"There'll be trouble if they try to turn a wheel or bring in scab
labor." He laughed, so that his white teeth showed. "The first thing
they did was to telephone for the police. I suppose this kid with a
whole day's experience in the business will be calling in strike
breakers and strong-arms and gunmen. ...Well, let him bring it down
on himself if he wants to. We're in this thing to win. It means
unionism breaking into this automobile game. This is just the
entering wedge."

"Won't the automobile manufacturers see that, too?" she asked. "Won't
the men have all their power and wealth to fight?"

Dulac shrugged his shoulders. "I guess the automobile world knows who
Dulac is to-night," he said, with gleaming eyes.

Somehow the boast became the man. It was perfectly in character with
his appearance, with his bearing. It did not impress Ruth as a brag;
it seemed a natural and ordinary thing for him to say.

"You've been here just two weeks," she said, a trifle breathlessly;
for he loomed big to her girlish eyes. "You've done all this in two
weeks."

He received the compliment indifferently. Perhaps that was a pose;
perhaps the ego of the man made him impervious even to compliments.
There are men so confident in their powers that a compliment always
falls short of their own estimate of themselves.

"It's a start--but all our work is only a start. It's preliminary,"