If every young man could be put in a position where he could do nothing but think for a matter of a couple of months just at that time when he is ready to take up the major business of his life, one may well believe the history of the world would be other and better than it is. Potter Waite was injured early in May. Three months passed before he was able to take the air even in a slowly driven, pillowed limousine. If ever a chance were given a human being to check up on his accounts, take a trial balance, and arrive at definite conclusions with respect to himself, Potter had that chance. Not only had he the opportunity, but a vital consideration had intervened, urging him to wider, deeper, bolder considerations. He thought much about Potter Waite, but the time in which he lived, the world turmoil which surrounded him, the pressure of great events on his own life, compelled him to think about himself with respect to grave, impending affairs and to the requirements of his country, which he had come, in some measure, to know.

This state of affairs developed in him a rare singleness of purpose. From the beginning of time men with rare singleness of purpose have been regarded as monomaniacs, cranks. They have been derided. The world has whispered about them behind its hands and snickered. This was an attitude which Potter was to encounter, first from his father, later from those who had formerly been his cronies.

Fabius Waite became more and more irritated by his son’s absorption in aeronautics, for he was a practical business man, and when he could not see how a profit could be entered in the ledger from a given transaction, he deleted the transaction.

“I’m glad, of course,” he said to Potter, “to see you taking an interest in something—outside the Pontchartrain bar and the chorus of a comic opera—but you’re going over the line with this thing. You’re getting as bad as Old Man Jeffords. I sit in directors’ meeting at the bank with him once a week, and he’ll butt into any sort of a discussion with idiocy about some new postage stamp he’s found in somebody’s attic. I suppose people must have fads and amusements.” He said it as if he did not in the least see why they should have such absurd things. “But they can be carried too far. You’re riding this hobby day and night. Aeroplanes! There’s no money in aeroplanes.”

“I’m not thinking of making money out of them,” said Potter.

“Then why are you monkeying with them? Too much aeroplane, or too much golf, or too much bridge, or too much anything that interferes with a man’s business, is about as bad as too much whisky.”

“But aeroplanes are my business.”

“Fiddlesticks, son! You’ve been sick a long time, and you’ve gotten this notion. Automobiles is your business.”

“I guess we don’t get the same point of view, Dad. You’re interested in one thing and I’m interested in another. Somehow they don’t match up.”

“I should say they didn’t.... I think you and I are better friends than we used to be, son.”

“Yes,” said Potter.

“On the whole, your accident was a good thing for both of us.... I’ve gotten acquainted with you, son, and it’s done me good. You had me going for a while. I thought you were a worthless young cub who would never do anything but squander what I made—and, by Jove! I was going to fix things so you couldn’t! But you’re not. You’ve got the stuff in you to take my place and carry on the business. A few years’ training and you’ll be up to the job. Don’t let any foolishness like this aeronautic stuff side-track you. Why, you’ve got to be a regular darn fanatic about it!”

“I suppose I have, Dad. I guess it needs a fanatic.”

Fabius shook his head with disgust. “I don’t want folks saying my son’s a crank,” he said. “I suppose boys at your age are bound to have enthusiasms, but there’s just one kind of enthusiasm that’s worth a tinker’s dam, and that’s enthusiasm about your business.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, if I disappoint you so much. I expect to come into the business after a while—when the world quiets down. I’ll work there as hard as you want me to, but first I’ve got to do this thing. It’s got to be done. Nobody knows what will happen. You believe in fire insurance, don’t you?”

“Naturally.”

“But you go ahead planning as if there wouldn’t be a fire. You don’t expect a fire.... But you admit the possibility of it?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, try to look at this thing in that way. We don’t know what a year or two years may bring. Germany may be licked or the Allies may be licked, ... or we may be dragged into it. That’s a fire we’ve got to insure against. And I’m going into one line of the insurance business—the aeroplane line. If the fire comes we’ve got to have aeroplanes to put it out. If it doesn’t come, no harm will be done by insuring.... The difference is that I believe it’s coming—and we won’t be ready.”

“All balderdash.”

Potter got up and walked slowly across the room. It was not easy, and his father was making it harder than it ought to be. He thought he understood his position and his reason for assuming it so clearly—that they were so clear no one could fail to agree with him, yet his father utterly failed to comprehend. Potter despaired of making him understand.

