TOMMY found it difficult during the first few days to adjust himself to his new work. He had fixed his mind upon doing Herculean labors, in the belief that the reward would thereby come the sooner. Moreover, in taking on a heavy burden he had imagined he would find it easier to expiate his own participation in his father's sin of love. Twice a week Tommy wrote to Mr. Leigh, and told him never his new feelings, but always his new problems. And the secret, after the manner of all secrets, proved a bond, something to be shared by both. Tommy did not realize it concretely, but it was his own sorrow that developed the filial sense in him.
His disappointment over the unimportance of his position he endeavored to soothe by the thought that he was but a raw recruit still in the training-camp. In a measure he had to create his own duties, and he was forced to seek ways of extending their scope, of making himself into an indispensable cog in Mr. Thompson's machine.
The fact that he did not succeed made him study the harder. It isn't in thinking yourself indispensable, but in trying to become so, that the wisdom lies.
His relations toward his fellow-employees crystallized very slowly, by reason of his own consciousness that the shop could so easily do without him. He neither helped them in their work nor was helped by them in his. But it was not very long before he was able to indulge in mild jocularities, which was a symptom of growing self-confidence. Friendliness must come before friendship.
As a matter of fact, he was learning by absorption, which is slow but sure. He obtained his knowledge of the company's business, as it were, in the abstract, lacking the grasp of the technical details indispensable to a full understanding. But he found it all the easier, later on, to acquire the details. In this Bill Byrnes was a great help to him, for all that Bill appeared to have the specialist's indifference toward what did not directly concern him. Young Mr. Brynes was all for carburetors. He would more or less impatiently explain other parts of the motor to Tommy, but on his own specialty he was positively eloquent, so that Tommy inevitably began to think of the carburetor as the very heart of the Tecumseh motor. He knew Bill was working on a new one in a little workshop he had rigged up in Mrs. Clayton's woodshed, a holy of holies full of the fascination of the unknown. Tommy must keep his secret to himself, but he was sorry that Bill kept anything from him. The fact that, after all, there could not be a full and fair exchange between them alone kept Tommy from bitterly resenting Bill's incomplete confidence in him.
Mr. Thompson, to Tommy, was less a disappointment than an enigma; and, worse, an enigma that constantly changed its phases. Tommy really thought he had bared his soul to the young-looking president of the Tecumseh Motor Company, and a man never can deliberately lose the sense of reticence without wishing to replace it with a feeling of affection. Mr. Thompson seemed unaware that Tommy's very existence in Tommy's mind was a matter of Mr. Thompson's consent. He was neither cold nor warm in his nods as he passed by Tommy's desk on his way to the private office.
Suddenly Mr. Thompson developed a habit of using Tommy as errand-boy, asking him to do what the twelve-year-olds could have done. And as this was not done with either kindly smiles or impatient frowns, Tommy obeyed all commands with alacrity and a highly intelligent curiosity.
What did Mr. Thompson really expect to prove by them? In his efforts to find hidden meanings in Mr. Thompson's casual requests Tommy developed a habit of trying to see into the very heart of all things connected with the company's affairs. Of course he did not always succeed, and doubtless he wasted much mental energy, but the benefits of this education, unconsciously acquired, soon began to tell in Tommy's attitude toward everything and everybody. And since the change took place within him he naturally was the last man to know it.
One day Mr. Thompson rang for him. Tommy answered on the run.
“Leigh,” said Mr. Thompson, rising from his chair, “sit down here.” Then he pointed to a sheaf of papers on his desk. Tommy sat down. He looked at the sheets on the desk before him and saw rows of figures. But before he could learn what the figures represented Mr. Thompson took a lead-pencil from the tray, gave it to Tommy, and said, “The first number of all, Leigh?”
Tommy looked at the top sheet. “Yes,” he said; “it's 8374—”
“No. The first of the cardinal numbers!”
“One?”
“Don't ask me.”
“One!” said Tommy, and blushed.
“Of course.” Mr. Thompson spoke impatiently. “The beginning, the first step. One! Did you ever study numbers?”
“I—” began Tommy, not fully understanding the question. Then, since he did not understand, he said, decidedly, “No, sir!”
“Do you know anything of the significance of the number seven?”
“In mathematics?”
“In everything!”
“No, sir.”
“Ever hear of Pythagoras?”
“The Greek philosopher?”
“I see you don't. At all times, in all places, a mystical significance has attached to the number seven. Ask a man to name a number between one and ten, and nearly always he will answer, 'Seven!' Do you know why?”
