"You mean you have, Mr. Spaulding. It was good luck for me to be drawing down my weekly cheques, bad luck to you not to have a man who could earn them." His desperate honesty touched Spaulding a trifle; at the risk of not seeming a business man to himself he inclined dubiously to relent, to give Duncan another chance. The fellow was likeable enough, his employer considered; he had good humour and even in dejection, distinction; whatever he was not, he was a man of birth and breeding. His face might be rusty with a day-old stubble, as it was; his shirt-cuffs frayed, his shoes down at the heel, his baggy clothing weirdly ready-made, as they were: there remained his air. You'd think he might amount to something, to somewhat more than a mere something, given half a chance in the right direction. Then what?... Spaulding sought from Duncan elucidation of this riddle. "Duncan," he said, "what's the trouble?" "I thought you knew that; I thought that was why you called me in with my route half-covered." "You mean--?" "I mean I can't sell your line." "Why?" "God only knows. I want to, badly enough. It's just general incompetence, I presume." "What makes you think that?" Duncan smiled bitterly. "Experience," he said. "You've tried--what else?" "A little of everything--all the jobs open to a man with a knowledge of Latin and Greek and the higher mathematics: shipping clerk, time-keeper, cashier--all of 'em." "And yet Kellogg believes in you." Duncan nodded dolefully. "Harry's a good friend. We roomed together at college. That's why he stands for me." "He says you only need the right opening--." "And nobody knows where that is, except my unfortunate employers: it's the back door going out, for mine every time.... Oh, Harry's been a prince to me. He's found me four or five jobs with friends of his--like yourself. But I don't seem to last. You see I was brought up to be ornamental and irregular rather than useful; to blow about in motor cars and keep a valet busy sixteen hours a day--and all that sort of thing. My father's failure--you know about that?" Spaulding nodded. Duncan went on gloomily, talking a great deal more freely than he would at any other time--suffering, in fact, from that species of auto hypnosis induced by the sound of his own voice recounting his misfortunes, which seems especially to affect a man down on his luck.