At exactly three-thirty o'clock on the following day in the Engineers'
Club the taciturn Mr. Martin, after some further questioning, took from
his pocket a contract and duplicate that assured Mr. James Gollop
employment.
"I've been in a peculiar situation in this affair," said Martin. "I've
had to fight against some personal likings and inclinations, and stand
as a mediator; for I must look after the best interests of the Sayers
Automobile Company as well as the interests of Jim Gollop. However, here
you are. Sign these."
Jimmy signed the contracts with as glad a hand as if he had been
affixing his signature to some document of inheritance that would bring
him a million. He put his own copy in his pocket with as much care as if
it were precious beyond computation.
"Now," he said, "when do I meet Mr. Sayers?"
"Sayers," said Martin, as he put the original contract into his pocket,
"is going somewhere West to-day. You'll see him soon enough. His
instructions are that you are to go immediately to San Augustine,
Florida, to see what is being done by rival concerns down there at the
beach races. I suppose he expects you to pick up points and information.
Keep track of your expense account. Learn all you can. Then report at
Princetown."
"But--about Granger! Am I to----"
"You'll be away at least two weeks," said Martin. "Many things can
happen in that time. If I were you, I'd forget that the Judge is on
earth. I'll--I'll tell Sayers about this matter," said his benefactor,
with the first sign of hesitancy that Jim had ever seen him display.
"And in the meantime, I'll do all I can to get that Judge to show some
sense. You can be certain of that. Well, may good luck go with you!"
At exactly seven-thirty that evening Mr. James Gollop reluctantly
departed from the street in front of the Martha Putnam hotel, where he
had taken up sentry go after convincing himself that MacDougall Alley
was dark.
"Got to catch my train to San Augustine," he warned himself. "Can't put
it off a minute longer because the meeting is on there day after
to-morrow, and it won't wait until I can tell Mary Allen all about it!
But if I don't straighten this matter out so that hereafter I can at
least write her, or send her a wire, I'm no organizer at all and my
chance with the Sayers Company isn't worth a tinker's curse."
As if he were forever scraping under the wire just before the barrier
fell, Jimmy got the last vacant berth in the sleeper and, recovering
from his Martha Putnam disappointment, whistled blithely as a porter
carried his suitcase to the Pullman steps. He stood outside to enjoy the
last of his cigar and was mildly interested in the final rush of
passengers when a porter came rapidly wheeling an invalid's chair in
which sat a man bodily broken and hideously scarred. The porter halted
the chair and the man asked, anxiously, if it were possible to secure a
berth.
"Sorry, sir," said the Pullman conductor, "but we're full up. You should
have engaged one earlier for this train. It's always crowded now."
"I didn't know until half an hour ago that I could come," said the man
in the wheel chair with such evident disappointment that Jimmy's
sympathy was enlisted. "Isn't there some place you can put me?
It's--it's like a day out of my life if I miss this train to San
Augustine!"
That was more than Jimmy could endure.
"Give this man my berth," said Jimmy to the conductor. "No. 12 in this
car. I can stick it through the night in the smoker. I've done it heaps
of times!"
And with that he brushed the porter aside, bent forward, lifted the
wreck from the chair and with his sturdy strength carried him up the
steps and to the relinquished section.
"There," he said cheerfully, as the porter came bearing the cushions
with which to make the invalid comfortable. "Now you'll be right as a
top."
The train took on motion and Jimmy was starting to carry his suitcase
forward when the Pullman conductor, proving that kindliness commands
kindliness, came hurrying forward and said, "Here! Let the porter find a
seat for you. It's pretty crowded out there now. Or, if the gentleman
has no objections, you might sit here with him until it's time to make
the berths down. The day coaches and smokers usually get thinned out a
little by ten o'clock at night."
And thus it was that Jimmy made a new friend.
"You see," explained the man he had befriended, "this race meeting down
there means a lot to a chap smashed up as I am. It's about the only
thrill I ever get since--since--I had to live in a chair. My name is
Carver. Dan Carver. What's yours?"
"Jim Gollop," said Jimmy, puzzling his excellent memory to recall why it
was that the name Dan Carver suggested something, and then, after an
interval, blurting, "Carver? Are you the man who used to be a famous
race driver two or three years ago? The man who wrecked himself in the
Vanderbilt Cup races rather than take a chance on throwing his machine
into the crowd at a turn?"
"The same--what's left of him," Carver admitted.
"Then," said Jimmy, "I wish I could have given you a whole Pullman
instead of just one berth! By gosh! You deserve it. The firm you drove
for ought to have seen to that."
"Firms forget, when a man is no longer of use," said Carver with a shake
of his head.
"Some of 'em do. Mine isn't that sort. But, you see, my firm is head and
shoulders above the others--in some ways. The Sayers Automobile Company
isn't one of these big, swollen concerns. Old Tom Sayers looks after his
people."