“Dad,” he said, “let’s make a bargain. Give me two years. Call it a vacation or call it a course in mechanics or call it whatever you want to. We ought to know where we’re at by that time. At the end of two years I’ll come into the business and do whatever you want me to—but for two years let me go ahead with this thing and don’t interfere with me.... I’ll need some money, too. I’ve got to experiment. The experimenting won’t do any harm. It’ll be with gas-engines. Maybe I’ll turn out something that will be worth money in our business.... just two years—and I’m pretty average young yet.”

His father shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll go you,” he said, with the air of a man compelled against his will. “Two years it is, and then you quit this foolishness and come down to earth.... But it’s dog-gone nonsense.”

One man did not share this common opinion. He was the bearded, ponderous, blinking man of monstrous girth who had brought Potter into the world and fed him pills and potions for his juvenile ailments—Old Doctor Ormond.

“Potter,” said the old gentleman, “you’ve been down for three months. You’ve taken into your system only the things you should have taken into it. You have eaten as God and your stomach intended a man should eat, and drunk as they intended you should drink. You’re going to be well—as well as ever. There won’t be a limp, probably. I can guarantee that there isn’t a drop of alcohol about you. You’re going to start clean. If you’ll take my advice, which probably you won’t, you’ll keep that way. Presbyterians used to say hell was paved with unbaptized infants. I say it’s paved with cocktail-shakers....”

Potter chuckled. “I’ve been thinking about the cocktails,” he said. “I’m afraid I sha’n’t have time for them. And I used to know bartenders by their first names.”

“Do you ever feel a hankering?”

Potter shook his head. “I never did when I had anything else to do.”

“Um!... Have you anything else to do now?”

Potter held up the book on his lap. It was a treatise on carburetion. “Aeroplanes,” he said, shortly.

“Your father said something about that,” said the doctor. “What’s it all about?”

“While I’ve been down and out,” Potter said, slowly, “I’ve discovered that I’ve been a man without a country. I’ve found my country. I’ve thought hard and I believe my country is going to need me.... It can have me. If we get into this war, Doctor, we’re going to need twenty thousand aeroplanes—quick. I’ve a knack that way. By the time this country needs the ’planes I’m going to know more about building them than anybody else this side the water—I’m going to be on the spot—ready.... That’s all there is to it. Dad thinks it’s a fad like stamp-collecting, and that I’m a crank.”

“If it is,” said the fat old practitioner, blinking his eyes, “I wish a hundred millions of us could get bumped on the head and have a similar fad jarred into us. You go to it, son. Stay by it. Don’t let them whisper and ridicule you out of it. Do you know that the greatest automobile manufacturer in the world was once called Crazy Henry by his friends? You don’t hear anybody calling him Crazy Henry now, do you?... And remember this: There’ll always be some to believe in you, and their belief will be worth more to you than the ridicule of all the rest. There’ll be a girl.... And there’ll be a fat old man. Shake, son.” They shook hands gravely. “Now get well—and show ’em.”

The last thought the doctor left with Potter remained. “There’ll always be some to believe in you.... There’ll be a girl.” He wondered if there would be a girl, and if she would believe in him. Naturally there would be a girl sometime; there never had been girls who ranked higher than episodes. He had never seen a girl he wanted as a man should want the girl who is to be his wife. Marriage had been a dim event in the distant future. It was so now. But, he thought, to have such a girl, to give her such a love as he could imagine—and to have her believe in him! That would be something. He pondered it.

Somehow he found himself thinking about Hildegarde von Essen. It was a pleasant exercise. He recalled her as he had seen her that morning when she alighted from her machine at the door of his hangar, radiant, vibrant, boyish—a flame of a girl. That picture had persisted.

They had visited the borderland of death together. That event connected them, would always connect them, by an invisible thread. He would not think of her as he thought of other women, nor she of him. Always the one would be to the other something peculiarly distinct. There was an overpowering intimacy about knocking hand in hand at the door of death.

