Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/27

 like trading-stamps. They go to the men equipped for them—and from this year those men are going to need greater equipment than flashing a gold-headed cane and writing sonnets. You know seven or eight languages, and you've covered Europe for ten or twelve years. You've learned the lay of the land and served your country on some pretty big questions."

The big form leaned forward over the desk and the big voice dropped to a more serious tone. "Kestner, that country needs you now. It needs you as it never quite needed you before. And if you're the American I think you are, you're going to side-step the tulle and organ-music for a few weeks and help this Administration out of a hole!"

A telephone-call interrupted the chief's words, but never once did his eyes leave the other man's face. "Remember, it's not this newspaper war-talk that's worrying us. We're three months ahead of that. And it's not the ship-bombs and the factory-burnings and the labor-plots that are worrying us. We've got plenty of good workers to trail down the rest of that rough-neck stuff. We can handle the Fays and Von Papens and Van Homes and Loudens and Scholzes easily enough, though we can't