"That is," I went on, "if fitness, training, experience, capacity, predilection and abundance of capital are factors, you have selected the one man—"
"Yah!" broke in Fred, "I know all about that. Don't try the sarcastic with me, old boy. I know all you can say and a darn sight more. But I told you it's the cut of your mug I want. What good is the best trained two-year old if he's a hammer-head? It's with a man as with a horse. You've got the right look to you—and that's what counts!"
The mockery of my thanks and all further attempts at clumsy satire were utterly ignored by Fred.
"You're comfortably fixed, I know," he said, ruminatively scanning my books, which curiously suggest wealth to every one. "But dash it all, man, you must want more money for something or other—more books, maybe. Everybody wants more something. I know," he ran on, "it isn't every fellah makes up his mind on the dot the way I do. You've got to turn it over in your so-called bean, I suppose. All right. But remember—I don't take no for answer."
"With that trifling limitation, I assume, I have a wide liberty of choice?" I ventured.
"Oh, yes," he grinned. "Outside the fact that you're coming in, you can go as far as you like. Salmon and Byrd!" he exclaimed suddenly. "How's that for a firm name? By gosh!—There's genius in it! May have been that which was driving me to you. I never go wrong. Salmon and Byrd—Gad! It's so good it scares me!"
"Salmon and Byrd," I repeated after him mechanically. "The menu strikes me as incomplete for a viveur like you. Add a little shrimp salad—or at least an artichoke."
He grinned but he would none of my flippancy.
"No, no," he wagged his head. "None of that. Don't spoil a fine thing. It's—what do they call it—sacrilege. A good firm name—it's half the battle. By George! This has been a day's work for me. I didn't know it was going to be so rich. We ought to have a dinner on it at the Knickerbocker—or Claridge's. What d'you say?"
In a flash I saw the vista of Fred's life spread out before me—noise and laughter, ventripotent bouts with costly dishes in expensive places, tinkling glasses—the world of money-making which consists as much in riotous expenditure as in half-jocund half-fanatical getting. It was to this world that Fred was inviting me.