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Fombombo hesitated a moment, then asked aloud:

"Coronel Saturnino, how many rifles do we want?"

The young colonel did not pause in his work.

"Twenty-five thousand, General." His brain seemed to be a card-index.

"Twenty-five thousand," repeated Fombombo.

A jubilant sensation went through the drummer at the hugeness of the order. He jotted something in his book.

"When do you want them delivered?"

"As soon as I can get them."

Strawbridge made soft, blurry noises of approval, nodding as he wrote.

"And how shipped?"

All through this little colloquy the general seemed rather at sea. At last he said:

"We can arrange these details later, Señor Strawbridge."

The drummer suddenly turned his full-power selling-talk on his prospect. This was the pinch, this was where he either "put it across" or failed. For just this crisis his sales manager had drilled him day after day. He turned on the dictator and began in an earnest, almost a religious tone:

"Now, General, I can make you satisfactory terms and prices. Every article that leaves our shop is guaranteed; the Orion Arms brands are to-day the standards by which all other firearms are judged. You can't make a mistake by ordering now." He pushed the pen and the book closer to the general's hand. All the general had to do now was simply to close his fingers.