Potter Waite appeared in the morning papers in a new character, and in his
new character occupied even more space and bigger headlines than he had
ever conquered in the old. Capable reporters had found a story to their
liking, and, what was more, a story with extraordinary news value and
interest to the public. It was not merely a local story, but one of a sort
which some newspaper men call "A. P. stuff." It is not the duty of a
reporter to assist in hiding anybody's light under a bushel, to minimize
heroism or rascality. Quite the contrary. He polishes his hero's armor; he
darkens the shadows about his miscreant.
So Potter was held up to public view as a hero of sorts, and it is
characteristic of the public that there were few to run back through the
index of memory and drag to light those closed pages of reckless deviltry,
of gaudy misbehavior. Potter had won for himself a new character.
Doubtless there were some devout enthusiasts who held him a convert; a
captive dragged up the sawdust trail at Billy Sunday's chariot wheel, for
Billy had, since early September, been belaboring the devil and torturing
the English language in his huge tabernacle on Grindley Field--once the
athletic domain of the parent Detroit Athletic Club. Billy had ranted to
the glory of God and the discomfiture of evil, and gone his way, leaving
behind him a state which, on its November election-day, voted the
abolition of traffic in intoxicants. Perhaps Billy claimed the credit for
both Potter's renovated character and the coming drought. There is some
justice in his claim to a fair share in the latter.
Major Craig and his two companions read the papers in the spacious
reading-room of the Athletic Club where Potter had put them up, reading
with a grain of salt at hand, for military men suspect the utterances of
the press, but not underestimating the main fact--that Potter was a
fighting-man and had done eagerly what battle was offered him.
"If Waite's engine has as good stuff in it as he has in himself," the
major said to Captain Ball, "our trip will be worth while."
"He seemed a capable chap," said Ball, who had met Potter in Washington,
"but offish."
"Something's eating the boy," said the major--and then arose with extended
hand as Potter entered.
"Where's the laurel wreath?" he asked, with a smile.
"My men were so proud of themselves that they had to blab," Potter said,
dismally. "They had to do a bit of bragging."
"It looks as if they were proud of you--and their bragging was about their
boss."
Potter smiled wryly, "Yes, confound them!"
"It's a valuable quality--to be able to capture the liking of the men who
work for you."
"They're good men, mighty good men."
Potter was shaking hands with Captain Ball and Lieutenant Emmons. "Have
you breakfasted?"
"All ready to go with you," said the major. "They really did no damage?"
"The men are busy replacing broken glass, that's all."
Presently they were driving through back streets toward Jefferson Avenue,
and out that broad thoroughfare to Potter's workshop.
"I hope you won't be disappointed in the looks of my motor," Potter said.
"It's rough--not finished up and polished like these European aeroplane
motors. I planned with the idea of a quick and large production, and cut
out all folderols."
He led the way to the machine, and for a couple of hours the Signal Corps
men studied it with technical minuteness and precision. They missed no
valve, no bolt, no lock-nut.
"Develops a two-hundred horse-power?" asked Captain Ball.
"A fraction over."
The room was filled with smoke and fumes from the exhaust of the roaring
motor. Potter motioned for doors and windows to be opened.
"The 'plane is a bit clumsy," he said, "but it will show what the motor
can do.... And to-day's as fine for a flight as we've had this fall. Will
you trust your neck with me, Major?"
The major climbed into the passenger's seat without a word. The machine
was wheeled out, its propeller began to mangle the air, and the craft
dropped the earth with a sort of gentle suddenness. Out over the sparkling
lake they sped, attaining greater altitude and wafting miles behind them
as with a breath. Beautifully, powerfully, rhythmically the motor labored,
and the major's eyes glowed as his skilled brain took note of the
performance, analyzing and appraising it.
Suddenly Potter veered to the northward, taking a course he had followed
once before with a quite different passenger--a fairy prince--for
companion. In a time unbelievably short they were over the piers and the
panorama of the Flats expanded before them. Potter descended, veered again
over Muscamoot, flew lower and lower. He was looking for something. A
couple of hundred feet above the ground he skimmed--and then he saw. Just
at his right lay an island, an island he recognized. Dingy buildings were
visible.... There was the channel where he had tried to land his
hydroplane--there was the tree against which they had brushed, and the
broken branches hung as a testimony to the fact. There was no sign of
life.
But Potter was satisfied. He knew that his dream had been no dream. None
could convince him now that his 'plane had fallen on the distant shores of
Baltimore Bay. He knew! He knew that beneath him lay the spot where he had
crashed to earth; he knew that himself, his companion, his machine, had
been conveyed, at great expenditure of labor, to a distance.... He knew
there must have been a reason, but what reason?
