Burned Bridges Part 18

CHAPTER XVIII

MR. HENDERSON'S PROPOSITION

Late that evening Thompson walked into his room at the Globe. He seated himself in a rickety chair under a fly-specked incandescent lamp, beside a bed that was clean and comfortable if neither stylish nor ma.s.sive.

Over against the opposite wall stood a dresser which had suffered at the hands of many lodgers. Altogether it was a cheap and cheerless abode, a place where a man was protected from the weather, where he could lie down and sleep. That was all.

Thompson smiled sardonically. With hands clasped behind his head he surveyed the room deliberately, and the survey failed to please him.

"h.e.l.l," he exploded suddenly. "I'd ten times rather be out in the woods with a tent than have to live like this--always."

He had spent a pleasant three hours in surroundings that approximated luxury. He had been graciously received and entertained. However, it was easy to be gracious and entertaining when one had the proper setting. A seven-room suite and two servants were highly desirable from certain angles. Oh, well--what the devil was the difference!

Thompson threw off his clothes and got into bed. But he could not escape insistent thought. Against his dull walls, on which the street light cast queer patterns through an open window, he could see, through drowsy eyes, Sophie half-buried in a great chair, listening attentively while he and her father talked. Of course they had fallen into argument, sometimes triangular, more often solely confined to himself and Carr.

Thompson was glad that the Grant Street orators had driven him to the city library that winter. A man needed all the weapons he could command against that sharp-tongued old student who precipitated himself joyfully into controversy.

But of course they did not spend three hours discussing abstract theories. There was a good deal of the personal. Thompson had learned that they were in San Francisco for the winter only. Their home was in Vancouver. And Tommy Ashe was still in Vancouver, graduated from an automobile salesman to an agency of his own, and doing well in the venture. Tommy, Carr said, had the modern business instinct. He did not specify what that meant. Carr did not dwell much on Tommy. He appeared to be much more interested in Thompson's wanderings, his experiences, the shifts he had been put to, how the world impressed him, viewed from the angle of the ordinary man instead of the ministerial.

"If you wish to achieve success as modern society defines success, you've been going at it all wrong," he remarked sagely. "The big rewards do not lie in producing and creating, but in handling the results of creation and production--at least so it seems to me. Get hold of something the public wants, Thompson, and sell it to them. Or evolve a sure method of making big business bigger. They'll fall on your neck and fill your pockets with money if you can do that. Profitable undertakings--that's the ticket. Anybody can work at a job."

That sounded rather cynical and Thompson said so. Carr laughed genially.

One couldn't escape obvious conclusions, he declared. Perhaps youth and enthusiasm saw it differently.

Thompson, through sleep-heavy eyes, saw Carr hold a gla.s.s of port wine, glowing like a ruby, up between himself and the light and sip it slowly.

Carr was partial to that wine. Wonder if the old chap didn't get properly lit up sometimes? He looked as if--well, as if he enjoyed easy living--easy drinking. There was brandy and soda and a bottle of Scotch on the sideboard too.--And Sophie _was_ beautiful. All the little feminine artifices of civilization accentuated the charm that had been potent enough in the woods. Silk instead of gingham. Dainty shoes instead of buckskin moccasins.--What an Aladdin's lamp money was, anyway. Funny that they had settled upon Vancouver for a home. Tommy was there too. Of course. Should a fellow stick to his hunch? Vancouver might give birth to an opportunity. Profitable undertakings.--At any rate he would see her now and then. But would he--working? Did he want to? Would a cat continue to stare at a king if the king's crown rather dazzled the cat's eyes? Suppose--just suppose--

Thompson sat up in bed with a start. It seemed to him that he had just lain down, that the train of his thought was still racing. But it was broad day, a dull morning, gloomy with that high fog which in spring often rides over the city and the bay till near noon.

He stretched his arms, yawning. All at once he recollected that he had something to do, a call to make upon Mr. John P. Henderson at ten o'clock. Groya Motors--he wondered what significance that held. At any rate he proposed to see.

It lacked just forty minutes of the appointed time. Thompson bounced out of bed. Within twenty minutes he had swallowed a cup of coffee at a near-by lunch counter and was on his way up Van Ness.

The corner of Van Ness and Potter revealed a six-story concrete building, its plate-gla.s.s frontage upon the sidewalk displaying three or four beautifully finished automobiles upon a polished oak floor. The sign across the front bore the heraldry of the card. He walked in, accosted the first man he saw, and was waved to a flight of stairs reaching a mezzanine floor. Gaining that he discovered in a short corridor a door bearing upon its name-plate the legend:

Mr. John P. Henderson.

