"But you quote me no figures or assurances that you can deliver," the Frenchman had snapped at him. "Details—I must have definite details. Show me where the material is coming from. Guarantee me shipping dates. You are putting the cart before the horse, young man. Take a month to get estimates and production figures from the mills, then come to me again."
So Dudley abandoned practically all his other duties to satisfy the demand of this exacting Frenchman, while Chartres went on to Pittsburgh and Chicago to interview other representatives of American firms anxious to do business with him. Dudley himself made frequent trips to Pittsburgh and Youngstown for steel estimates, to New England and Southern lumber mills. He brought his figures back and worked them out nights at the office and home until he was tearing down ruined French villages and building them up again in his sleep. His uncle kept a wary eye upon him but he did not offer a suggestion one way or the other. Finally Chartres went out to California to be gone a month. There followed four weeks of feverish anxiety on Dudley's part during which he wrote or wired the Frenchman two or three times a week and received not a sign or a word from him.
A week previous Dudley had learned that
