Fred Henderson was
evolving a new car, a model that should have embodied in it power and
looks and comfort at the minimum of cost. And in pursuance of that ideal
he built and discarded, redesigned and rebuilt, putting his motors to
the acid test on the block and his assembled chassis on the road.
Indeed, many a wild ride he and Thompson had taken together on quiet
highways outside of San Francisco during that testing process.

No, Thompson never went back to that after his interview with John P.
Henderson. He was sorry, in a way. He liked the work. It was fascinating
to put shafting and gears and a motor and a set of insentient wheels
together and make the assembled whole a thing of pulsing power that
leaped under the touch of a finger. But--a good salesman made thousands
where a good mechanic made hundreds. And money was the indispensable
factor--to such as he, who had none.

Fred Henderson had the satisfaction of seeing his theory verified.
Thompson made good from the start. In three months his sales were second
in volume only to Monk White, who was John P.'s one best bet in the
selling line. Henderson chuckled afresh over this verification of his
original estimate of a man, and Fred Henderson smiled and said nothing.
From either man's standpoint Wes Thompson was a credit to the house. An
asset, besides, of reckonable value in cold cash.

"New blood counts," John P. rumbled in confidence to his son. "Keeps us
from going stale, Fred."

When a twelvemonth had elapsed from the day Sophie Carr's red roadster
blew a tire on the San Mateo road and set up that sequence of events
which had landed him where he was, Thompson had left his hall bedroom at
the Globe for quarters in a decent bachelor apartment. He had a
well-stocked wardrobe, a dozen shelves of miscellaneous books, and three
thousand dollars in the bank. Considering his prospects he should have
been a fairly sanguine and well-contented young man.

As a matter of fact he had become so, within certain limits. A man whose
time is continuously and profitably occupied does not brood. Thompson
had found a personal