Private.

Thompson looked at his watch. It lacked but two minutes of ten. He knocked, and a voice bade him enter. He found himself face to face with the master of the gray car. Mr. John P. Henderson looked more imposing behind a mahogany desk than he did on the street. He had a heavy jaw and a forehead-crinkling way of looking at a man. And--although Thompson knew nothing of the fact and at the moment would not have cared a whoop--John P. was just about the biggest toad in San Francisco's automobile puddle. He had started in business on little but his nerve and made himself a fortune. It was being whispered along the Row that John P. was organizing to manufacture cars as well as sell them--and that was a long look ahead for the Pacific coast.

He nodded to Thompson, bade him be seated. And Thompson sank into a chair, facing John P. across the desk. He wanted nothing, expected nothing. He was simply smitten with a human curiosity to know what this stout, successful man of affairs had to propose to him.

"My name is Thompson," he stated cheerfully. "It is ten o'clock. I have called--as you suggested."

Henderson smiled.

"I have been accused of hastiness in my judgment of men, but it is admitted that I seldom make mistakes," he said complacently. "In this organization there is always a place for able, aggressive young men.

Some men have ability without any force. Some men are aggressive with no ability whatever. How about you? Think you could sell motor-cars?"

"How the deuce do I know?" Thompson replied frankly. "I have never tried. I'm handicapped to begin. I know nothing about either cars or salesmanship."

"Would you like to try?"

Thompson considered a minute.

"Yes," he declared. "I've tried several things. I'm willing to try anything once. Only I do not see how I can qualify."

"We'll see about that," John P.'s eyes kept boring into him. "D'ye mind a personal question or two?"

Thompson shook his head.

He did not quite know how it came about, but he pa.s.sed under Henderson's deft touch from reply to narration, and within twenty minutes had sketched briefly his whole career.

Henderson sat tapping the blotter on his desk with a pencil for a silent minute.

"You have nothing to unlearn," he announced abruptly. "All big commercial organizations must to a certain extent train their own men. A man who appears to possess fundamental qualifications is worth his training. I have done it repeatedly. I am going to proceed on the a.s.sumption that you will become a useful member of my staff, ultimately with much profit to yourself. I propose that you apply yourself diligently to mastering the sale of motor cars to individual purchasers.

I shall pay you twenty-five dollars a week to begin. That's a mechanic's wages. If you make good on sales--there's no limit to your earning power."

"But, look here," Thompson made honest objection. "I appreciate the opportunity. At the same time I wonder if you realize what a lot I have to learn. I don't know a thing about cars beyond how to change a tire and fill grease cups. I've never driven, never even started a motor.

How can I sell cars unless I know cars?"

"You overestimate your handicap," John P. smiled. "Knowing how to build and repair cars and knowing how to sell cars are two entirely different propositions. The first requires a high degree of technical knowledge and a lot of practical experience. Selling is a matter of personality--of the power to convince. You can learn to drive in two or three days. In a month you will handle a machine as well as the other fellow, and you will learn enough about the princ.i.p.al parts and their functions--not only of our line, but of other standard machines--to enable you to discuss and compare them intelligently. The rest will depend upon a quality within yourself that has nothing to do with the mechanical end."

"You should know." Thompson could not help a shade of doubt in his tone.

"But I must say I could approach a man with a proposition to sell him an article with more confidence if I knew that article inside and out, top and bottom. If I really knew a thing was good, and _why_, I could sell it, I believe."

"He has the right hunch, Dad."

Thompson had not heard young Henderson come in. He saw him now a step behind his chair, garbed in overalls that bore every sign of intimate contact with machinery.

He nodded to Thompson and continued to address his father.

"It's true. Take two men of equal selling force. On the year's business the one who can drive mechanical superiority home because he knows wherein it lies will show the biggest sales, and the most satisfied customers. I believe six months' shop work would just about double the efficiency of half our sales staff."

John P. gazed good-naturedly at his son.

"I know, Fred," he drawled. "I've heard those sentiments before. There's some truth in it, of course. But Simons and Sam Eppel and Monk White are products of _my_ method. You cannot deny their efficiency in sales.

What's the idea, anyway?"

Young Henderson grinned.

"The fact is," he said, "since I listened in on this conversation I have come to the conclusion that you've good material here. I need a helper.

He'll get a thorough grounding. Whenever you and he decide that he has absorbed sufficient mechanics he can join the sales end. I'd like to train one man for you, properly."

"Well," John P. remarked judicially, "I can't waste the whole morning discussing methods of training salesmen in the way they should go. I've made Mr. Thompson a proposition. What do you say?"