Thinking of it; he tried to silence the qualms.  Tried to reassure himself with Cliff’s very evident sincerity, his easy assurance that all would be well.  Johnny had been canny enough to make the agreement by the week—­surely nothing much could go wrong in that little while, and if he didn’t like the look of things after a week’s try-out, he could quit, and that would be all there would be of it.  It was too good a chance to let slip by without a trial, anyway.  A man would be a fool to do that; and Johnny, whatever he thought of himself, did not consider himself a fool.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WITH HIS HANDS FULL OF MONEY AND HIS EYES SHUT

Under Cliff’s direction, that afternoon Johnny did what a woman would call shopping.  He bought among other things a suit of khaki such as city dwellers wear when they go into the wilds.  Cliff had told him that he must not appear among people in the clothes of a flyer, but must be a duck hunter and none other when they left Los Angeles.  When that would be, Johnny did not know; nor did he know where they were going.  But a duck hunter he faithfully tried to resemble when he let Cliff into his room at five o’clock in the evening, which meant after the lights were on in the quiet hallways of the Alexandria, and the streets were all aglow.  Cliff looked, if not like a hunter, at least picturesque in high, laced boots and olive-drab trousers and coat that had a military cut.

“Fine!  We’ll get under way and eat somewhere along the road, if you don’t mind.  What about that mechanic?  Has he shown up yet?” Cliff’s boredom was gone, along with his swagger stick.

“Naw.  I guess the little runt went on a spree.  I thought he’d be here when I got back, but he wasn’t, and the clerk said nobody had called for me except you.”

“All the better.  You won’t have to bother explaining to him without telling him anything.  If you ever do run across him, give him a temperance talk—­and the boot.  That will be convincing, without your needing to furnish any other reason for letting him out.  By the way,”—­reaching casually into a pocket,—­“here is your first week’s salary.  The boss made it fifteen hundred a week, straight.  And he said to tell you he would add a hundred every week that you deliver the goods.  That is giving a tremendously square deal, in my opinion.  But it’s the boss’s way, to make it worth a man’s while to do his level best.”

Round-eyed, Johnny took the roll of bank notes and flipped the ends with eager fingers.  Golly!  One with five hundred on it—­he had never seen a five-hundred-dollar bill in his life, until this one.  And fifties—­six or seven of them, and four one-hundreds, and the rest in twenties and three or four tens for easy spending.  He had a keen desire to show that roll to Mary V, and ask her whether he could make money flying, or whether she would still advise him to go to work for her dad!  Why, right there in his hand was more money than Sudden thought he was worth in a year, and this was just one week’s salary!  Why, good gosh!  In another week he could pay that note, and start right in getting rich.  Why, in a month he could own a car like Cliff’s.  Why—­