“No, sir. But I am not sure he would answer—”
“Try it!” interrupted Mr. Thompson, almost rudely. “It is also a well-known fact that in all religions seven has been the favorite number. Greece had her Seven Sages. There were the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and Seven Wonders of the Old World. The Bible teems with sevens: the Seven-branched Candlestick, the Seven Seals, the Seven Stars, the Seven Lamps, and so forth.
“Abraham sacrificed seven ewes; the span of life is seventy years, and the first artificial division of time was the week—seven days. And the Master multiplied seven loaves and fed the multitude, and there were left seven baskets. And He told us to forgive our enemy seven times, aye and until seventy times seven. And there are seven notes in music and seven colors in the spectrum. Also the superstition about the seventh son of a seventh son is found among all peoples.”
“I see!” said Tommy, and wondered.
Mr. Thompson looked at Tommy searchingly. Tommy's mind was working away—and getting nowhere!
Mr. Thompson now spoke sharply: “Take your pencil and strike out in those sheets every odd number that comes after a one or a seven. Get that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don't skip a single one. I've spent a lot of time explaining. Now rush. Ready?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tommy.
“Go!” shouted Mr. Thompson, loudly, and looked at his stop-watch.
Tommy went at it. His mind, still occupied with the magical virtues of seven, and, therefore, with trying to discover what connection existed between his own advancement and life-work and Mr. Thompson's amazing instructions, did not work quite as smoothly as he wished. He was filled with the fear of omitting numbers. He did not know that Mr. Thompson was watching him intently, a look of irrepressible sympathy in his steady brown eyes. And then Tommy suddenly realized that obedience was what was wanted. From that moment on his mind was exclusively on his work. At length he finished and looked up.
“How many?” asked Mr. Thompson.
Tommy counted. Mr. Thompson timed him.
“Two hundred and eighty-seven,” said Tommy, presently.
“Thank you; that's all,” said Mr. Thompson, impassively.
Tommy felt an overwhelming desire to ask the inevitable question, but he also felt in honor bound not to ask anything. This made him rise and leave the room without the slightest delay.
Mr. Thompson smiled—after Tommy passed out of the door.
Just a week later Mr. Thompson stopped abruptly beside Tommy, who sat at his desk, and said, without preamble:
“Look round this room!”
Tommy did so.
“Again—all round the room!” said Thompson.
Tommy obeyed unsmilingly.
“Once more, slowly. Look at everything and everybody!”
Tommy did so. This time he included both ceiling and floor, and in the end his glance rested on Mr. Thompson's face.
“Come with me,” said Mr. Thompson.
Tommy followed the president into the private office.
“Sit down, Leigh, and tell me what you saw. Name every object, everything you remember—numbers and colors and sizes.”
Tommy understood now what was expected of him and regretted that he had not made a stronger effort at memorizing. He decided to visualize the office and its contents. He closed his eyes and began at one corner of the office, methodically working his way clear round.
Mr. Thompson had a comptometer in his hand and registered as Tommy spoke.
“That's all I can remember.”
“Ninety-six—less than a third. Color seems to be your weak point. Study colors hereafter, but don't neglect form and size or numbers. Now tell me how the people looked; how they impressed you. Frankly.”
Tommy told him frankly how the clerks looked to him.
“Come back here this afternoon at two-thirty-two sharp,” said Thompson. And Tommy, after one look at the plump face and steady eyes, went away, disappointed but honestly endeavoring to convince himself that Mr. Thompson was not really and truly unfair.
At two-thirty-two sharp—Tommy had taken the precaution not only to go by the infallible electric dock over the cashier's desk, but had predetermined exactly how many seconds to allow for the twenty-eight-yard trip from his desk to Mr. Thompson's—Tommy reported to Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson looked at the clock, then at Tommy. “Leigh,” he said, with an impatient frown, “sell me a car!”
Tommy, of course, had thought of the selling department as he had of others. He had become acquainted with such agency inspectors as dropped in to talk to Mr. Thompson, but that branch of the business did not interest him as much as others. He knew what he ought to do, and tried to recall all the devices of salesmanship he had ever heard or read about. He was not very successful, for though his mind worked quickly, no mind can ever work efficiently on insufficient knowledge or without the purely verbal confidence that practice gives.
He looked at Mr. Thompson, the man who was trying to find out what Tommy Leigh was best fitted for. That made him once more think of Tommy Leigh in terms of Tommy Leigh's needs. He must not bluff. He must not conceal anything except the secret. Mr. Thompson was a square man. He must be square with Mr. Thompson. Also Tommy Leigh must be to Mr. Thompson exactly what Tommy Leigh was to himself. Now what was Mr. Thompson to him? And, indeed, what was Mr. Thompson to Mr. Thompson? An expert, a man who knew not only motors, but men, who knew more about everything than any salesman could know. No salesman could talk to Mr. Thompson effectively.
