“You did—­pretty near.  Anyway, you made me think of it.  Anti-Pellets, Pro-Pellets:  it’s just one step.  Like as not you’d have seen it yourself if I hadn’t butted in.  Now, go to it, and figure out your series on that.”

With kindly hands he pushed Conover back into his chair, gave him a hearty pat on the shoulder, and passed on.  Hal began to have an inkling of the reasons for his father’s popularity.

“Have we got other medicines besides Certina?” he asked.

“Bless you, yes!  This little laxative pills business I took over from a concern that didn’t have the capital to advertise it.  Across the hall there is the Sure Soother department.  That’s a teething syrup:  does wonders for restless babies.  On the floor below is the Cranicure Mixture for headaches, Rub-it-in Balm for rheumatism and bruises, and a couple of small side issues that we’re not trying to push much.  We’re handling Stomachine and Relief Pills from here, but the pills are made in Cincinnati, and we market ’em under another trade name.”

“Stomachine is for stomach troubles, I assume,” said Hal.  “What are the Relief Pills?”

“Oh, a female remedy,” replied his father carelessly.  “Quite a booming little trade, too.  Take a look at the Certina collection of testimonials.”

In a room like a bank vault were great masses of testimonial letters, all listed and double-catalogued by name and by disease.

“Genuine.  Provably genuine, every one.  There’s romance in some of ’em.  And gratitude; good Lord!  Sometimes when I look ’em over, I wonder I don’t run for President of the United States on a Certina platform.”

From the testimonial room they went to the art department where Dr. Surtaine had some suggestions to make as to bill-board designs.

“You’ll never get another puller like Old Lame-Boy,” Hal heard the head designer say with a chuckle, and his father reply:  “If I could I’d start another proprietary as big as Certina.”

“Where does that lead to?” inquired Hal, as they approached a side passage sloping slightly down, and barred by a steel door.

“The old building.  The manufacturing department is over there.”

“Compounding the medicine, you mean?”

“Yes.  Bottling and shipping, too.”

“Aren’t we going through?”

“Why, yes:  if you like.  You won’t find much to interest you, though.”

Nor, to Hal’s surprise, did Dr. Surtaine himself seem much concerned with this phase of the business.  Apparently his hand was not so close in control here as in the other building.  The men seemed to know him less well.

“All this pretty well runs itself,” he explained negligently.

“Don’t you have to keep a check on the mixing, to make sure it’s right?”

“Oh, they follow the formula.  No chance for error.”

They walked amidst chinking trucks, some filled with empty, some with filled and labeled bottles, until they reached the carton room where scores of girls were busily inserting the bottles, together with folded circulars and advertising cards, into pasteboard boxes.  At the far end of this room a pungent, high-spiced scent, as of a pickle-kitchen with a fortified odor underlying it, greeted the unaccustomed nose of the neophyte.