And here I'd been boostin' the Rowley proposition to Mr. Robert good and hard, almost gettin' him enthusiastic over it! I was smeared, that's all! My first stab at makin' myself useful in my new swing-chair job has been brushed aside as a beginner's bungle; and there sits Mr. Robert, prob'ly wonderin' if he hadn't made a mistake in takin' me off the gate! I stares at a row of empty pigeonholes for a solid hour after that, not doin' a blamed thing but race my thinkin' gears tryin' to find out where I was at. This dummy act that I'd been let in for might be all right for some; but it didn't suit me. I've got to have action in mine. So, long before quittin' time, I slams the desk cover down and pikes out on Rowley's trail. He might be a dead duck; but I wanted to know how and why. I had his address all right, and it didn't take me long to locate him in a fifth-story loft down on lower Sixth-ave. It's an odd joint too, with a cot bed in one corner, a work bench along the avenue side, a cook-stove in the middle, and a kitchen table where the coffeepot was crowded on each side by a rack of test tubes. Old Rowley himself, with his sleeves rolled up, is sittin' in a rickety arm chair peelin' potatoes. He's grouchy too. "Oh, it's you, is it?" says he. "Well, you might just as well trot right back to the Corrugated Trust and tell 'em that Old Hen Rowley don't give two hoots for their whole outfit." "I take it you didn't get on so well with Mr. Briscoe?" says I. "Briscoe!" he grunts savage. "Who could talk business to a smart Alec like that! He knew it all before I'd begun. You'd think I was trying to sell him a gold brick. All right! We'll see what the Bethlehem people have to say." "What?" says I. "Before you get the final word from us?" "I've had it," says he. "Briscoe is final enough for me." "You're easy satisfied," says I, "or else you're easy beat. I didn't take you for a quitter, either." Say, that got to him. "Quitter, eh!" says he. "See here, Son, how long do you think I've been plugging at this thing? Nine years. And for the last four I've been giving it all my time, day in and day out, and many a night as well. I've been living with it, in this loft here, like a blessed hermit; testing and perfecting, trying out my processes, and fighting the Patent Office sharks between times. Nine years--the best of my life! Call that quitting, do you?" "Well, that is sticking around some," says I. "Think you've got your schemes so they'll work?" "I don't think," says he; "I know." "But what's the good," I goes on, "if you can't make other folks see you've got a good thing?" "I can, though," he says. "Why, any person with even ordinary intelligence can----" "That's me," says I. "My nut is just about a stock pattern size, six and seven-eighths, or maybe seven. Come, try it on me, if it's so simple. Now what about this retort business?"