"Sayers knows I belong to this club," said Martin, returning to his seat; "so will think nothing of my letter being written on club, rather than business stationery. Besides I shall confirm these letters along with other matters, when I return to the office. Now here is a letter to old Tom Sayers, and another to Mr. Holmes, his general superintendent. Letters of introduction—both—as you can see. I think they will suffice to put you in right, and then it's up to you to formulate a general plan for a selling organization that will suit Sayers. If you can't show him something to catch his approval, you'll have wasted your time. If you can, it's almost certain that you'll be given a chance to show what you can do. But—mind you!—he's been probing around on this matter for some time, and has probably had all sorts of schemes suggested and proposed, and you've got to show something that is better than anyone else has put forward. In that way it's sort of competitive. And—see here!—if I were you I'd not wait to grow a mustache and get my hair dyed and all that rot; but waste no time at all in getting out there lest someone beats you to the place."
"Good!" said Jimmy, promptly. "You just wire them that I'm coming. I remember the timetables. You tell them to send a car to meet me at a train that arrives in Princetown at ten o'clock to-morrow morning! I'm going to start west on the train that leaves the Pennsylvania station in just thirty-five minutes from now."
"Oh, that means an all-night ride and a breakneck connection, doesn't it? There's no such rush as all that," expostulated Martin.
"There's no such thing as too quick action when looking for a job," declared Jimmy with all his accustomed energy. "Good-by, and thank you—ever so much. I'm off to try to make good! Good-by!"
Martin looked at him approvingly as if this was the sort of hustling he liked, and accompanied him out to the street. Jimmy bolted into the traffic, dodged under horses' noses, disregarded the shouts of drivers and traffic policemen, mounted a slowly moving taxi, shouted instructions to the driver from the running board, and the last that Martin saw of him was a hand waved through an open window.
"Well," soliloquized Martin after this breathless chase, "if he moves that fast when at work it would take a cyclone to catch him. It strikes me that he's going to land that job, all right!"
CHAPTER XII
The train that ran up the branch line to Princetown was comfortably filled when the man wearing blue glasses and with his coat collar pulled up around his ears as if they were cold boarded it and found a vacant seat in the smoker, into which he settled with a sigh of relief. He had passed through a distressing hour when the main line train was delayed, fearing every moment that he would miss his connection to Princetown and thus make an unpropitious start in the estimation of Sayers. And a very different traveler was this from the jovial Mr. Gollop who customarily sought information on all points pertaining to the country through which he passed, for now he was like the Irish section boss who sternly warned his garrulous men with, "All we want is silence; and damned little of that!" He was about to arise and discard his overcoat, when suddenly he subsided with a gasp. Two men had entered the coach and taken the unoccupied seat immediately in front of him and one of them was Judge J. Woodworth-Granger.
Jimmy looked for another place, but none was vacant. The train began to move and the fact that other men came through in quest of a seat, found none and stood up, convinced Jim of the futility of searching other coaches. The car speedily filled with smoke and got hotter. No one seemed to care for ventilation. Jim's overcoat gave him the pleasant feeling of sitting in a sweat bath but he dared not doff it. The Judge's voice, loud and slow, floated back to his ears, and his previous discomfort was as nothing when he heard the Judge say, as if in response to some comment of his traveling companion, "No, of course not! Gollop! I'm so sick of hearing that man's name that I could wish it banned. His apologies only made matters worse, because there are idiots in this state who actually took that flagrant outrage as a joke! And you have observed what capital the Democratic press are making of it? They declare now that I'm vindictive because I got the scoundrel discharged! As if a citizen had not the right to protect himself from the villainous impositions of a coarse, low-browed ignoramus who turns everything into a practical jest. And, what is more, if ever that man enters the state jurisdiction I'll bring the law to bear and make an example of him that will forever deter other miscreants from such enterprises. That man Gollop has done me an incredible amount of damage!"