“Your automobile is here in Detroit; a little the worse for wear, perhaps, but there is nothing wrong with it that you cannot put right in short order. As for letters, I never received any. I thought I had notified you of my changed address.”
“As a matter of fact, you didn’t.”
“In that case, I apologise most humbly. The truth is, Mr. Sterling, I have been working practically night and day, often under very discouraging circumstances. Until quite recently there was nothing hopeful to tell, and the moment I struck a bit of good luck, I came on here in the car to let you know. You see, it was very difficult to interest capital in a proposition that apparently has no substantiality behind it. If you had possessed a big factory in going order, that I could have shown a man over, the company would have been formed long ago. It therefore surprised me exceedingly, when I passed your shop less than a hour ago, to see standing in this window, while you were explaining the car to him, the man on whom I chiefly depended. You must put it down to my credit that instead of coming in as I had intended, thus embarrassing him, and perhaps spoiling a deal by my interference, I passed on, waited until he came out, and followed him to his hotel.”
Sterling was plainly nonplussed.
“I wish you had come in an hour earlier,” he said. “You couldn’t have interfered with a deal, because your option ran out two months ago.”
“I know that,” said Parkes regretfully, “but I thought the good work on my part would have made up for a legal lapse. Indeed, Mr. Sterling, if you will allow me to say so, I had such supreme faith in your own honesty, that I believed you would not hesitate to renew our arrangement.”
“That’s just the point,” said Sterling. “Had you come in an hour sooner, you would have been in time. As it is, I have granted a new option to the man you saw here with me.”
“What name did he give you? Trevelyan?”
“No; the name he mentioned was Henry Johnson.”