Mr. Thompson was not an average man. He knew! And the average man was a sort of Tommy Leigh—that is, he did not know much.
And so, though Tommy did not know it, his secret, which by making all other concealment intolerable, compelled him to be honest, again compelled him to do the intelligent thing. It enabled him not only to see clearly, but to speak truthfully.
And when Mr. Thompson repeated impatiently: “Come! Come! Sell me a car!” Tommy Leigh looked him boldly in the eye and answered confidently:
“Can't!”
“Why not?”
“Because it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“You are you. You give me a problem that can't be answered except by an answer to quite a different problem. You know cars. You have cars. You make cars. You really don't want me to sell you a car. You want me to talk to a groceryman who has never spent more than seventeen cents for recreation, or to a speed maniac with ten thousand dollars a year pocket money. It wouldn't be Thompson. Nobody could sell a car to Thompson. Thompson doesn't need to be made aware that he wants to buy a car.”
He was speaking from the bottom of his soul, and because he had been honest to himself and to the man who had promised to befriend him, Tommy's courage grew. It made him now look unblinkingly at the president of the Tecumseh Motor Company. He saw neither displeasure nor approval in the brown eyes. So to make sure he had made himself understood Tommy added, positively:
“It isn't that I think your question is an unfair one, but that the problem isn't a problem, any more than if you ask, 'How old is a man who wears a black necktie on his way to his office?' when you really want to know if he limps.”
“That's all,” said Mr. Thompson, and turned his back on Tommy.
Tommy turned on his heel and walked out of the room, conscious that he was a failure. He realized now that he had not made himself indispensable. His information bureau could be shut up and no harm whatever suffered by the company. In the tests to which Mr. Thompson had subjected him he had not proven that there was first-class raw material in him. Perhaps the tests were not fair; probably they were. Why, indeed, should he expect favors? What business could be conducted on the basis of unintelligent kindliness?
And the crushing sense of failure made his secret rise before the poor boy. He had intended to make restitution, and here he was good for nothing! When discovery came where would he be? He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as the awful vision fleeted before his eyes—the vision of what discovery would bring to him. He would take the blow! He would be good for something! If not in Dayton, elsewhere.
He had been a boy! He had been himself, as God made him. But now he would be different! He would make Tommy Leigh a young man who would secure his advancement by any and all means. To succeed he would bluff and lie and—
No! Nobody had it easy, not even people who wouldn't fight. And now he wanted to fight—fight with all his might! The harder the fight, the better! Fight the world, life, hell, Thompson, everything, and everybody, the more the better. He would die fighting, with his soul full of rage. The great reward was the end of all trouble!
When a man commits suicide in a really glorious way he grows calm. How can petty annoyances disturb a heroic corpse? Tommy grew calm. He would have to leave Dayton, but Dayton had taught him just one thing—that beyond all question there was some place in the world where Thomas Francis Leigh would prove his value! He felt even a sort of gratitude to the head of the Tecumseh Motor Company, to whom he was indebted for his education. He had learned more of life in the few weeks he had been there than in the twenty-one years and three months he had spent elsewhere. His gratitude brought in time that mood of genial melancholy which is the heritage of youth, when youth, in the midst of life, feels its own loneliness. And because youth also is generous, Tommy felt he must share it with somebody.
He decided to write, not to his father, but to Marion Willetts! He had written to her only once, a bright and amusing letter—of course to be read between the lines. She had answered. And her own letter, too, was full of Tommy Leigh. She asked for details concerning the few hundred things that Tommy intentionally had merely hinted at in his first.
This second letter to her must be carefully written. It must both express and conceal, say and leave unsaid. Every word must mean exactly what he desired to convey, in precisely the way he wished her to get the message.
He closed his eyes and began to compose.
Words never before had meant quite so much to Tommy. It was a literary revelation, because Tommy was utterly unaware that he was writing his first letter to his own twenty-one years and eighteen weeks!
He had not quite finished his peroration when Mr. Thompson came out of his office. Tommy looked up and saw him, saw the man who had written the end of his Dayton chapter. He felt no resentment. Indeed, Mr. Thompson had been more than kind. The fifteen dollars a week was really a gift; Tommy acknowledged to himself that he hadn't given a just equivalent therefor to the Tecumseh Motor Company.
And Mr. Thompson also was the man who had made it possible for Tommy to compose that wonderful unwritten letter to Marion, which by crystallizing his own attitude toward life, work, duty, and earthly happiness, had enabled Tommy Leigh to become acquainted with the brand-new Tommy Leigh.
Tommy stood up, for Mr. Thompson was walking straight toward him, and smiled expectantly, hoping to receive some order, that he might carry it out in full, now that he knew he had to leave, and, therefore, could obey with an eager willingness unvitiated by hopes of advancement.