He wondered how she was, wished he might see her. He had not seen her since that moment when he had crawled to her as she lay so still and graceful, like a lovely boy asleep. That wakened other puzzling memories. The scene was so distinct—the little island, the reaches of the great marsh.... And yet the island and marsh had not existed. They had fallen on the mainland miles from any such island! The ’plane had been found against a tree miles away from it. There had been a man.... Potter was certain he remembered a man, and that the man’s face had been familiar to him, but he could not recall the man’s identity. The whole thing gave him a queer, gasping sensation. It was like thinking on eternity or on limitless space—something inconceivable. He compelled himself to take his mind away from it.

Hildegarde von Essen was away, had been sent away by her enraged father as soon as she was able to travel. First she had gone to an aunt in the Adirondacks, was now with friends on the Maine coast. Potter’s mother had told him this and had told him, too, of the raging call Herman von Essen had made on Fabius Waite, of the arrogant, brutal manner of the man toward the father of a boy whose death was declared inevitable. Fabius Waite had shown von Essen the door almost with violence.

Yes, Potter wanted to see her....

That afternoon a servant brought him a letter. It was from her, the first of her handwriting he had ever seen.

“Dear Potter,” she began, addressing him by his given name, and he did not regard it as forward or provocative. It was merely due to the intimacy of their adventure with death, and natural to him. “I just found out you were able to read letters,” she went on. “You can’t imagine the pains people are at to keep news of you from me. It’s as if I’d tried to elope with you and been caught. You knew father shipped me away. You don’t know how glad I was to know that you are going to be all right again. Somehow I felt to blame.” How abruptly, jerkily she wrote, changing from one subject to another without warning. It was like her, he thought. “I don’t know when I shall be home, but I’m making myself as disagreeable as possible. I don’t think they’ll be able to stand me much longer. Then I’ll come to see you. It was great fun while it lasted. I don’t think I ever enjoyed a morning as much. There are things about it I don’t understand—where we were found, for instance. I thought we fell on an island. Didn’t you? I’ll write again when I can steal time. It’s the least I can do, and we’re pals. Aren’t we? Get well as quickly as you can and we’ll fly again. Is the ’plane fixed?” That was all. It stopped abruptly like that.

She wanted to fly with him again. He chuckled. A little thing like falling out of the sky would not damp her enthusiasm, and fear seemed to have no place in her vocabulary. She was the most utterly daring girl he had ever met, and the most reckless of consequences. He perceived her similarity to himself.

“Mr. La Mothe and Mr. Cantor to see you,” announced a servant.

“Send them up,” Potter directed, fumbling in his memory for the name Cantor, recollecting it was the chap he had met at the Country Club who had letters of introduction to him.

La Mothe and Cantor entered. Potter looked first at Cantor. There was something about the man, something that made his memory itch. He had seen Cantor somewhere, but where? What was there about the man? He noticed that Cantor scrutinized him tensely. It was as if the man were searching for something, something that he was afraid to find.

“Greetings, Potter,” said La Mothe. “You’re looking bang-up for a fellow that was all fitted to a coffin. We were taking up a subscription to send you a floral pillow.... You remember Cantor?”

“Yes,” said Potter, extending his hand. “You’re making quite a stay in Detroit.”

“He’s joined the lodge,” La Mothe remarked. “Shouldn’t be surprised if he squatted. Eh, Cantor?”

“I find Detroit very attractive, especially to a business man,” said Cantor. “I’ve even thought of making it my home.”

“That’s about the best compliment you could pay the city,” said Potter, but in his mind he was saying over and over: “What is it? What is there about him? Where does he fit in?”

“I’ve never had an opportunity to present some letters I have from friends of yours, Mr. Waite. But here they are.”

“From Tom Herkimer and George Striker, eh?” said Potter, glancing over the notes. “They seem to be rather strong for you. I’m not very useful as an acquaintance just now, but as soon as I’m on my feet—”

“As soon as you’re on your feet,” said La Mothe, “he’ll have you chaperoning him through your plant. He’s a regular factory hound. Never saw a man so keen on factories.”

“I’m interested in mill-work and manufacturing efficiency,” said Cantor. “It’s an important part of my business.”

“I’d say it was all of your business,” said La Mothe, with a laugh. “I’ll bet he could draw from memory the plans of half the plants in Detroit.”

Cantor smiled.

