ion, and I told him
what he could do with his generals. The high school boy grinned when I
said that. He must have been old enough to have served in the army.

The generals were crimson. You don't get that kind of talk where they
worked. But the old man was unperturbed. "Let's make that one sentence
a paragraph. Give these gentlemen a demonstration as effective as the
last--and ten minutes after, if you like, you can walk out of here
free as the air."

I jumped at that. "Is that straight? If I do it again you'll let me
loose?"

He nodded. "If you really want to."

I persisted. "Straight, now? On your word of honor?"

He wasn't lying. "If you want my word you have it."

I grinned all over like a dog. "Bring on your fans, or whatever you
have cooked up."

The young man went out and came right back in with a little cartload
of electric fans. Either they had too many for general use, or someone
had very little imagination. Come summer, with Detroit ninety in the
shade, they were going to miss their ventilation. Me, I was going to
be a long way from the Federal Building. He set the fans on the desk,
and the generals craned stork-like to see what was going on. The old
man bowed to them.

"Name one, gentlemen. Any one you like." They named the middle one
again.

* * * * *

I called my shots again, as free and easy as though I'd been doing it
for years. "The middle one first, you say? No sooner said than done,
gentlemen. Right? Right! Now the far left, and right down the line.
Eeney, meeny, and out goes me." They were all dead, and I stood up and
asked the room, "Which is the express elevator to the main floor?"

The old man held up his hand. "One moment, Mr. Miller." He read my
mind, which, at that second, wasn't hard to do. "Oh, no. You're free
to go any time you so desire. But I would like to make this
demonstration a little more convincing."

He meant it. I could go if I liked.

"You also, Mr. Miller, as I understand it, exhibit somewhat the same
degree of control over internal combustion engines." And well he knew
I did. That traffic tieup I'd engineered had traveled via newsreels
all over the world. "Will you gentlemen step over to the window?" This
was to me and the generals.

We all crowded over. I looked down and saw we were on the ninth floor,
maybe the eighth or tenth. It's hard to judge distance when you're
looking straight down.

"Mr. Miller--"

"Yeh?"

"If on