“No.”

“Well, it was made of such good stuff that it22 couldn’t break down, not one part before another, so when the time came it busted up all together.”

22

“What’s that got to do with our business?”

“Oh, I was just thinking,” said Hank.

They were in the building now. Hank gave a name to the elevator man, and they were whisked up to the fourth floor. Here, entering an office filled with the clatter of typewriters, Hank asked for Mr. Tyrebuck, and in a minute or two they were shown into a room where a man sat facing them at a desk table, a heavy-jowled, bulging-eyed, fresh-coloured man, with an unlighted cigar between his lips. He had just finished with a stenographer, but she was still standing waiting with a sheaf of notes in her hand, whilst Tyrebuck, as if engaged with some after-thought, sat, the cigar pushing out on his under lip and his prominent eyes staring straight at the newcomers without seeing them. He seemed to be looking at something a thousand miles away. He was. He was looking at Chicago and the dial of the Wheat Pit. Then he came to.

“That will do,” said he to the stenographer. “Well, Hank, how’s the world using you?”

George was introduced, cigars were handed round and they talked. George did the listening. Tyrebuck owned steamers and mines and was engaged just then on a wheat deal. He was one of the busiest men on the Pacific coast and one of the wealthiest, but he found time to talk to Hank. Tyrebuck talked as if he had absolutely nothing23 to do. They talked of the weather and President Wilson and Europe. Hank, who had been in England during the war, outlined a plan of his for taking over the British Empire, electrifying it, steam-heating it, fitting it with elevators, speaking tubes and American business methods. Then he rose. “Well, I must be going,” said Hank. “But say, what I came about was the Wear Jack. I saw her only day before yesterday down at Sullivan’s Wharf.”

23

“Oh, did you?” said Tyrebuck, “blessed if I hadn’t clean forgot her. Is she hanging together?”

“Well, she was, the day before yesterday. I’m open to hire her.”

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