u want to hear about my plans now?"

"Of course I do. That's what I came for. I don't see why you didn't tell
me hours ago. You're as slow in action as a Chinese play. Out with it."

Fenger got up and began to pace the floor, not excitedly, but with an
air of repression. He looked very powerful and compelling, there in the
low-ceilinged, luxurious room. "I'll make it brief. We met yesterday in
Haynes's office. Of course we had discussed the thing before. You know
that. Haynes knew that I'd never run the plant under the new conditions.
Why, it would kill every efficiency rule I've ever made. Here I had
trimmed that enormous plant down to fighting weight. There wasn't a
useless inch or ounce about the whole enormous billionaire bulk of it.
And then to have Haynes come along, with his burdensome notions, and
his socialistic slop. They'd cripple any business, no matter how great
a start it had. I told him all that. We didn't waste much time on
argument, though. We knew we'd never get together. In half an hour we
were talking terms. You know my contract and the amount of stock I hold.
Well, we threshed that out, and Haynes is settling for two million and a
half."

He came to a stop before Fanny's chair.

"Two million and a half what?" asked Fanny, feebly.

"Dollars." He smiled rather grimly. "In a check."

"One--check?" "One check."

Fanny digested that in her orderly mind. "I thought I was used to
thinking in millions. But this--I'd like to touch the check, just once."

"You shall." He drew up a chair near her. "Now get this, Fanny. There's
nothing that you and I can't do with two millions and a half. Nothing.
We know this mail order game as no two people in the world know it. And
it's in its infancy. I know the technical side of it. You know the
human side of it. I tell you that in five years' time you and I can be
a national power. Not merely the heads of a prosperous mail order
business, but figures in finance. See what's happened to Haynes-Cooper
in the last five years! Why, it's incredible. It's grotesque. And it's
nothing to what you and I can do, working together. You know people,
somehow. You've a genius for sensing their wants, or feelings, or
emotions--I don't know just what it is. And I know facts. And we have
two million and a half--I can make it nearly three millions--to start
with. Haynes, fifteen years ago, had a couple of hundred thousand. In
five years we can make the Haynes-Cooper organization look