White Fire

Johnny Thompson started, then stared with dilated pupils at a spot on the aluminum casting before him. The spot, a jagged notch left by imperfect work in the foundry, turned first a dull red, then a bright red, then a glowing white.

Mechanically his hand touched the valve of his oxy-acetylene torch. Yes, it was as he had believed, the acetylene valve was closed. The oxygen valve was open, it was true, but the drum which had contained oxygen under a thousand pounds pressure was empty. In fact, he was waiting for the arrival of a new drum. That was what made the thing seem strange, impossible! It was a miracle, only miracles don’t happen in such places—he was working in the heart of a great industrial plant which turned out automobiles in twenty carload lots and airplanes by the hundreds.

Johnny scratched his chin and stared at the white spot. True, the nozzle of his torch was aimed at that spot; but five minutes before it had sput-sputted for a few seconds, then died down to an insignificant flame giving too little heat for any sort of welding. He had cut that flame off, yet now, before his very eyes the metal glowed white hot.

With a grin which said plainer than words, “I’m dreaming,” he thrust a finger in a can of water, then held it over the glowing spot until a drop of water fell.

Instantly he started afresh and stared with wilder eyes. There had come the hiss of water on white-hot metal.

“It’s hot—hot enough to weld!—no doubt about it,” he whispered. “What in the name of all that’s good?”

Mechanically he lifted a light hammer and struck four deft blows. The metal yielded to the touch of the hammer as wax to the seal. Still as in a dream he selected a bit of metal and dropped it into the niche in the casting.

Watching it closely, he saw it, too, turn dull red, bright red, then glow white. Again his hammer fell upon the spot. Deftly he struck it here and there until presently no trace of the weld remained save the glowing white spot.

That, too, changed rapidly, first grayish white, then light red, then dull red, then black.

For a time he watched it, then with a file he brushed away the black scar, leaving the casting perfect, ready to take its place in a splendid chummy roadster.

A chummy roadster! For a moment, at thought of it, Johnny’s mind left the mystery. It was to be his chummy roadster, and was to cost him only a small fraction of what it would cost on the market, for was he not of the salvage department? And had not the head of that department given him permission to salvage a part here, another part there, and another there, a few in the foundry, in the forge room, in the electrical repair shop, here and there all over the factory, until he had all the parts to make a complete car, and was he not to pay for the car just what the total value of the whole number of parts would have been if they had been thrown upon the scrap pile?

A chummy roadster! It was the only bright spot that had come upon his horizon since he had returned home at the call of a telegram, and had arrived to find his home draped in black, with noiseless footsteps passing to and fro. His father, the father who had been his boyhood chum, had left him for other lands. He had left, too, through no fault of his, a debt unpaid and no estate from which to pay it.