possibly something in the airplane line. Sash, door and blind sounded
extremely prosaic and uninteresting to Mr. Torrance. The mail-order
proposition, while possibly more interesting, struck him as being too
trifling and unimportant.

"However," he thought, "it will do no harm to have a talk with these
people, and possibly I might even consider giving one of them a trial."

And so, calling a taxi, he drove out onto the west side where, in a
dingy and squalid neighborhood, the taxi stopped in front of a grimy
unpainted three-story brick building, from which a great deal of noise
and dust were issuing. Jimmy found the office on the second floor, after
ascending a narrow, dark, and dirty stairway. Jimmy's experience of
manufacturing plants was extremely limited, but he needed no experience
as he entered the room to see that he was in a busy office of a busy
plant. Everything about the office was plain and rather dingy, but there
were a great many file clerks and typists and considerable bustling
about.

After stating his business to a young lady who sat behind a switchboard,
upon the front of which was the word "Information," and waiting while
she communicated with an inner office over the telephone, he was
directed in the direction of a glass partition at the opposite end of
the room--a partition in which there were doors at intervals, and upon
each door a name.

He had been told that Mr. Brown would see him, and rapping upon the door
bearing that name he was bid to enter, and a moment later found himself
in the presence of a middle-aged man whose every gesture and movement
was charged with suppressed nerve energy.