“Tommy,” said Mr. Thompson, in the voice of an old and intimate friend, “are you game for a quiet evening?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tommy, not betraying his curiosity or his fear.
“Will you dine with me at my house—seven sharp. We'll have a very quiet time talking, just the two of us.”
Mr. Thompson was smiling slightly. Tommy felt a wave of gratitude surging within him. This man, being a gentleman, wished to break the news gently.
In his appreciation Tommy in turn felt honor bound to spare Mr. Thompson every embarrassment.
“Of course I shall be delighted. But I want to say, Mr. Thompson, that you don't have to—er—” Tommy paused.
“To what?” asked Mr. Thompson, puzzled.
“To be so nice about telling me that I—I haven't made good with you. You've done more than anybody else in the world would have done, more than I had any reason to expect. And—”
“What are you driving at?” interrupted Mr. Thompson.
“You've made up your mind to let me go, haven't you?” asked Tommy, bluntly.
“Hell, no!” said Thompson.
Tommy looked at him, wide-eyed.
Thompson went on: “Seven. You know my house?”
Tommy nodded as Mr. Thompson passed on. It was all he was able to do. In point of fact he had to ask Martin, the cashier, where Mr. Thompson lived.
He didn't finish his letter to Marion. He was too busy dressing for his first dinner in Dayton and trying to keep from singing. Whatever happened eventually, this was a respite. He didn't even attach any importance to Mrs. Clayton's look of awe as she saw Tommy in his dinner clothes, nor to Billy's ironical, “Good-by, old carburetor!” as he left the boarding-house on his way to Mr. Thompson's.
MR. THOMPSON went in for etchings, and Tommy had to stop, look, and listen. He was not bored, because his proud delight in Mr. Thompson's versatility kept him awake. There were so many evidences of a wide interest in the non-money-making things of life in this home that Tommy found himself free from the oppression of his burden. Mrs. Thompson was away on a visit to her people and the two men dined alone.
Over the coffee in the library the talk finally drifted to Mr. Thompson. From that to Mr. Thompson's “Experiments” at the factory was a short step. Tommy had learned that all of these “Experiments” were at work in the experimental shop and in the selling department, and that not all of them were young men. Then Mr. Thompson talked about his advertisement in the New York Herald.
“I received many answers. I should have thrown yours away if you had not given your age. It was too sophisticated and smart-Alecky. It didn't mean anything—except the truth. Not knowing you, I was not sure it was true. I can't stand puzzles, so I sent for you.”
“I'm glad you did. It saved my life,” blurted Tommy.
“Don't exaggerate, Leigh,” admonished Thompson, calmly.
“I didn't,” said Tommy. “But I won't.” He couldn't tell Mr. Thompson, first, what had compelled him to look in the nor, second, how he had taken it for granted that his own answer would bring him employment.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” asked Thompson, in a matter-of-fact voice that nevertheless in some curious way showed sympathy—in advance.
Tommy's eyes clouded with the pain of struggle. “I—can't, Mr. Thompson,” he answered.
Thompson's eyes did not leave Tommy's. “They called you Tommy at college?”
“Yes, sir—everybody,” answered Tommy.
“It is not always a recommendation. A diminutive nickname is apt to keep a man young. But there are degrees of youth, and superficial affection often has a babying effect. I'll call you Tommy hereafter.” Mr. Thompson said this in a musing voice. It made Tommy laugh, until Mr. Thompson said, seriously, “A secret is hard on concentration, isn't it?”
Tommy started. He couldn't help it. Mr. Thompson went on:
“It makes the result of the concentration test I applied to you the other day all the more remarkable. At your age, with your imagination and the habit of introspection that an untold secret begets, it was unfair to make the test even more difficult about the magical virtues of the number seven. Crossing out all odd numbers after one and seven is the common test. I have improved it, I think. I must have concentrated imagination, if I can get it. You did very well. Of course you are no wonder, Leigh—”
“Certainly not!” interrupted Tommy, indignantly, before he stopped to think that it was not an accusation.
Thompson smiled. “But you did well enough to justify me in keeping you—for a while longer, at all events.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now you must continue to study our work. Discover what you want to do; then make sure it is what you really want. Then try to convince yourself that it isn't. When you know, tell me. Do you want more money?”
“Yes, I do, but I won't take it,” answered Tommy, very quickly.
“Very well,” said Mr. Thompson, regarding the incident as closed.
Tommy was perfectly sincere in his resolve not to accept unearned money. Nevertheless, he felt a little disappointed at Mr. Thompson's prompt acquiescence. Then Tommy realized more than ever that the joy of telling the truth is in the instant acceptance of the truth by your hearers. It is what makes it important for words to mean the same thing in all minds at all times. If “no” always meant “no” there would be much less trouble in this world.
