Burned Bridges Part 19

He turned abruptly on Thompson.

"Or," young Henderson cut in. "You have the counter proposition of an indefinite mechanical grind in my department--which is largely experimental. If you take to it at all I guarantee that in six months you will know more about the internal combustion motor and automobile design in general than any two salesmen on my father's staff. And that,"

he added, with a boyish grimace at his father, "is saying a lot."

It seemed to Thompson that both men regarded him with a considerable expectancy. It perplexed him, that embarra.s.sment of opportunity. He was a little dazed at the double chance. Here was Opportunity clutching him by the coat collar. He had nothing but impulse, and perhaps a natural craving for positive knowledge, to guide his choice. He wasted few seconds, however, in deciding. Among other things, he had outgrown vacillation.

"It is just as I said," he addressed Henderson senior. "I'd feel more competent to sell cars if I knew them. I'd rather start in the shop."

"All right," Henderson grunted. "You're the doctor. Be giving Fred a chance to prove one of his theories. Personally I believe you'd make a go of selling right off the bat, and a good salesman is wasted in the mechanical line. When you feel that you've saturated your system with valve clearances and compression formulas and gear ratios and all the rest of the shop dope, come and see me. I'll give you a try-out on the selling end. For the present, report to Fred."

He reached for some papers on the desk. His manner, no less than his words, ended the interview. Thompson rose.

"When can you start in?" young Henderson inquired.

"Any time," Thompson responded quickly. He was, in truth, a trifle eager to see what made the wheels go round in that establishment. "I only have to change my clothes."

"Come after lunch then," young Henderson suggested. "Take the elevator to the top floor. Ask one of the men where you'll find me. Bring your overalls with you. We have a dressing room and lockers on each floor."

He nodded good-by and turned to his father. Thompson made his exit.

Half a block away he turned to look back at the house of Henderson. It was ma.s.sive, imposing, the visible sign of a prosperous concern, the manifestation of business on a big scale. Groya Motors, Inc. It was lettered in neat gilt across the front. It stood forth in four-foot skeleton characters atop of the flat roof--an electric sign to burn like a beacon by night. And he was about to become a part of that establishment, a humble beginner, true, but a beginner with uncommon prospects. He wondered if Henderson senior was right, if there resided in him that elusive essence which leads some men to success in dealings with other men. He was not sure about it himself. Still, the matter was untried. Henderson might be right.

But it was all a fluke. It seemed to him he was getting an entirely disproportionate reward for mauling an insolent chauffeur. That moved him to wonder what became of Pebbles. He felt sorry for Pebbles. The man had probably lost his job for good measure. Poor devil!

As he walked his thought short-circuited to Sophie Carr. Whereat he turned into a drugstore containing a telephone booth and rang her up.

Sophie herself answered.

"I guess my saying good-by last night was a little premature," he told her. "I'm not going north after all. In fact, if things go on all right I may be in San Francisco indefinitely. I've got a job."

"What sort of a job?" Sophie inquired.

He hadn't told her about the ten o'clock appointment with Henderson. Nor did he go into that now.

"I've been taken on in an automobile plant on Van Ness," he said. "A streak of real luck. I'm to have a chance to learn the business. So I won't see you in Vancouver. Remember me to Tommy. I suppose you'll be busy getting ready to go, so I'll wish you a pleasant voyage."

"Thanks," she answered. "Wouldn't it be more appropriate if you wished that on us in person before we sail?"

"I don't know," he mumbled. "I--"

A perfectly mad impulse seized him.

"Sophie," he said sharply into the receiver.

"Yes."

He heard the quick intake of her breath at the other end, almost a gasp.

And the single word was slightly uncertain.

"What did you mean by a man standing on his own feet?"

She did not apparently have a ready answer. He pictured her, receiver in hand, and he did not know if she were startled, or surprised--or merely amused. That last was intolerable. And suddenly he felt like a fool.

Before that soft, sweet voice could lead him into further masculine folly he hung up and walked out of the booth. For the next twenty minutes his opinion of John P. Henderson's judgment of men was rather low. He did not feel himself to be an individual with any force of character. In homely language he said to himself that he, Wesley Thompson, was nothing but a pot of mush.

However, there in the offing loomed the job. He turned into the first clothing store he found, and purchased one of those all-covering duck garments affected by motor-car workers. By that time he had recovered sufficiently to note that an emotional disturbance does not always destroy a man's appet.i.te for food.

CHAPTER XIX

A WIDENING HORIZON

This is not a history of the motor car business, nor even of the successive steps Wes Thompson took to win competent knowledge of that Beanstalk among modern industries. If it were there might be sound reasons for recounting the details of his tutelage under Fred Henderson.

No man ever won success without knowing pretty well what he was about.

No one is born with a workable fund of knowledge. It must be acquired.

That, precisely, is what Thompson set out to do in the Groya shop. In which purpose he was aided, abetted, and diligently coached by Fred Henderson. The measure of Thompson's success in this endeavor may be gauged by what young Henderson said casually to his father on a day some six months later.

"Thompson soaks up mechanical theory and practice as a dry sponge soaks up water."

"Wasted talent," John P. rumbled. "I suppose you'll have him a wild-eyed designer before you're through."

"No," Henderson junior observed thoughtfully. "He'll never design. But he will know design when he sees it. Thompson is learning for a definite purpose--to sell cars--to make money. Knowing motor cars thoroughly is incidental to his main object."

John P. c.o.c.ked his ears.

"Yes," he said. "That so? Better send that young man up to me, Fred."

"I've been expecting that," young Henderson replied. "He's ripe. I wish you hadn't put that sales bug in his ear to start with. He'd make just the man I need for an understudy when we get that Oakland plant going."

"Tush," Henderson snorted inelegantly. "Salesmen are born, not made--the real high-grade ones. And the factories are turning out mechanical experts by the gross."

"I know that," his son grinned. "But I like Thompson. He gives you the feeling that you can absolutely rely on him."

"Send him up to me," John P. repeated--and when John P. issued a fiat like that, even his son did not dispute it.

And Thompson was duly sent up. He did not go back to the shop on the top floor where for six months he had been an eager student, where he had learned something of the labor of creation--for Fred Henderson was evolving a new car, a model that should have embodied in it power and looks and comfort at the minimum of cost. And in pursuance of that ideal he built and discarded, redesigned and rebuilt, putting his motors to the acid test on the block and his a.s.sembled cha.s.sis on the road.

Indeed, many a wild ride he and Thompson had taken together on quiet highways outside of San Francisco during that testing process.

No, Thompson never went back to that after his interview with John P.

Henderson. He was sorry, in a way. He liked the work. It was fascinating to put shafting and gears and a motor and a set of insentient wheels together and make the a.s.sembled whole a thing of pulsing power that leaped under the touch of a finger. But--a good salesman made thousands where a good mechanic made hundreds. And money was the indispensable factor--to such as he, who had none.

Fred Henderson had the satisfaction of seeing his theory verified.

Thompson made good from the start. In three months his sales were second in volume only to Monk White, who was John P.'s one best bet in the selling line. Henderson chuckled afresh over this verification of his original estimate of a man, and Fred Henderson smiled and said nothing.

From either man's standpoint Wes Thompson was a credit to the house. An a.s.set, besides, of reckonable value in cold cash.