I considered this one carefully. "Do you let me pick the public relations firm that handles that end of the campaign, Mr. Shaughnessy?" He grinned artlessly. "I should say not!" he chuckled. "How do you think we boys on the Committee make a living? No, we pick the firm that does the job and that's all you need worry about. We own 'em. So you see you're protected right across the board. Any time we sell an Ambassadorship, we deliver." "Doesn't the State Department have something to say about it?" Shaughnessy told me exactly what the State Department could do about it, so I told him to let me have a few days to think it over. After all, three hundred thousand dollars was quite a lot of money to pay for a diplomatic post. It wasn't as though I could make it pay off in Scotch whiskey or mining shares as in the past. "That's what you think," the agent of the Democratic National Committee rapped out. "Listen, Mr. Tompkins, if you buy that job take me along as your private secretary and I'll show you how to make it pay like a bank and no ifs. What shall I tell the gang?" "Tell them I'm definitely interested," I replied truthfully, "but I'd like a couple of weeks to think it over." My next visitor was General Forbes-Dutton of the Army Service Forces. "Remember me, Winnie?" "Why sure!" I replied with great cordiality. "If it isn't--" "That's right," the General interrupted. "Well, boy, after Pearl Harbor I got me--I was asked to go to Washington to help out, so the bank said it was my duty, that they'd hold my job for me, and I've been there ever since. I'm on Westervelt's staff, in charge of financial procurement policies. Neat, eh?" "So you're still working for the bank?" "Not _for_ them, Winnie. _With_ them. We're both working for the government. Financing war-contracts, you know. Now Westervelt's heard good things about you, Winnie. He was much impressed by the way you turned down that gang of chiselers who tried to horn in on the quinine deal. They're all out. He's got a big job in mind for you. How'd you like to be a Brigadier-General?" "It's a little late for that," I told him. "The war's almost over." He laughed very heartily. "It's a honey of a job, Winnie. Here's what gives. This war's almost over, as you say. Then the Army will have the job of selling off the stuff it doesn't need and boy! it has everything. We've just about cornered everything there is and the whole world's going to be crying for the stuff. We want a good trader in charge, who knows how to play ball with the boys, realistic that is. No star-gazer, eh? And that's where you come in. There's millions in it. Hell! there's billions. We got to go slow in selling it or we'd bust the market, wreck values and stall reconversion, so we had us a brain-storm when we heard how you cleaned up in the Funeral Market. How about it? Want to play ball and get next to the biggest break you ever heard of?" I looked Forbes-Dutton squarely in the eye.