Tommy resolved to find out which part of the business appealed to him the most, and then he would tell Mr. Thompson. Then there would be more money to send home every week. He had sent so little! But he had paid off the fifty dollars he borrowed to pay for his transportation to Dayton.
“Where do you live?” asked Mr. Thompson.
Tommy told him; told him all about Mrs. Clayton and all about Bill and Bill's carburetor mania. When Mr. Thompson spoke it was not to refer to anything that Tommy had said.
“Don't know much about the selling end of the business, do you?” he asked.
“No, sir.''
“Would you LIke to learn? Think before you speak.”
Tommy thought. At length he said, “Yes, I would, very much.”
“Think you'd like it?”
Tommy's habit of being honest made him discover that he could not answer either yes or no truthfully. So he decided, as usual when in doubt, to tell the truth. Better to be considered an ass than a liar—easier and safer.
“I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking that in the shop I can learn only what a mechanic thinks of the product, and what the shipping departments think of moving it away. What the buyer thinks, I don't know. So I don't know whether I'd like to be a salesman.”
“They get good money. You'd like that. Think again before you answer.”
Tommy thought. To him money meant only one thing: Not what one hundred thousand dollars, for instance, might buy for him, but what seventeen thousand dollars—no more, no less—would do for his soul's peace. He answered Mr. Thompson slowly:
“I don't know which is the greater pleasure—doing work you really love for fair pay, or making more money out of work you neither like nor dislike. I—I don't know, Mr. Thompson,” he finished, and looked at his chief dubiously.
Mr. Thompson stared into space. “That's so,” he said at last, in a perfunctory way.
Tommy felt he had hit no bull's-eye, but he was neither sorry nor angry. He bethought himself of his bedroom, where he could do his thinking unstimulated and undepressed. He arose and said:
“I've had a very nice time, Mr. Thompson, and you don't know how grateful I am to you, sir.”
“Yes, it's bedtime,” said Mr. Thompson, absently. Then he came back to Tommy. “Tommy,” he said, “if you ever feel like coming to me to tell me what an ignorant ass you think you are, do so. I'll agree with you; and perhaps, after I listen to your reasons I'll even raise your salary on the spot. If you get lonesome walk it off; don't come to me. But Mrs. Thompson will introduce you to a lot of nice young people—”
Tommy shook his head violently. “Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson. But I'd—” He floundered till a ray of light showed him the way out. He finished, “I'd be more than glad if Mrs. Thompson would let me call once in a while so I could confidentially tell her what I think of her husband.”
Tommy smiled what he thought was a debonair smile. He wasn't going to know nice young people who some day might read in the newspapers—And, anyhow, he wasn't in Dayton to have a good time, but to sweat seventeen thousand dollars' worth.
“I see I can't do a damned thing for you, young man,” said Thompson, evenly. He accompanied Tommy to the door. He held out his hand. “Remember, when you want to tell me that you are not only an ignoramus, but an ass, and, to boot, blind, come up and say it. Good night, Tommy!” And he shook Tommy's hand firmly.
“All I know,” thought Tommy to himself on the way home, “is that he is the greatest thing that ever came down the pike.”
He thought of the day when he could feel that he owed nothing and dreaded nothing.
He fell asleep thinking he ought to look into the selling end of the business.
TOMMY found, after his dinner with Mr. Thompson, that the responsibility of learning the business by doing his own studying in his own way did not weigh so heavily upon him. There were times, of course, when the slowness of his own progress was not comfortable, but he learned the most valuable of all lessons—to wit, that you cannot turn raw material into finished product by one operation in one second.
He now divided his time between the general business office in the Tecumseh Building and the office at the works. In the morning he was with the selling force, listening to the dictated replies to all sorts of correspondence or to the explanations and pointers of men who looked after the merchandising of the company's product. But his own interest in the psychology of selling was not personal enough. He couldn't bring himself to feel that in selling for the Tecumseh Company he was pleasing Thomas Francis Leigh quite as much as the company. Of course it would please him to succeed; but he acknowledged to himself that the pleasure would not be because of the selling, but because of the success. He could not project himself into his imaginary auditors, for the wonderful possession of another's ears with which to hear his own voice was not to him what it is to the bom pleader.
He began to think that selling did not come natural to him, but he kept on listening to the salesmen, grasping their point of view and at times even sympathizing with it, but always feeling like a buyer himself—an outsider. This gave him the buyer's point of view—an invaluable gift, though he not only did not know it, but felt sorry he had it. To conceal part of the truth, to be only technically veracious, to have a customer say, “You did not tell me thus and so when you sold me that car!” was an apprehension he could not quite shake off. All he could conceal was one thing, and in his introspective moments at home he almost convinced himself that his secret, by making it difficult for him to become an enthusiastically unscrupulous salesman, was interfering materially with the success of Thomas Francis Leigh.
