Cheerfully Al greeted the rigger for whom he worked.
“Barney—Mr. Horton—” he corrected his own familiar allusion to the manager of the aircraft plant, “—says please hurry the work on this sport biplane. The man who’s buying it is in a big hurry. He wants to get into some race with it.”
“Oh, sure!” the rigger grumbled a little. “They’re all in a hurry. But I don’t rush my part of it for anybody. There’s been enough complaint about this plant, already, without me doing anything to cut down the performance of a crate by skimping my share of the high standards Mr. Tredway always kept up.”
“I know,” agreed Al, “but he meant to do all you can, I guess.”
“Yes,” the rigger was in a complaining mood, “that’s all very well. But did he say why they’re giving us cheaper stuff to work with, since the real boss—went West, maybe!—did they tell you why that is, that we’re getting cheaper stuff!”
“No,” Al admitted, “but I do know that Mr. Parsons and Bar—and Mr. Horton were talking about some complaint from the wing assembling room, about poor fabric. They almost quarreled. Barney told Mr. Parsons it had to stop, he was going to uphold Mr. Tredway’s ideas, and Mr. Parsons said so was he.”
“Well, somebody’s ordering cheap stuff. Look here!”
He picked up a turnbuckle, a metal object in which the threads of each wire end were so threaded in that when the ends of wires were screwed in, the turning of the central, revolving part either drew the two sections of wire close, making it taut, or allowed them to recede a little from one another, for more looseness—by which the flying and landing wires, and other parts of the guying rig were adjusted.
The turnbuckle looked all right to Al and he said so.
“Shows how much you know,” scoffed the rigger, Sandy. “Look here—heft this—and then this one!”