Cantor.... That point was vague. There was no evidence in support of that
vague memory. Had Cantor bent over him as he lay? Had he seen the face of
the man who had become his close acquaintance on that lonely island
enfolded in the heart of a great marsh? If the main fact were true the
subordinate fact might be true as well.... The whole matter was _outré_,
bizarre, sinister.
Once more the machine veered, banked skilfully and throbbed cityward. It
descended in a not over skilful landing and bounded clumsily until it
subsided into motionlessness.
"I brought him back safely," Potter called to the captain.
"And," said Major Craig, with quiet satisfaction, "I've ridden with a
motor.... You've got a motor, Mr. Waite."
"You think so?... You think it will be worth something?"
"Of course this has been no real test, but you've shown enough to make a
real test necessary. I believe this motor of yours is far and away the
best motor for its purpose in America. That's something. But over there,
Mr. Waite, improvements are made overnight that render existing types
obsolete. The 'planes of six months ago are antediluvian. The 'planes of a
year hence will be--nobody knows what. But you've got something, something
to work from, anyhow."
"Speed," said Captain Ball, succinctly.
"This 'plane doesn't give the motor a chance," said Potter. "With one of
those little French fighting-machines I think I could show you speed."
Craig nodded. Then Potter and the officers immersed themselves in
technicalities of weight per horse-power, lubrication, machining, high
altitude, and such future matters as standardization, possible output,
time of manufacture. With these matters the day passed.
They dined at the club. At the table next on their right sat Fred La Mothe
and a young man, of recent prosperity, named Roper. Potter called across:
"I hear your father has bought a new Whistler, Fred?"
"He's all puffed up over it," Fred said, with a laugh.
Roper was applying himself to a steak. He lifted his face and said,
"Whistler, did you say?"
"Yes."
"That's a new car on me. Where's it made?"
"The production is very small," said Fred, without a smile. "Mostly they
come from Europe."
That represented one phase of Detroit, the part of it which had grown so
rapidly it had shot past certain stations on the way without so much as a
knowledge of their existence. It was producing lopsided men. Roper did not
know Whistler, probably had never heard of Meredith, was too busy to
understand or care that his speech was crude, sometimes vulgar, always
studded with solecisms; yet a great motor company found his knowledge of
production in bulk such that it gladly paid him twenty-five thousand
dollars a year for the use of it.
"Supposing," said the major, "that we should need this twenty-five
thousand aeroplanes next year. If events should shape themselves so that
we were drawn into the war in the spring, how long would it be before we
could hope for deliveries?"
"I imagine you are better equipped to answer that than I," said Potter. "A
great deal depends on the start. If a motor were adopted and orders given
_now_, we could probably begin making deliveries in six or seven
months--if we were assured the material and the labor--and if factories
could be found to equip for their manufacture?"
"Have you any doubts of that?"
"I've estimated that the initial cost of equipping my father's plant to
make engines alone will be upward of half a million dollars," Potter said.
"I don't know how he would feel about going ahead to that extent. Six
months ago I would have said he would never consider it. Now I rather
believe he would.... Some manufacturers here would jump at the
opportunity--from patriotic motives--without a thought of profit. Others
would have to be shown where the profit was."
"Would cost and ten per cent. interest them?"
"If you could get them waked up. You'd have to get them to think less
about themselves and more about the country."
"But don't you think a change is taking place in public opinion?"
Potter paused before replying. "Yes," he said. "There has been a change, a
slow movement. Right now I wouldn't even guess how far it had traveled."
The major leaned back in his chair and gazed at the table-cloth; his
companions did not speak. At the next table two men in the prime of their
middle age were talking in tones louder than one expects in such a place.
But these men were privileged. Both were millionaires; both were
manufacturers of automobiles; both had worked, less than twenty years ago,
as machinists at the bench. They were big men, rough men, but able men.
"This gin they serve here can't be touched in town," said the heavier of
the two.
"It's bully.... Reminds me, are you getting ready for the long thirst,
Bob?"
"You can lay a sweet bet on that. I'm planting enough in the cellar to
last till the birdies nest again--and I'm looking out for more.... Hey,
waiter."
The waiter approached.
"Call the steward. I want to talk to him."
Presently the steward appeared.
"Say," began the millionaire who had summoned him, "how much of this gin
you got? Enough to carry you through to May first?" May 1st, 1917, was the
date on which the state of Michigan became an arid waste.
"I'll have a surplus, sir."
"How much?"
The steward told him.
"Um!... What would that come to?"
The steward figured a moment. "About seven thousand dollars, sir."
"I'll take it. Have it delivered--"
"Whoa there!" interrupted his companion. "You'll take half of it. I want
the other half myself."