His afternoons he spent in his information bureau, or wandering about the shop asking the various heads of the mechanical departments what they were doing to correct one or another of the parts of the motor that seemed to be regarded by customers as sources of trouble. When they told him the customers were to blame, and that no car is utterly fool-proof, he refused to abandon his buyer's point of view. He would argue, with the valor of ignorance, against the mechanical experts—and learned much without being aware of it.
At home evenings he did not talk, but kept from brooding on his own troubles by listening to Bill Byrnes. The young mechanic soon outgrew his feeling of pity for the New-Yorker's profound ignorance, and then developed a friendship that rose almost to enthusiasm—Tommy listened so gratefully to Bill's monologues.
On this evening Bill told Tommy that everything was wrong with the work. Tommy was dying to ask for details, that he might sympathize more intelligently, but Bill had not seen fit to enlighten him, and not for worlds would he ask point-blank. So Tommy contented himself with looking judicial and told Bill:
“This carburetor business is becoming an obsession with you. Give it a rest and then go back to it fresh. When you get a hobby and ride it to death—''
“Grandpop,” interrupted Bill, unimpressed by Tommy's octogenarian wisdom, “the moment I see a carburetor that suits me, no matter whose it is, I'll have no more interest in the problem than I have in the potatoes in the neighbors' cellars.”
Tommy was not sure that Bill was deceiving himself. He, therefore, observed, cynically, “All signs fail with inventors that don't invent.”
Bill became so serious that Tommy felt he had hurt Bill's feelings. Before he could explain his words away Bill said, slowly:
“Let me tell you something, Tommy. You don't know what I've gone through.” He hesitated, then he went on reluctantly, as though the confession were forced out of him, “My father was a mouth-inventor!”
“What was he?” asked Tommy, puzzled.
“A mouth-inventor I call him. He always knew what ought to be done by machine. He had mighty good ideas, but he never got as far as building a working model or even making a rough drawing. My mother used to tell him to go ahead and invent, and he'd promise he would. But all he ever did was to talk about the machine that ought to be built, until somebody else did it and copped the dough. Then he would tell my mother, 'There, wasn't I right?'”
Bill's face clouded and he stopped talking—to remember.
“Didn't he ever finish anything?” Tommy meant to show a hopeful loyalty to his friend's father.
“Yes, he finished my mother,” answered Bill, savagely. “He got so he would talk in the shop, and the men would stop their work to listen to him, for he certainly had the gift of gab. He cost the shop too much, and so my mother had to support him and us kids. She invented regular grub for all of us, and it wore her out.”
Bill paused and stared absently at Tommy, who tried to look as sorry as he felt and feared he wasn't succeeding. Bill started slightly, like a man awakening from a doze, and went on quietly:
“Even as a kid I was crazy about machinery. I wanted to be a mechanic and she hated the idea of it, but when she saw I was bound to be one she simply would talk to me by the hour about the same thing—to do my inventing with my hands instead of with my jaw. She's dead and he's dead. I take after her on the matter of regular grub, but I haven't got my father's nose for discovering what's needed ahead of everybody else. I don't seem to be as interested in a brand-new machine as in a better machine.”
“The company would pay for any improvement you might make,” suggested Tommy.
“I'm not so sure,” said Bill, who was inventor enough to be suspicious.
“Oh, shucks! Mr. Thompson is a square man,” retorted Tommy.
“He's like all the rest. All business men are nothing but sure-thing gamblers, and they never make their gambling roll big enough. Take the case of the Tecumseh carburetor. It used to be a fine carburetor.”
“Isn't it still?”
“In a way. You see, the oil companies can't supply the demand for high-grade gas, so what you get to-day is so much poorer than it was five years ago that the old carburetor couldn't work with it at all. Now the carburetor is one of the principal things the advertisements call attention to in the Tecumseh.” Bill permitted himself a look of disgust.
“What's the answer?” asked Tommy.
“To be able to use bum gasoline. I've been working on this at odd times.”
“Why not at all times?” asked Tommy, with a stem frown.
Bill could see by Tommy's face that Tommy would remain unconvinced by any answer he might make. So he resorted to sarcasm.
“You see, dear Mr. Leigh, when you work with the company's machine in the company's shop in the company's time, the company has a claim on your invention. Oh, yes, I could tell you a thousand stories of fellows who—”
Bill's voice grew so bitter that Tommy broke in: “You make me tired, Bill. If you get to think that everybody's a crook, you'll find everybody not only willing, but delighted to do you. Do you know why? Because everybody that you take for a crook will take you for one, too.”
