“And here I am at last! Skaal!”
“Welcome home,” said Merle, lifting her glass with a smile.
He rang the bell. “What do you want?” her eyes asked.
“Champagne,” said Peer to the maid, who appeared and vanished again.
“Are you crazy, Peer?”
He leaned back, flushed and in happy mood, lit a cigarette and told of his greatest triumph out there; it was after he had finished his work at the cataracts, and had started again with a branch of the English firm in Alexandria. One morning in walked the Chief and said: “Now, gentlemen, here’s a chance for a man that has the stuff in him to win his spurs—who’s ready?” And half a score of voices answered “I.” “Well, here’s the King of Abyssinia suddenly finds he must be in the fashion and have a railway—couple of hundred miles of it—what do you say to that?” “Splendid,” we cried in chorus. “Well, but we’ve got to compete with Germans, and Swiss, and Americans—and we’ve got to win.” “Of course”—a louder chorus still. “Now, I’m going to take two men and give them a free hand. They’ll go up there and survey and lay out lines, and work out the whole project thoroughly, both from the technical and the financial side—and a project that’s better and cheaper than the opposition ones. Eight months’ work for a good man, but I must have it done in four. Take along assistants and equipment—all you need—and a thousand pounds premium to the man who puts it through so that we get the job.”
“Peer—were you sent?” Merle half rose from her seat in her excitement.
“I—and one other.”
“Who was that?”
“His name was Ferdinand Holm.”