‘Oh, I’m sorry, but I was all excited. You will be, too.’

‘How’d you get back from Chicago so quick? Didn’t expect you till tomorrow.’

‘Flew, sir.’

‘FLEW?’

‘You bet.’

‘In an aeroplane?’

‘Nothing less.’

‘Well, I’ll be doggoned! I’ve flown, couple of times. But don’t know’s I liked it so much. Kept wanting to pull up beside the road and rest a little and maybe chew the rag with a filling-station attendant, and then I’d look down and there wasn’t any road — just spider webs, down there. I felt like a toad in a cyclone.’ His recollections were interrupted by the realization that Popple was jittery with a grandiose impatience, and he complained, ‘But what was the idea? What was all the rush?’

‘Mr. Cornplow, I think we’ve gotten hold of a whale of a proposition. I’ve brought with me a contract giving us not just a district agency but the whole of northern New York State for the Duplex Trailer! I looked it up, and there are six million people in the territory, and if we can’t sell fifty thousand Duplexes in the next five years —’

‘Take it easy! Get down to brass tacks, Paul. What is this machine for counterfeiting money that you think you’ve discovered?’

‘Honest, Mr. Cornplow, the Duplex is a natural! It’s got everything. On the road, it looks like an ordinary high-class passenger trailer, except that it’s about eighteen inches higher — which still gives it as much clearance for railroad underpasses as any big furniture truck. Well, in that extra eighteen inches, there’s an entire extra story to the trailer, collapsed like a bellows when you’re driving.

‘The roof of the second story — it’s of aeroplane linen, with ribs of ribbon steel — drops right down on the flat roof of the first story, with room between them for collapsible aluminum-alloy beds and chairs, and even collapsible washstands. The sides of the second story are of tarpaulin, and they cave in like an accordion.’

Fred was not interrupting. Fred was a lively enough chatterer when the customers wanted encouragement, but he had trained himself to utter stillness of listening when it should be useful.

‘When you make camp, you raise the top roof with compressed air worked from the engine — in two minutes you can raise it, and you’ve added three separate bedrooms, with tarpaulin partitions and a gangway. And that leaves you a really comfortable big living room and kitchen downstairs. So Pop and Mom and two-three kids can all travel together with some privacy. It’s a real moving home! It’s a knockout! Look at these photos!’

Fred did look and felt like the first time he had put on radio earphones, heard Philadelphia talking, and guessed that someday he would listen from afar to presidents and kings. Fred had always found business a diverting struggle; he could not understand these superior people who considered trade mechanical and witless; and in the Duplex Trailer he smelled a new adventure.