“And if you talk like a kid, everybody will think you are a kid and take away the nice little toy so you won't hurt yourself by being independent.”
“I bet if I went to Thompson—”
“Yes, he'd smile like a grandfather, and pat you on the head and tell you to stick to the office-boy brigade where you belong, and kindly allow his high-priced experts to earn their wages. By heck! if I had a little time and a little shop of my own—”
“Well, you have the shop—”
“And no machinery.”
“What machinery do you need?”
“Well, I have to get a generator. I'm dickering for one, but I am shy fifty dollars. I tried the self-starter generator, but it doesn't do what I want. So there you are—mouth-inventor.” Tommy saw Bill's despairing look and asked, “Can't you borrow one from the shop?”
“No.”
“Fifty dollars,” mused Tommy, “isn't much. You're making your three and a half a day—”
“Yes, but I've got a sister who—well, she isn't right. My father's fault.” He paused and corrected himself. “No, it wasn't. Just her luck. When she was a baby my father thought of something and he yelled to mother to tell her. And mother was frightened and dropped Charlotte. The fall did something to her. Anyhow, she's got what they call arrested development. She will never be able to amount to anything. So, of course, I—Well, it takes a big bite out of the pay envelope”; and he smiled defensively.
“Of course,” agreed Tommy with conviction. Then he irrepressibly held out his right hand toward Byrnes and said, nonchalantly, “Say, Bill, I've got a hundred I'm not using.”
“Keep it,” said Bill, shortly.
“It's yours,” Tommy contradicted, pleasantly. “Then keep on keeping it for me,” said Bill, and rose. He went toward his own room so quickly that Tommy did not have time to pursue the subject further. At the threshold Bill turned and said, “I'm much obliged, Tommy.”
“Wait!” said Tommy, going toward him. But Bill slammed the door in his face and locked it. It came to Tommy that Bill, too, had his cross to bear, and it was not of his own making—the sister for whom he must work, about whom he never talked. Yet Bill had shared his secret with Tommy, and Tommy couldn't share his with anybody! The more he thought about it the more he liked Bill. And the more he liked Bill the more he desired to help Bill in his experiments with the carburetor. It was a man's duty to help a friend. Tommy told himself so and agreed with himself.
He did not know that while his sense of duty was undergoing no deterioration, the equally strong desire for recreation, for something to make him forget his own trouble without resorting to cowardly or ignoble devices, insisted upon making itself felt. Then the thrilling thought came to him that besides helping Bill he was helping an inventor to do something useful, something that might be the means of accelerating the accumulation of the seventeen thousand dollars he needed. That made the loan strictly business, he thought, with the curious instinct of youth to cover the outside of a beautiful impulse with sordid motives, deeming that a more mature wisdom.
He had been sending three dollars a week regularly to his father. He had put it delicately enough. “Please credit me with the inclosed and write it down in the little black book. It's too one-sided as it is; too much Dr. and not enough Cr.” This was all that he had written to his father about his remittances. He had not asked what proportion of the debt was rightfully his. He would not stop to separate the clean dollars from the tainted, but give back the whole seventeen thousand. Nevertheless, he now wished to do something else with his mother's hundred, and the gold coins began to burn a hole in his pocket.
One night after supper he said to Bill, “I've been thinking about our experiments.” He paused to let the news sink in.
“Oh, you have, have you?” retorted Bill, with the elaborate sarcasm of the elder brother.
“Yep. Now if gasoline is going to keep on becoming less and less inflammable, what's the matter with going the whole hog and tackling kerosene?”
“Oh, shucks!” said Bill, disgustedly. Then meditatively, “I don't know—”
“I do,” said Tommy, decisively. “No scarcity of supply and cheaper.”
“Yes, and more power units; go further and cost less. But it will be more difficult—”
“Sure thing. That's what you're here for. The first practical kerosene-auto will make a goldmine look like a pile of wet sawdust.”
“You're right,” said Bill. “But I've never tried—”
“I'll help you,” said Tommy, kindly. “Don't talk about it; think!” This was rank plagiarism from Thompson, and he wouldn't let Bill say another word on the subject. Being compelled to do his thinking in silence made Bill grow quite excited about it. Tommy saw the desire to experiment show itself unmistakably in Bill's face. It made Tommy happy. He was helping some one else. Therefore, he was not thinking of himself. Therefore the secret slept.
On the very next morning Tommy went to one of the engineers in the experimental laboratory and asked, “Say, where can I get some literature on kerosene-motors—”
The engineer, La Grange, who had early taken a liking to Tommy, threw up his hands, groaned, and cried, “Another!”
“Another what?” asked Tommy.
