Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/206

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

into his plant. Axles, axles, forever axles! Transmissions, transmissions, forever transmissions; those accursed transmissions which, because of a fatal difference between the old planetary form and the new device of the sliding gears, were declared to be hopelessly out of date. Milton Morris would have had that sliding gear in his model of 1910, but Milton Morris was dead.

The president of Judson-Morris walked back into his office with a quick, alert step. Grim, but without a quaver in his voice, he issued terse orders, knowing well that the edifice of hope must fall and fall quickly to avert a worse disaster. Atone slash of the pen $200 was cut from the price of the Nemo model. Within five minutes the telegraph was ticking this message out to every agency, and before the agent in San Diego had received his, the advertising copy announcing the cut was being flashed out, also by telegraph, to a selected list of newspapers at strategic points throughout the country.

George Judson sat, with sweat upon his brow, in the midst of all this vibrant energy which had suddenly been turned loose in an effort to save what might be saved from the wreck of his plans. He knew that by the stroke of that pen he had cut the profits from his twelve thousand unsold Nemos and that only events could decide whether this cut would be sufficient to move the