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He was up with the dawn and at his desk again, but by four that afternoon he was too dazed, too exhausted to continue. His eyes were playing him tricks, the room was whirling, his hand was shaking until his fingers staggered drunkenly across the sheets of paper. Ground plans, substructures, superstructures, were jumbled into a frightful tangle. He wanted to yell. Instead he flung the drawings about the room, stamped savagely upon them, then rushed down-stairs and devoured a table d’hote dinner. He washed the meal down with a bottle of red wine, smoked a long cigar, then undressed and went to bed amid the scattered blueprints. He slept like a dead man.

He arose at sun-up, clear-headed, calm. All day he worked like a machine, increasing his speed as the hours flew. He took good care to eat and drink, and, above all, to smoke at regular intervals, but he did not leave his room. By dark he had much of the task behind him; by midnight he began to have hope; toward dawn he saw the end; and when daylight came he collapsed.

He had deciphered the tank and superstructure plans on forty-five sets of blueprints, had formulated a proposition, exclusive of substructure work, basing a price per pound on the American market then ruling, f.o.b. tidewater, New York. He had the proposition in his pocket when he tapped on the ground-glass door of Mr. Peebleby’s office at ten-twenty-nine Thursday morning.

The Director General of the great Robinson-Ray Syndicate was genuinely surprised to learn that the young American had completed a bid in so short a time, then requested him, somewhat absent-mindedly, to leave it on his desk where he could look it over at his leisure.

“Just a moment,” said his caller. “I’m going to sit down and talk to you again. How long have you been using cyanide tanks, Mr. Peebleby?”

“Ever since they were adopted.” Mr. Peebleby was visibly annoyed at this interruption to his morning’s work.

“Well, I can give you a lot of information about them.”

The Director General raised his brows haughtily. “Ah! Suggestions, amendments, improvements, no doubt.”

“Exactly.”

“In all my experience I never sent out a blueprint which some youthful salesman could not improve upon. Generally the younger the salesman the greater the improvement.”

In Mitchell’s own parlance he “beat Mr. Peebleby to the punch.” “If that’s the case, you’ve got a rotten line of engineers,” he frankly announced.

“Indeed! I went over those drawings myself. I flattered myself that they were comprehensive and up-to-date.” Mr. Peebleby was annoyed, nevertheless he was visibly interested and curious.

“Well, they’re not,” the younger man declared, eying him boldly. “For instance, you call for cast-iron columns in your sub-and super-structures, whereas they’re obsolete. We’ve discarded them. What you save in first cost you eat up, twice over, in freight. Not only that, but their strength is a matter of theory, not of fact. Then, too, in your structural-steel sections your factor of safety is wrongly figured. To get the best results your lower tanks are twenty inches too short and your upper ones nine inches too short. For another thing, you’re using a section of beam which is five per cent. heavier than your other dimensions call for.”

The Director General sat back in his chair, a look of extreme alertness replacing his former expression.

“My word! Is there anything else?” He undertook to speak mockingly, but without complete success.

“There is. The layout of your platework is all wrong–out of line with modern practice. You should have interchangeable parts in every tank. The floor of your lower section should be convex, instead of flat, to get the run-off. You see, sir, this is my line of business.”

“Who is your engineer?” inquired the elder man. “I should like to talk to him.”

“You’re talking to him now. I’m him–it–them. I’m the party! I told you I knew the game.”

There was a brief silence, then Mr. Peebleby inquired, “By the way, who helped you figure those prints?”