Potter did not smile. “It will come,” he said. “Gradually we’re finding out we have a country—and that we love our country. Wait till you see this American people awake and on the job. I don’t take it placidly, because the thing was shoved down my throat. I was kicked awake.” He turned away and went into the office that he occupied now more often twelve hours a day than eight. Here he remained until noon in constant conference with railroad man, engineer, steel representative, or machinery man come to explain delay in delivery or to promise beyond possibility of performance. At noon he drove down-town to the club for lunch.
As he entered the building he saw young Matthews, a frail-bodied millionaire whose hobby was mechanics, gesticulating in the center of an interested group.
Will Kraemer saw Potter and beckoned to him. “Something new,” he said. “The aeroplane joyrider has come.”
“What’s that?”
“Hey, Matthews, tell it to Waite!”
Matthews was more than willing. He was angry, excited, but pleased to be commanding so much attention. “Somebody swiped my hydro,” he said.
“At last Matthews has won a first,” laughed Eldredge. “First aeroplane to be stolen in America.”
“What’s the joke?” Potter wanted to know.
“No joke.... You wouldn’t think it was a joke if you saw my man Mullens. Somebody hit him on the nose with a sledgehammer. Found him tied up in a bundle and dumped in a corner, and blood all over the shop.... This morning. Went down about nine o’clock to sort of look at things. Door was locked. I thought Mullens was off on a bat, and then when I looked inside and saw the machine was gone, I thought he’d gone crazy. He couldn’t fly a kite.... Machine clean gone. Then I heard a miawing in one of the lockers, and there was Mullens, all in, with enough waste stuffed in his mouth to choke an elephant. I yanked him out and turned him loose and asked him what was the answer. He said he was reading the paper about ten last night and somebody hammered on the door. Mullens opened it, and before he could sniff the air he got that wallop on the nose. Next he knew a couple of boys were sitting on him and stuffing waste in his mouth. They stuffed him in the locker-room and shut the door, and then in a couple of hours he heard them run the machine out, start the motor, and breeze off.... And that’s all. Just clean vanished, going straight up, as near as I can find out. Nobody seems to have seen them or heard them. Not a darn trace.... Now wouldn’t that get you?”
“Is this real stuff, Matthews? You aren’t planting any sort of joke?”