financially interested in one or two such conferns and was on their Boards of Directors.
Andre Chartres was a tough nut to crack, there was no doubt about that. He was far from the excitable, emotional Frenchman of fiction the picture of whom the war did much to expel from the minds of the rest of the world. Chartres was small, but so was Ferdinand Foch. He was an iron-haired, pointed-bearded native of Brittany with small keen eyes and a disconcerting habit of waving bunkum aside and getting immediately down to business.
Despite the secrecy surrounding Chartres' coming to America, several other firms besides Drake and Porter had gotten word of his impending visit and were making preparations to receive him with offers. Sanford Drake knew that the competition would be stiff, that there would be better prices offered to the Frenchman than Drake and Porter would be able to make, that the chances of his concern's landing the contracts were not too good. But there was something like $25,000,000 involved and it was worth trying for. He would use it as a means of testing his nephew.
So he summoned Dudley to Greenwich on the week-end Carmelita accepted Lucy's invitation to Hedgewood, told him the situation, and put him in charge of Drake and Porter's
