“Pete,” I say, after Grandis leaves, “I smell something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a faint odor.”
Pete puckers his lips and says, “Ed, you may be right, but we’re going to sell him sooner or later, one way or another.”
“What makes you think so?” I ask dubiously.
Pete’s answer is simple. “He listens, doesn’t he?”
Next day the big news breaks. Sandyville gets the Los Angeles papers about ten o’clock, and it’s spread all over the front page. The Scarborough Engineering & Experimental Company has taken over a big contract for the manufacture of a new explosive. The company has been searching for some isolated place where it can manufacture the explosive and carry out tests. The company was in a quandary until an alert speculator sold it the idea of moving into a ghost town — a mining community out in the desert where the vein had pinched out. Here was a city made to order, with residences for the workmen, a big mill which could be converted into a factory for the explosives, picture show, pool hall, stores, and millions of desert acres where the company could conduct its experiments.
The newspaper doesn’t mention the name of the town or the name of the shrewd speculator. It doesn’t need to.
Pete looks across at me and says, “Crazy like a fox, eh?”
We hear, later on, that Scarborough is in town. It doesn’t take long to locate him. Pete barges up with all the Quint personality flowing along behind his outstretched hand.
“Mr. Scarborough, I’m Pete Quint, of the Puckley Air-Conditioner Company. We’re here to make your workingmen comfortable and—”
Scarborough beats him to it. “I wired Mr. Grandis yesterday,” he says, “telling him we would have labor trouble unless we air-conditioned the factory. I don’t suppose these houses” — indicating the miners’ unpainted shacks with galvanized-iron roofs — “can be conditioned. But, if possible, I want to do something. See Grandis, Tell him I sent you.”
“We’ve already seen him,” Pete says.
Scarborough smiles. “That’s good. I wired him about air conditioning yesterday.”
Pete shakes hands again and starts with me toward the telegraph office. On the way he says, “That’s what accounted for Grandis’ change in attitude. The wire was delivered to him after he left the poolroom.”
“Elementary, my dear Watson, but why didn’t he give us the order?”
Pete laughs. “The order is in the bag.”
He sends Bernice Johnson a wire:
DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE MINE. WE ARE ON THE JOB. BIG SHOTS SOLD ON OUR STUFF. FINE ORDER ASSURED.
We start hack to the hotel. Everybody on the main street is cussing Grandis. He pulled out around midnight for Los Angeles. Probably he knew the story was going to break. There’s just one question you hear everywhere on the street: “Signed up with Grandis yet?” The answer always starts with a nod of the head. After that, the boys really warm up.
When we get back to the hotel, the proprietor says, “You’ll have to vacate your rooms tonight. Mr. Scarborough’s party have reserved every room.”
He’s so smug about it I can’t resist asking, “Signed up with Grandis yet?”
He turns away, looking sick. We go to our room and start packing. Pete is jubilant. “Good old Lady Luck sure gave us the breaks on that air conditioning. I tell you, Ed, she’s with us a hundred per cent. That’s the way with the dame. Sometimes when a fellow gets to taking too much for granted, she’ll go A. W. O. L. for a while. It’s just a test. She’s always watching, and if you take it on the chin, stay in there and pitch, she comes back with a smile and says, ‘Why, hello! There you are! I lost you in the crowd and have been looking for you ever since.’ ”
And Pete picks up one of the hotel’s straight-hacked chairs, dusts it off, and says, “Here you are. Lady Luck. Since you’re going to be with us, you may as well be comfortable. Take this seat by the window. You’ll find it’s cooler here.”
That’s Pete. When things are going good, he’s kidding the Dame along, putting out chairs for Lady Luck to sit in, and talking to her as though she’s there in the room.
“We haven’t got the order yet,” I tell him.
Pete says, “You don’t think he listened to all that engineering data on changes in temperature and humidity per cubic foot per minute just because he liked the sound of my voice, do you?”
“No,” I admit. “He was interested, but... well, there’s something queer about that fish, Pete.”
“Forget it,” he tells me, and makes a bow to the chair he’s placed for Lady Luck. “You’ll have to excuse my pessimistic partner. Some mornings he has a grouch, but—”
There’s a knock on the door. It’s the manager. “Telegram,” he says.
Pete takes it, walks over to the chair by the window. “I’ll open it where you can look at it,” he says to Lady Luck. “Thus telegram is from Mr. Grandis ordering Puckley air-conditioning units.”
“Perhaps,” I interrupt, “Lady Luck is as curious about what’s actually in that telegram as I am.”
Pete says, “It’s a cinch. I can read it by mental telepathy.” He closes his eyes and presses the envelope against his forehead. “Mr. Grandis,” he says, “wants to buy—”
I jerk the envelope out of his hand and tear it open.
The message is from Bernice Johnson, and reads:
TELEGRAM RECEIVED. HOW VERY NICE TO KNOW YOU ARE ON JOB. GRANDIS JUST SIGNED DISTRIBUTOR’S CONTRACT WITH REFRIGERHEAT. AM ENTITLED FIFTY WORDS THIS MESSAGE. YOU FILL IN BALANCE.
I pick up the telephone. “If our bill’s ready,” I tell the manager, “we’ll check out now. We won’t be back.”
Back in Los Angeles, we take Bernice to dinner. She’s a little soldier, but it’s harder for her than for us. She tries to keep cheerful, but she’s blue.
On our way back to her apartment, we’re coming to a railroad crossing when the red signal starts wigwagging.
Pete says, “The way Lady Luck’s giving us the go-by, this’ll be a freight train a mile long.”
He’s right. It’s a procession of fruit express cars, crawling past the crossing.
“Those cars certainly do rattle,” Bernice says. “Some of them look awfully old. What do they do when they finally—”
Pete says, “They have a car graveyard. They—” He stops talking as my hand digs into his shoulder.
“Remember Lingar,” I say.
Pete’s eyes are blinking rapidly, the way they do when he’s thinking fast. “We’ll need Bernice to help make up our first sample. Let’s make it a three-way partnership. Shall we, Ed?”
I nod.
Pete grabs her hand and mine. “You’ll have to get Lingar, Ed,” he says, talking five hundred words a minute, “and let him circulate with the incoming workmen. Bernice and I will keep on the job at this end — and every second’s going to count.”
Bernice smiles. “I guess it’s going to be swell, but I’d like to know what it is.”
Lingar surveys me with a tired air of detached indifference. “You mean I get money for doin’ nothin’ except lyin’?”
“That’s right. Not too big lies. Don’t put it on so thick they don’t sound plausible.”
He says, “You come and offer me ten bucks a day for tellin’ the same sort of lies I’ve been tellin’ for nothin’. When I work, I never get more than three bucks a day, and that’s workin’ in a mine with pick and shovel. Shucks, partner, you’re the one that’s puttin’ it on so thick it don’t sound plausible.”
I drive Lingar down to Sandyville and turn him loose. Workers are starting to arrive, hanging around the pool hall, looking the city over.