“It was, but—”
The magnate held up his hand for silence. “There was also that bag of diamonds you rescued from the head of the bolsheviki band. Where’d your share of all that disappear to?”
“I never had any share,” Johnny answered. “In that Siberian gold mine affair I was pledged to pay over the profits to a relief committee working with the refugees in Vladivostok. In the case of the bag of diamonds, it belonged to a defenseless Japanese woman and her people. I returned it to its rightful owner.”
The magnate sat down. He was smiling. “That’s the sort of fellow I thought you were—a son of your father. Know what broke your father?”
“Not—not altogether.”
“He was too honest, too good to his employes. Sold them stock when things were booming because he thought it would be a good thing for them. Then, when the slump came and the stock went down, down, down, he bought it back at the price they had paid. I think it was a mistake. He thought it a point of honor. He paid them the last cent and it broke him flat.”
The capitalist sat staring into space. When he spoke again his voice was husky.
“Such men as that are rare. You’re like your father. That’s why I took you into our shop. I didn’t need you in the salvage department. I do need you now for a far more important mission.” He rose and closed the door. “I need you for a secret mission, one about which you must not breathe a word to any living being save myself.”
A silence fell over the room; a tense, almost vibrant silence.
“Johnny,” he put his hand on the boy’s arm, “we’ve a great discovery within the walls of our factory, a discovery to which the formula, for the time being, is lost. It is a new type of steel. It has the hardness and the flexibility of the Damascus sword blade and, like that wonderful weapon, its owner cannot tell how it was made.”