“Savior of the industry.”
“Is everybody trying—”
“Everybody—and then add a couple of millions on top of that. It's worse than Mexico for revolutionists.”
“I again ask,” remarked Tommy, severely, in order not to show his disappointment, “where can I get some literature on the subject?”
“You never read the technical papers?”
“No.”
“Do so.”
“Got any files here?” persisted Tommy. It was evident that somebody had beaten him to the great idea.
“Yep, all of them, and several hundred tons of Patent Office Gazettes.”
“Where be they?” asked Tommy, pleasantly. “In the library.”
“Thank you; you are very helpful.”
“Don't mention it. Say, Tommy, if you invent a kerosene-carburetor, swallow it whole before you bring it up here, won't you, please?”
“I'll cram it down your giraffe throat,” said Tommy, La Grange being stout and short-necked.
He spent an hour looking over the files, taking notes of the issues he thought Bill would find useful. His disappointment over finding that so many bright minds were at work on the same problem was tempered by his stronger realization of the value of a working kerosene-carburetor. His profit came in his own recognition of his own ignorance. Enthusiasm isn't enough in this world. There must be knowledge. And other people existed who had knowledge, experience, and brains.
He went to the down-town office for the first time keenly interested in the selling department.
The more he thought about it the more important selling became. And the reason was that he was now dramatizing his own sales of his own kerosene-car. He would apply only sound selling methods when the Bymes-Leigh carburetor was put on the Tecumseh cars; therefore he began to study sound selling methods with a more sympathetic understanding.
Mr. Grosvenor, the selling genius of the Tecumseh organization, was greatly impressed by Tommy's intelligent questions. It made him say to Mr. Thompson: “Young Leigh has suddenly taken hold in a surprising manner, but he comes here mornings only. He'll spoil if he gets too technical. I'd like to have him with me.”
“Why?” asked Mr. Thompson, curiously.
“Because he'll make a first-class—”
“No, no! I mean why has he taken hold suddenly?”
“He is no fool. He instinctively reduces all his problems to the basis of 'Show me'—not Missouri distrust, but the desire really to know and—”
“Ah yes, the ideal juryman,” said Thompson, musingly.
“I don't see it,” said Grosvenor.
“The lawyers don't, either, hence it is all law or all emotion with them. Well, you can't have Tommy yet awhile.”
“Why not?” asked Grosvenor, curiously. He, too, learned from Thompson and his experiments with human beings.
“He hasn't reported to me yet.”
“But he's crazy to begin,” protested Grosvenor.
“No, he isn't. It is only that something has happened. Wait!” said Thompson. “Now about the Chicago agency—” And they ceased to discuss young Mr. Leigh.
That same afternoon Thompson rang for Tommy. “Tommy,” he said, “I want you to take one of our cars and play with it.”
“Meaning?” asked Tommy.
“Whatever you like. Company's car, company's time,” returned Mr. Thompson, impassively.
Tommy nodded. He saw, or thought he saw, usefulness to the company. Then he thought of Tommy Leigh. This made him think of Bill. The car being company's property, the Bymes-Leigh experiments with it also would be company's property.
“And Sundays?” he asked, and looked intently at Mr. Thompson.
Thompson stared back. Then he frowned slightly and kept on staring into Tommy's eyes. “H'm!” said Thompson, presently.
Tommy would have given much to know what the chief was thinking about. It fascinated him to watch the face and to wonder what the machine within the well-shaped cranium was turning out in the way of conclusions and decisions. Then the fear came to Tommy that Mr. Thompson might think Tommy wanted to joy-ride on the Sabbath or break speed records or have fun—Tommy who wanted no pleasure whatever in life until the seventeen thousand was paid back! The boy's face clouded. He couldn't explain.
“H'm!” again muttered Thompson, absently. Then his eyes grew alert and he said: “Use one of my own cars instead. Company's time, my car. Sundays, your time, your car.”
Tommy's heart skipped a beat. Had Mr. Thompson guessed? It was positively uncanny. Then Tommy asked, “Is it an old car?”
Thompson looked sharply at Tommy. Then he said: “It isn't; but it is—so far as you are concerned. I expect to have to repaint it.”
Tommy hesitated.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” asked Thompson.
Tommy might have said there wasn't anything to tell. But he answered, “I do, but I think I'd better wait.”
“Very well, Tommy,” said Thompson, seriously. “Want your salary raised?”
“Not yet!” said Tommy. Impulsively in a burst of gratitude he held out his hand. Then he drew it back.
“Shake hands, anyhow,” said Thompson; and Tommy did.
“Mr. Thompson, I'll tell you—”
“Not much you won't!” interrupted Mr. Thompson. “Run along, sonny!”