struction work in the devastated regions. Chartres had the job of building anew scores of villages—dwellings, municipal buildings, factories—and he intended buying in America, provided the supply could be found at the right price. Sanford Drake had gotten wind of the coming of the Frenchman and his mission from his Paris agents almost as soon as Chartres decided to come. The Frenchman's trip was to be strictly a confidential affair and the elder Drake had gone to the precaution of summoning Dudley out to his Greenwich home for a week-end to discuss the matter with him.
For Sanford Drake was beginning to look with hopeful approval at the manner in which his nephew was settling down to business and showing some of the acumen that had carried him, Sanford Drake, to his present enviable position in the Street. Drake and Porter were extremely anxious to do business with Chartres. J. P. Morgan and other banking houses had made millions buying steel and other supplies for the Allies during the war. There was no reason why Drake and Porter should not now reap their share of the business of repairing the damage which Morgan-bought shells had wrought in France. Drake and Porter had several large steel and lumber companies for which they transacted foreign business regularly. Indeed Sanford Drake was
