dampen the most youthful optimism. His
proposal to the firm to win all or lose all, he realized now, had
been in the nature of a bluff, and the firm had called it. There was
nothing to do, therefore, but go through and win; there could be no
turning back, for he had burned his bridges.

When one enters a race-horse in a contest he puts the animal in good
condition, he grooms it, he feeds it the best the stable affords,
he trains and exercises it carefully. Mitchell had never owned a
race-horse, but he reasoned that similar principles should apply to a
human being under similar conditions. He had entered a competition,
therefore he decided to condition himself physically and mentally for
the race. A doped pony cannot run, neither can a worried salesman sell
goods.

In line with this decision, he took one of the best state-rooms on the
_Lucania_, and denied himself nothing that the ship afforded. Every
morning he took his exercise, every evening a rub-down. He trained
like a fighter, and when he landed he was fit; his muscles were
hard, his stomach strong, his brain clear. He went first-class from
Liverpool to London; he put up at the Metropole in luxurious quarters.
When he stopped to think about that nine hundred and twenty, already
amazingly shrunken, he argued bravely that what he had spent had gone
to buy condition powders.

On the way across he had posted himself so far as possible about the
proposed Robinson-Ray plant. He learned that there were to be fifteen
batteries of cyanide tanks, two high--eighty-four in all--supported
by steel sub- and super-structures; the work to be completed at
Krugersdorpf, twenty miles out of Johannesburg, South Africa.
The address of the company was No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street.
Threadneedle Street was somewhere in London, and London was the
capital of a place called England.

He knew other African contracts were under consideration, but he
dismissed them from his thoughts and centered his forces upon
this particular job. Once he had taken a definite scent his early
trepidations vanished. He became obsessed by a joyous, purposeful,
unceasing energy that would not let him rest.

The first evening in London he fattened himself for the fray with a
hearty dinner, then he strove to get acquainted with his neighbors and
his environment. The nervous force within him needed outlet, but he
was frowned upon at every quarter. Even the waiter at his table made
it patent that his social s