“Dashed awkward,” said Archie, politely. He sat up suddenly. “I say! By Jove! I know what you want, old friend! Just thought of it!”
“That busy brain is never still,” explained Lucille.
“Saw it in the paper this morning. An advertisement of a book, don’t you know.”
“I’ve no time for reading.”
“You’ve time for reading this one, laddie, for you can’t afford to miss it. It’s a what-d’you-call-it book. What I mean to say is, if you read it and take its tips to heart, it guarantees to make you a convincing talker. The advertisement says so. The advertisement’s all about a chappie whose name I forget, whom everybody loved because he talked so well. And, mark you, before he got hold of this book—The Personality That Wins was the name of it, if I remember rightly—he was known to all the lads in the office as Silent Samuel or something. Or it may have been Tongue-Tied Thomas. Well, one day he happened by good luck to blow in the necessary for the good old P. that W.’s, and now, whenever they want someone to go and talk Rockefeller or someone into lending them a million or so, they send for Samuel. Only now they call him Sammy the Spell-Binder and fawn upon him pretty copiously and all that. How about it, old son? How do we go?”
“What perfect nonsense,” said Lucille.
“I don’t know,” said Bill, plainly impressed. “There might be something in it.”
“Absolutely!” said Archie. “I remember it said, ‘Talk convincingly, and no man will ever treat you with cold, unresponsive indifference.’ Well, cold, unresponsive indifference is just what you don’t want the pater to treat you with, isn’t it, or is it, or isn’t it, what? I mean, what?”
“It sounds all right,” said Bill.
“It is all right,” said Archie. “It’s a scheme! I’ll go farther. It’s an egg!”