do you not get better men,
Bailey? You wanted to go into this racing business; you said the cars
needed advertising. My brother always attended to that side of the
factory affairs, while he lived, with you as his manager. Now it is
altogether in your hands. Why do you not find a proper driver?"

"Perhaps my hands are not used to holding so much," mused Bailey
unresentfully. "A man might be a good manager, maybe, and weak as a
partner. It isn't the same job. But a first-class driver isn't easy to
get, Mr. Ffrench. There's Delmar killed, and George tied up with
another company, and Dorian retired, all this last season; and we
don't want a foreigner. There's only one man I like--"

"Well, get him. Pay him enough."

Bailey hunched himself together and crossed his legs.

"Yes, sir. He's beaten our cars--and others--every race lately, with
poorer machines, just by sheer pretty driving. He drives fast, yet he
don't knock out his car. But there's a lot after him--there's just one
way we could get him, and get him for keeps."

"And that?"

"He's ambitious; he wants to get into something more solid than
racing. If we offered to make him manager, he'd come and put some new
ideas, maybe, into the factory, and race our cars wherever we chose to
enter them. I know him pretty well."

The proposition was advanced tentatively, with the hesitation of one
venturing in unknown places. But Ethan Ffrench said nothing, his gray
eyes fixed on the hearth.

"He understands motor construction and designing, and he's been with
big foreign firms," Bailey resumed, after waiting. "He'd be useful
around; I can't be everywhere. What he'd do for us in racing would
help a whole lot. It's very well to make a fine standard car, but it
needs advertising to keep people remembering. And men like to say 'my
machine is the same as Lestrange won the Cup race with.' They like
it."

"I don't know," said Mr. Ffrench slowly, "that it is dignified for the
manager of the Mercury factory to be a racing driver."

"The Christine cars are driven by the son of the man who makes them,"
was the response. "Some drive their own."

"The son of the man who makes them," repeated the other. He turned his
face still more to the quivering fire, his always severe expression
hardening strangely and bitterly. "The son--"

The girl rose to draw the crimson curtains before the windows and to
push an electric switch, filling the room with a subdued golden glow
in place of