Where's Cowdin anyhow? Who are you?"

"Cowdin's sick. I'm Add.i.c.ks," said Croly.

His voice trembled, and his hands went up to play with his necktie. They came in contact with the point of his new chin, and fresh courage came back to him. He plunged his hands into his coat pockets, pushed the chin forward.

He felt the eyes under the bushy brows surveying his chin.

"Cowdin sick, eh?" inquired Cephas Langdon acidly. "Seems to me he's always sick when I want to find out what in blue thunder ails his department." He held up a report. "I installed a purchasing system in 1913," he said, slapping the report angrily, "and look here how it has been foozled." He slammed the report down on the table. "What I want to know, young man," he exploded, "is why material in the Syracuse factories cost 29 per cent more for the past three months than for the same period last year. Why? Why? Why?"

He glared at Croly Add.i.c.ks as if he held him personally responsible.

Croly did not drop his eyes before the glare; instead he stuck his chin out another notch. His jaw muscles knotted. His breathing was difficult.

The chance he'd been working for, praying for, had come.

"Your purchasing system is all wrong, Mr. Langdon," he said, in a voice so loud that it made them all jump.

For a second it seemed as if Cephas Langdon would uncoil and leap at the presumptuous underling with the big chin. But he didn't. Instead, with a smile in which there was a lot of irony, and some interest, he asked, "Oh, indeed? Perhaps, young man, you'll be so good as to tell me what's wrong with it? You appear to think you know a thing or two."

Croly told him. Eleven years of work and study were behind what he said, and he emphasized each point with a thrust of his jaw that would have carried conviction even had his a.n.a.lysis of the system been less logical and concise than it was. Old Cephas Langdon leaning on the directors'

table turned up his ear trumpet so that he wouldn't miss a word.

"Well? Well? And what would you suggest instead of the old way?" he interjected frequently.

Croly had the answer ready every time. Darkness and dinnertime had come before Croly had finished.

"Flagstead," said Old Cephas Langdon, turning to the president, "haven't I always told you that what we needed in the purchasing department was a man with a chin on him? Just drop a note to Cowdin to-morrow, will you, and tell him he needn't come back?"

He turned toward Croly and twisted his leathery old face into what pa.s.sed for a smile.

"Young man," he said, "don't let anything happen to that jaw of yours.

One of these bright days it's going to be worth twenty-five thousand dollars a year to you."

That night a young man with a prodigious jaw sat very near a young woman named Emily Mackie, who from time to time looked from his face to the ring finger of her left hand.

"Oh, Croly dear," she said softly, "how did you do it?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Guess I just tried to live up to my jaw."

THE END