“Speaking of plants,” said La Mothe, “things are getting a little thick. I was just talking to Weston, of the Structural Steel. He said they’d put armed guards all around the plant. Found explosives in the coal, and now they’re sorting over every chunk of coal that comes in. They’re making shrapnel-cases, you know.... Kraemer’s friend, the Kaiser, is doing it, I suppose.”

“Dirty business,” Cantor said, easily. “Trouble developed last week in the Delmont Machine Company’s shops. They found somebody had put emery in the bearings.”

“Any war news?” asked Potter.

“Nothing big since Warsaw fell. Looks as if Russia was about done,” La Mothe said.

“The war’s going into its second year,” said Cantor. “Who thought it could last a year?”

“Looks as if we might have a little war of our own one of these days. Mexico’s in need of a cleaning up,” La Mothe said.

“It’s been Germany’s year,” Potter said. “Only for the Marne—”

“It looks as if she couldn’t be beaten,” said Cantor.

“She’s got to be beaten,” Potter replied. “The sort of thing Germany stands for to-day has got to be wiped out—wiped clean off the slate.”

“Hang the war!” La Mothe said, impatiently. “Can’t we talk about anything else? When does the sawbones tell you you can come out and play with the boys, Potter?”

“In a week or two now.”

“We’ll have to pull a party for you. Welcome you back and all that. The crowd’ll be glad to see you around.”

“I’m going to work,” Potter said.

“Whoop!” exclaimed La Mothe. “At what and wherefore?”

“Fred,” Potter said, “I want to talk things over with you and some of the boys. I’m going to need your help—all the fellows who are in the automobile game. I’ve laid around for three months with nothing to do but think, and I’m here to say that the old stuff doesn’t go. We’ve got to take off our coats and get to work.”

“At what?” said La Mothe.

“Aeroplanes,” said Potter.

“I thought you had about all the aeroplane that was coming to you. Why aeroplanes?”

“The country’s going to need them, and Detroit’s got to make the engines. You seemed to be surprised that the war had lasted a year, Mr. Cantor. My idea is that it’s just begun. It’ll spread, and it will spread to us. We’ll be in it.”

“Rats!” said La Mothe; but Potter was aware of Cantor’s close scrutiny, and of an expression on the older man’s face which baffled solution.

“Germany has run wild with the notion of grabbing the world,” Potter said. “If she gets away with Europe we’ll come next.”

“Fat chance. Germany doesn’t want any of our action. Look how she backed down on the submarine stuff.”

“You’ve got the old notion, Fred, that nobody can get at us and that we can lick all creation. If Germany’s hands were free she could land an army on our coast, and before we could start to get ready to fight we’d be licked. We’re like cake in an unlocked cupboard, and Germany’s a hungry boy. We’d be gobbled.”

“Oh, say, Potter—”

“Think it over. The day’ll come when this country will need thousands upon thousands of aeroplanes—all of a sudden. When it comes it’ll be sudden, and we’ll be caught. We won’t have an army, we won’t have equipment—and we won’t have aeroplanes, which will be harder to get than anything else. That’s going to be my business. Getting ready for the aeroplane end of it. And I want you fellows to help.”

“You’ve been laying around too much, Potter. You’ve been sick, that’s what’s the matter with you.”

Potter shrugged his shoulders. “Think about it, anyhow, will you, Fred? Great heavens! you’ve got brains.”

“Much ’bliged,” said Fred. “Cantor, let’s be wiggling on. We’re exciting the invalid. See you again soon, old man,” La Mothe said.

Cantor stood up and extended his hand. “When you’re around again,” he said, “I’m going to bother you. You interest me—about the aeroplanes.... And I want to see your plant. Making munitions, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Potter, “glad to show you around.” He paused, and his eyes darkened. He fixed them on Cantor and said, suddenly, “You weren’t fishing up at the Flats about the time I was hurt, were you—back in the marsh?”

“Flats? No. What are the Flats, Mr. Waite?” Little points of white appeared at the comers of his jaw. Potter noticed them.

“It’s nothing. I guess you got mixed up in a dream of mine.”

“Dreams are queer,” said Cantor, flatly.

“Damn vivid dream, though,” said Potter. “Come again, fellows. My regards to the crowd.”