to sweep down the back stairs, take it, and sweep, and don't
forget the corners. And if, while you're sweeping, you notice that
that kind of broom isn't suited to the stairs go in and suggest a
new kind. They'll like it."

Brooms and back stairways had no place in Jock McChesney's mind as
the mahogany and gold elevator shot him up to the fourteenth floor
of the great office building that housed the Berg, Shriner
Company. Down the marble hallway he went and into the reception
room. A cruel test it was, that reception room, with the cruelty
peculiar to the modern in business. With its soft-shaded lamp, its
two-toned rug, its Jacobean chairs, its magazine-laden cathedral
oak table, its pot of bright flowers making a smart touch of color
in the somber richness of the room, it was no place for the
shabby, the down-and-out, the cringing, the rusty, or the
mendicant.

Jock McChesney, from the tips of his twelve-dollar shoes to his
radiant face, took the test and stood it triumphantly. He had
entered with an air in which was mingled the briskness of
assurance with the languor of ease. There were times when Jock
McChesney was every inch the son of his mother.

There advanced toward Jock a large, plump, dignified personage, a
personage courteous, yet reserved, inquiring, yet not offensively
curious--a very Machiavelli of reception-room ushers. Even while
his lips questioned, his eyes appraised clothes, character,
conduct.

"Mr. Hupp, please," said Jock, serene in the perfection of his