“Here’s the thing—the real thing,” he said within himself. “This is the machine; the stroke is there and the bore is there ... if they can be made to see and to understand.”
Potter stepped into his car and drove out Woodward Avenue, and thence down a side-street to that mammoth, unbelievable mass of buildings which all the world, through advertisements, would recognize as the plant of the Waite Motor Car Company. Since the day the first brick was laid, a dozen years before, building had never ceased. The plant had never caught up with itself, had never been able to produce the number of automobiles required of it by the public. As far as the eye reached were clean, splendid structures; the ragged outline at the end, dimly seen, was caused by steel not yet covered by brick, by brick walls rising to wall in new space in which to manufacture yet more thousands of the Waite motor-car.
To all this, to this concrete, visible, tangible fortune, Potter Waite was sole heir. It was not like wealth in stocks, bonds, securities. It was not in promises to pay, in paper standing for something more substantial. It was there. It could be beheld in the mass. Perhaps a hundred millions of dollars actually reared themselves in brick and steel, in splendid, efficient machinery. Potter had grown up with it, was accustomed to it. Unlike the casual passer-by, he was not awed by it.
He leaped from his car and ran up the broad flight of stairs leading to the offices on the second floor.
“Dad in?” he flung at the man who sat behind the information-desk.
“Yes, but he’s occupied, Mr. Waite. I shouldn’t go in.”
Potter strode past. The man rose as though to call him back, and then sat down with a shrug. Potter flung open the door of his father’s office, flung himself through it.
“Dad, have you heard?” he said, abruptly.
Fabius Waite looked up, frowned. “I’m busy. Weren’t you told?” he said.
Potter glanced at the other occupants of the room; recognized Senator Marvel, did not recognize the other. He nodded to the Senator.