that dodge on Pickerbaugh for three years. I'm glad to have seen you. And I think I really may put in some more bowls—just before your next inspection. Good-by!"
After the Klopchuk affair, Martin and Leora encountered Clay Tredgold and that gorgeous slim woman, his wife, in front of a motion-picture theater.
"Give you a lift, Doctor?" cried Tredgold.
On the way he suggested, "I don't know whether you're dry, like Pickerbaugh, but if you'd like I'll run you out to the house and present you with the noblest cocktail conceived since Evangeline County went dry. Does it sound reasonable?"
"I haven't heard anything so reasonable for years," said Martin
The Tredgold house was on the highest knoll (fully twenty feet above the general level of the plain) in Ashford Grove, which is the Back Bay of Nautilus. It was a Colonial structure, with a sun-parlor, a white-paneled hall, and a blue and silver drawing-room. Martin tried to look casual as they were wafted in on Mrs. Tredgold's chatter, but it was the handsomest house he had ever entered.
While Leora sat on the edge of her chair in the manner of one likely to be sent home, and Mrs. Tredgold sat forward like a hostess, Tredgold flourished the cocktail-shaker and performed courtesies:
"How long you been here now, Doctor?"
"Almost a year."
"Try that. Look here, it strikes me you're kind of different from Salvation Pickerbaugh."
Martin felt that he ought to praise his chief but, to Leora's gratified amazement, he sprang up and ranted in something like Pickerbaugh's best manner:
"Gentlemen of the Steel Windmill Industries, than which there is no other that has so largely contributed to the prosperity of our commonwealth, while I realize that you are getting away with every infraction of the health laws that the inspector doesn't catch you at, yet I desire to pay a tribute to your high respect for sanitation, patriotism, and cocktails, and if I only had an assistant more earnest than young Arrowsmith, I should, with your permission, become President of the United States."
Tredgold clapped. Mrs. Tredgold asserted, "If that isn't