He was in true form again, proud of his firm, boasting its merits,
advertising it and ready to defend it quite as valiantly as if he had
been with it from its beginnings.
"I've heard of it," admitted Carver, politely. "Suppose it's because I'm
so out of the game that I don't know more about it than I do. My fault!
How long you been with 'em?"
"Since about five o'clock this afternoon," said Jimmy.
The crippled record breaker took out his watch, consulted it, and
slipped it back in his pocket.
"Long time, isn't it?" he commented. "That's nearly three hours. I've
broken a few records in my time, but you beat anything I've come across.
It took thirteen years for me to learn that one concern I worked for
was no good. It took you three hours to learn the one you work for is
the best there is."
"But I believe it!" declared Jimmy, with his unquenchable enthusiasm.
"Why? Because I believe in Tom Sayers. I believe in his honesty, and his
reputation, and--well--because he gave me a chance."
"Know him very well?" his seat mate asked.
"Never met him," Jimmy admitted.
"Know anything about his cars?" Carver somewhat cynically asked.
"I know that some of those who have them brag about them," said Jimmy.
"And I know that the men who work for him, from the superintendent down
to the yard boy, believe in them and say so, and would tear to pieces a
man who says they aren't the best. That's good enough for me. Know
anything about cars? Um-m-m-mh! I reckon I don't know a thing on earth
about 'em. If my life depended upon starting a car that somebody had
handed me on a platter, I suppose I'd be a deader. But a man doesn't
have to know it all to succeed. Noah couldn't have started the
_Aquitania_; but he did navigate the ark pretty successfully, and nobody
denies that he was the first admiral that ever sailed the seas. Admiral
Nelson and Commodore Paul Jones got there, somehow, but if they had seen
a motor launch tearing down on them at twenty miles an hour, I can
imagine both of them diving off the poop!"
Before they parted that night, the expert and the novice had become
friends. Before the race meeting was over, Mr. James Gollop knew more
about the merits of cars, the advantages of one over the other, and the
prevailing failings and universal obstacles than he had ever dreamed
before. Incidentally, he had established a friendship that lasted and
was to be of mutual benefit thereafter. He jubilated when considering
fortune. All things were coming his way. He would have accepted it as a
part of the regular procedure had he found a twenty dollar gold piece on
the pavement. His luck was in.
And so, like a happy victor, Mr. James Gollop of the Sayers Automobile
Company returned to New York one evening and, knowing that it was too
late to base any hope on either MacDougall Alley or the Martha Putnam
hotel, repaired, in lieu thereof, to the palm-garden precincts of the
place in which he had last dined with Mary Allen. He made plans for the
morrow, thought of what he might say to her, determined that the mystery
should end, and was anything but discontented. He ate leisurely, enjoyed
his food, and perused an evening paper. He liked the black coffee, and
felt civilized when he resorted to the finger bowl. He got to his feet
leisurely, well content, and then stopped, bent to one side, moved a
pace and through a screen of palm fronds stared as if transfixed. What
he saw was Mary Allen seated at a nice little table, inspecting a bunch
of violets in her hand, whilst across from her, stiff, pompous,
self-conscious, but entirely self-satisfied, sat the man who might have
been Mr. James Gollop but who was, indubitably one J. Woodworth-Granger,
Judge of the Fourth District Court. Others might not identify him, but
Mr. James Gollop did and for a moment his mind was in a turmoil of
surprise and anger. Granger! That wind bag had somehow, probably by mere
accident, met the only girl on earth, taken base advantage of his
likeness to one Jim Gollop, and was profiting thereby! How dare he! To
impersonate another man under ordinary circumstances was in itself
sufficiently culpable, but in private affairs, extraordinary and
personal, it became outrageous.
A great wave of indignation surged Jimmy Gollop as if he had been thrust
into a turbulent sea and was being helplessly bobbed up and down
thereon. He was undecided whether to create a scene by rushing forward,
seizing the impertinent Judge by the short hair at the back of his neck,
which country barbers had encouraged to a bristle, or to stalk
deliberately forward like the long lost hero in the cinema and--after
the screen had announced his words, "This girl is mine!"--scornfully
indicate to the impostor the door through which the latter, crestfallen,
must inevitably depart. For about a half-minute that seemed a
half-century, he didn't know what to do. And then, upsetting all ethics
and standards of the melodrama and the movies, he did just what anyone
else would have done in like circumstances; stalked majestically toward
the hat pirate in the outer hall, fumbled for his hat slip, presented it
with humble fingers, got his head covering and his overcoat, and
shuffled out into the street dejectedly to ponder over the exigencies of
this calamity, this tragedy, that threatened to end the world. How dared
the Judge to look like him! What a dirty trick to take advantage of
their unfortunate resemblance and impose himself into such a situation!
It was incredible, and base. He didn't know what to do about it, because
she was involved. He felt himself in a peculiarly helpless position. He
could but pray that the Judge's intentions were honorable.