"A letter stating that I am your general sales manager."
The steel merchant's mouth fell open.
"Oh, I only want it for this London trip," Mitchell explained. "I won't use it except as a credential. But I've got to go armed, you understand. Mr. Comer, if I don't land that Robinson-Ray contract, I won't come back. I—I couldn't, after this. Maybe I'll drive a 'bus—I hear they have a lot of them in London."
"Suppose, for instance, you should get the job on a profitable basis; the biggest job this concern ever had and one of the biggest ever let anywhere—" Mr. Comer's brow was wrinkled humorously. "What would you expect out of it?"
Mitchell grinned. "Well, if I signed all those contracts as your general sales manager, I'd probably form the habit."
"There's nothing modest about you, is there?" queried the elder man.
"Not a thing. My theory of business is that a man should either be fired or promoted. If I get that job I'll leave it to you to do what's right. I won't ask any questions."
"The whole thing is utterly absurd," Mitchell's employer protested.
"You haven't a chance! But—Wait!" He pressed a button on his desk.
"We'll talk with Mathison."
Louis Mitchell took the night train for Pittsburgh. He was back in three days, and that afternoon Mr. Comer, in the privacy of his own office, dictated a letter of which no carbon copy was preserved. He gave it to the young man with his own hand, and with these words: "You'd better think it over carefully, my boy. It's the most idiotic thing I ever heard of, and there isn't one chance in a million. It won't do you any good to fail, even on a forlorn hope like this."
But Mitchell smiled. "I can't fail—I'm married." Then when the other seemed unimpressed by this method of reasoning, he explained: "I guess you never saw my wife. She says I can do it."