AMERICAN AEROPLANE COMPANY
Factory: Newark, New Jersey
Offices: New York, London, Paris, Chicago
Mr. Robert T. Atkinson, President
Capital Stock $1,000,000
Tested Aeroplanes Ready for Delivery
“This Mr. Atkinson?” began the westerner when he had been ushered into that gentleman’s private office.
“I am,” responded the aeroplane company official. “Pretty hot?”
“Hot enough,” smiled back the visitor; “but I don’t mind the heat when I can find a little shade occasionally and a drink of water. Out my way we’re a little shy on shade and water. I’m from Utah. And that ain’t the worst—I’m from southern Utah.”
President Atkinson motioned to a chair next the open window.
“Never been there,” he replied in much the same tone he might have said he had never visited the north pole.
“Few people have,” added the westerner. “Don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”
Before he could find one of his own cigars, the aeroplane manager had thrust at him a box of perfectos. Mr. Atkinson at once saw in the stranger a man of affairs, who had not come all the way out to the aeroplane factory to gossip. He judged correctly.
“I’ve got a card somewhere,” began the westerner briskly, as he closed a pair of white, steel-trap-like teeth on the cigar, “but it don’t say nothin’ but that my name’s Cook—R. C. Cook. I’m from Bluff, Utah.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Cook,” politely remarked the easterner, wondering at the same time what possible business Mr. Cook, of Bluff, Utah, could have with the American Aeroplane Company.