He sat at the heavy oak table, chewing resolutely at a final fibrous shred of breakfast steak, wondering what to do with the day. The dogs could be heard faintly, and that reminded him that the tournament would be coming up soon; but there was nothing he could do now, except practice. And that was pretty stupid, when you got right down to it. He had the best dogs in the state: no other animal had come close to matching Rupert’s stance, and Prince was just sloppy enough to make his retrieves popular. He would win the tournament, there was no doubt of that. So why should he even bother to enter?

The question was vague and unspoken, just as all other questions were, these days.

He yawned and pushed the table forward. His dark silk dressing gown was stained where he had spilled coffee onto it, and his face seemed stained, too: it was square and thick, covered by a three-day growth of beard. Two hundred and thirty pounds of meat stuck loosely to his bones; it bunched around the chest and stomach, even around the fingers of his hands. In the immaculate room with its white lace curtains and white walls and oriental rugs, with all its polished silver plates and candelabra, Verne Shipman looked grotesquely out of place.

He was quite aware of this fact, and felt it, also. His was a completely untenable position: having the instincts of an adventurer, wanting to start with nothing, as his father, Parke Shipman, had done, and work up a personal fortune of his own, he’d had to yield to his common sense and take the luck built-in. You can’t disregard two million dollars. Yet, having it, what was there left for a man to do?

He hated his father, and venerated him. Old Parke had been one of those electric young men with bright lights shining deep behind their eyes. At the age of twenty-two he’d gone to California and bought a small lemon grove. The grove had been producing but losing money because of poor management; also, there was no way to fight the frosts then. Parke figured out a way, and soon had himself a thriving business; but it was not satisfying to him. There was nothing for him to do, once the initial rhythm had been set up. So he sold the grove and began to look around for something else to do. At that time, the most popular machine in America was the Model T Ford. The “T” was a stark, unlovely, uncomfortable, graceless conveyance; it had to be. Department stores therefore began to offer accessories, and the idea caught on. People started to “improve” their machines—adding special gimmicks to step up the power output, to give a softer ride.

Parke Shipman decided to climb onto the bandwagon in a hurry. What could he produce that was new, not yet thought of by the department stores?