“Jim thought highly of you, Stone, from our first tennis match. He admired the way you played against him, the fact that you were not intimidated. As you will recall, Jim was a very intimidating tennis player.”

“I was hanging on by my fingernails,” Stone said.

“He also admired how quickly you mastered the Citation Mustang.” Hackett had suggested during their acquaintance that Stone learn to fly the airplane.

“I was glad of the opportunity to learn a new airplane,” Stone said.

“I’m delighted to hear that, because Jim left you the Mustang in his will. It was his personal property.”

“You’re kidding!” Stone said.

“I am not, and I have a proposition to offer you. Strategic Services has bought a hangar at Teterboro and we have on order a CitationJet 4, which will be delivered shortly. We would like to continue to use the Mustang for business flights of less than a thousand miles, and if you will consent to that, we will offer you space for your airplane in our new hangar, and we will continue to make the payments on the maintenance programs covering the airplane. Also, we’ll have an in-house mechanic at the hangar for smaller maintenance jobs, and one of the company pilots will fly the Mustang up to the Cessna Service Center at Newburgh, New York, for periodic inspections. The firm would also like to buy your old Jetprop,” he said. “We’ll pay whatever you paid for it.”

“I am delighted to accept,” Stone said.

“You’ll always have first call on the Mustang,” Freeman said. “If you’d like your old tail number on the Mustang, we’ll have the change made for you.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I’m also happy to tell you that I am assigning the remainder of all our legal work to Woodman & Weld, where we would like you to join Bill Eggers in supervising it.”

“Thank you very much, Mike. Have you told Bill yet?”

“We spoke on the phone this morning; he was very pleased.”

The car drew up in front of Strategic Services’ building on East Fifty-seventh Street.

“The car will take you back to your office,” Freeman said. “By the way, would you like an office in our building?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Stone said.

“We’ll reserve my old office for you, on the occasions when you’re in the building,” Freeman said.

The two men shook hands, and the car took Stone home.

Stone went into his office and sank into his chair. He had just had the best twenty-four hours of his life, and he was still stunned. He was now a stockholder of Strategic Services, he had a new airplane, and he had not only his bonus of the night before but he would have cash for the sale of his old airplane to the company. What more could he ask for in this lifetime?