The traveler told a depressing tale. Jebusa Jones had got in everywhere and was underselling the Cure. A new German skin remedy had insidiously crept on to the market. Wholesale houses wanted impossible discounts, and retail chemists could not be inveigled into placing any but the most insignificant orders. He gave dismaying details, terribly anxious all the while lest his chief should attribute to his incompetence the growing unpopularity of the Cure. But to his amazement Sypher listened smilingly to his story of disaster, and ordered a bottle of champagne.
"All that is nothing!" he cried. "A flea bite in the ocean. It will right itself as the public realize how they are being taken in by these American and German impostors. The Cure can't fail. And let me tell you, Dennymede, my son, the Cure is going to flourish as it has never flourished before. I've got a scheme that will take your breath away."
The glow of inspiration in Sypher's blue eyes and the triumph written on his resolute face brought the features of the worried traveler for the first time into an expression of normal satisfaction with the world.
"I will stagger you to your commercial depths, my boy," Sypher continued. "Have a drink first before I tell you."
He raised his champagne glass. "To Sypher's Cure!" They drank the toast solemnly.
And then Sypher unfolded to his awe-stricken subordinate the scheme for deblistering the heels of the armies of the world. Dennymede, fired by his enthusiasm, again lifted his brimming glass.
"By God, sir, you are a conqueror, an Alexander, a Hannibal, a Napoleon! There's a colossal fortune in it."
"And it will give me enough money," said Sypher, "to advertise Jebusa Jones and the others off the face of the earth."
"You needn't worry about them, sir, when you've got the army contracts," said the traveler.
He could not follow the spirituality underlying his chief's remark. Sypher laid down the peach he was peeling and looked pityingly at Dennymede as at one of little faith, one born to the day of small things.