John P. cocked 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 assembled chassis 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 assembled 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 asset, besides, of reckonable value in cold cash.
"New blood counts," John P. rumbled in confidence to his son. "Keeps us from going stale, Fred."