you play up the
keen, alert stuff with a dash of sophistication, see? If you can
keep your mouth shut and throw a kind of a canny, I-get-you, look
into your eyes, all the better. He's gabby enough for two. Try a
line of talk that is filled with the fire and enthusiasm of
youth, combined with the good judgment and experience of middle
age, and you've--"

"Say, look here," stammered Jock. "Even if I was Warfield enough
to do all that, d'you honestly think--me an advertising
manager!--with a salary that Griebler--"

"You nervy little shrimp, go in and win. He'll pay five thousand
if he pays a cent. But he wants value for money expended. Now I've
tipped you off. You make your killing--"

"Oh, McChesney!" called Bartholomew Berg, glancing round.

"Yes, sir!" said Jock, and stood before him in the same moment.

"Mr. Griebler is looking for a competent, enthusiastic,
hard-working man as advertising manager. I've spoken to him of
you. I know what you can do. Mr. Griebler might trust my judgment
in this, but--"

"I'll trust my own judgment," snapped Ben Griebler. "It's good
enough for me."

"Very well," returned Bartholomew Berg suavely. "And if you decide
to place your advertising future in the hands of the Berg, Shriner
Company--"

"Now look here," interrupted Ben Griebler again. "I'll tie up
with you people when you've shaken something out of your cuffs.
I'm not the kind that buys a pig in a poke. We're going to spend
money--real money--in this campaign of ours. But I'm not such a
come-on as to hand you half a million or so and get a promise in
return. I want your plans, and I want 'em in full."

A little exclamation broke from Sam Hupp. He checked it, but not
before Berg's curiously penetrating pale blue eyes had glanced up
at him, and away again.

"I've told you, Mr. Griebler," went on Bartholomew Berg's patient
voice, "just why the thing you insist on is impossible. This firm
does not submit advance copy. Every business commission that comes
to us is given all the skill, and thought, and enthusiasm, and
careful planning that this office is capable of. You know our
record. This is a business of ideas. And ideas are too precious,
too perishable, to spread in the market place for all to see."

Ben Griebler stood up. His cigar waggled furiously between his
lips as he talked.

"I know something else that don't stand spreading in the market
place, Berg. And that's money. It's too darned perishable, too."
He p