"Nothing doing. There ain't enough to split.... But I'll tell you what
I'll do. I'll flop the dice with you for it. Winner gets the gin, loser
gets the bill."
The other hammered the table with his palm. "Fetch on your dice," he said,
boisterously.
A box of dice was quickly set before them.
"Best two out of three?" asked Bob.
"Naw.... Let's have swift action. One flop."
"All right," said Bob, rattling the cubes in their box and spreading them
on the table with practised hand. "Beat that, my boy." Three fives, an ace
and a four lay exposed. "My gin, I guess," Bob crowed.
"Not while the old man keeps his strength," replied his friend. "Just peel
your eye and watch this." He made the cast. A pair of fours was the
result. "Oh, hell!" he said, not petulantly, not angrily, but as if it
were a duty. He pushed the dice back, and the incident was closed;
apparently he brushed it from his mind as he had brushed back the ivory
cubes. "Say, I hear Bogel is going to reduce the price of his car a
hundred dollars...."
In Detroit in that day men could hazard seven thousand dollars on one cast
of the dice without a quickened throb of the pulse. To those two the
winning or losing of that sum was a trivial thing, a sort of matching of
pennies.
"Did you see that?" Potter asked of the major.
"Yes," said Major Craig, staring unbelievingly.
"Well, do you think our big men in Detroit are going to interest
themselves in anything so dinky as a European war?... That's the attitude
of mind that frightens me, Major. It's here; it's all about us. A big,
ingrowing selfishness; the ability to squander and the will to
squander.... Do you think those men give a tinker's dam about the United
States or what happens to it so long as their ability to throw away
thousands is left uninterfered with?"
Major Craig frowned, did not reply at once, but presently said: "It's
Gargantuan; the thing is so big that it almost wins itself dignity--this
highflying of your city. I'm not sure it's so bad; it's more like
boyishness.... There's nothing mean about it; it's big, and its bigness
bespeaks big men. It's very American. No other nation could produce it....
No, Mr. Waite, I don't think this is the thing to worry us. There's
something here, something tremendous, something of marvelous
vitality--like an earthquake or Niagara. If it can be harnessed--put to
use."
Potter shook his head.
"It will take a jar and a shock," the major said, "but I believe the day
will come when America will thank God for your spenders, your
high-rollers--when they wake up. There's an openness, an open-handedness,
about them.... I believe they're _men_.... I believe they will realize
what their country requires of them, and when they have come to realize
it, the whole world will stand amazed at the things they do."
Presently the major said: "I will make arrangements for the test of your
motor. It will have to be sent on to us. I'll write you where and when."
They went up to the major's room, where they talked more technicalities
until a late hour. Potter said good night, and with a feeling of warmth in
his soul, a feeling that these men really considered him of value and that
he was performing no mean service for his country, he descended to the
first floor. The major's parting words had been: "Stick to it, Mr. Waite.
Work over it, study it, keep on as you've been going. You are doing a big
thing, and your country will owe you its thanks."
As he stepped out of the elevator he met Cantor, just about to ascend.
Cantor hesitated as if he considered joining Potter, but Potter merely
spoke and passed on--not with any thought of brusqueness, but because his
mind was full, because he wanted no companionship.
Cantor stared after him. "What's gotten hold of him?" he asked himself.
The sight of Cantor set in motion new thoughts and speculations, thoughts
that might grow into suspicions. "The island was there," Potter said
inwardly. "It was no dream. We fell there...." The "we" ushered in
Hildegarde von Essen. What warmth of satisfaction he had been experiencing
was chilled. Black, brooding, morose shadows took its place--a sort of
mental nausea, a shuddering horror of the fact she had stated to him....
Defiled!... That unbelievable, dank, squalid fact!... He saw her as the
fairy prince of the day of their flight. It did not seem that life would
allow such a glowing, buoyant, fire-pure thing to be touched with evil. It
was not a fact that would endure close to her; it was a thing removed from
her by an unsurpassable gulf.... Yet it had leaped the gulf and fallen
upon her....
She loved him; confessed that she loved him--confessed this black thing to
explain why she could not marry him.... His brain burned; it seemed as if
he could not endure the reality of it.
Insidiously, unasked, came another fact. Cantor had been her companion;
there had been intimacy between them.... Cantor was a man whom report said
to be without honor in his dealings with women.... The thoughts had become
suspicions, searing suspicions. Never again could he take the hand of
Cantor in friendship unless they were cleared away.... If Cantor were the
man--But what right had he to act? What was it to him? He found himself
hating Cantor with a lurid, blood-lusting hatred. Yet he had only
suspicions, vague suspicions.... Added to them was the question of
Cantor's presence on that island and what it signified. What was the man's
business? Who was the man?... These were suspicions Cantor would have
labored much to have averted.