"Well?" asked Chisholm, hard and cross, as if annoyed at the intrusion. "I'm quitting," said Firrel. "That's all." "Suit yourself," said Chisholm, indifferently. "I never begged a man to work for me and I can't see myself starting now. Check out with Miss Delmar. Give her your kit and turn over the list of prospects you have been working on--not that I think they are any good. It's the rule, you know." "You can go to hell," said Mr. Firrel, very quietly. Maizie noticed that his knuckles were white and his hands tense. "I called in to see Mr. Fentress this afternoon. He told me to. That was a week ago. He said that they had to await the authorization of their Board of Directors before signing an order. I found out what had happened." "So what?" roared Chisholm savagely. "Do you think we could keep open if we ran on a sometime, if and when basis? Alibis are all you ever have ... at the end of the quarter ... when they take the inventory ... when Mr. Goofus gets back from the West Coast. We want business _now_. That's why I sent Hardy when they called up this morning and wanted to know why our man hadn't been around. _He_ doesn't stall and make alibis for himself. He gets 'em on the dotted line. I couldn't let you muff a big order like this one." Chisholm waved the order under his nose, then laid it face down so the amount on the check would not show. "Of course," the sales manager went on, in that I-lean-over-backward-being-a-good-fellow manner he assumed at times, "if you really feel that you have anything coming to you for what preliminary work you did, I'm sure I can make Hardy see it that way. He'll cut you in. That's a promise. Would a twenty, say, help out?" He pulled out his wallet and opened it. Maizie took one glance at the smoldering hatred and contempt in the weary eyes of the man before the desk and then hastily dropped her own to the notebook on her knee. If only someone would sock the porcine jowl of her detested employer! "You heard me," said Firrel with a cold distinctness that cut. "You can go to hell." He turned abruptly and walked out. A moment later the outer door slammed. "Never mind trying to piece out his torn prospect cards, Maizie," said POHAC's eminently successful sales manager. "We have a file of his daily reports. Hardy can work just as well from those." "Yes, sir," said Maizie. Her rent was over-due, and the doctor had said-- She swept out of the office and down the hall to the washroom. Her nails were biting into her palms and her eyes were brimming. "Oh, the louse," she moaned over and over again, "the louse, the dirty, dirty louse! If I were only a man--" Then those lines of Burns came to mind again: "O, wad some power the giftie gie us--" "That would do," she cried fervently. "Hang himself! If he only saw himself as I see him, he'd be lucky if he _could_ hang himself."