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from us on this locomotive because he had prices from others and ours was lacking. That seemed to be the answer - Gus is trying to make a patch work quilt of prices and needs this from us to fill it out. We got that much out of him and Roy said to me afterward, "If he'd said that last thing first, we could have left in five minutes instead of two hours and a half!" But I thought we got another thing - Ernie knew so little about the Hercules engine, it appeared it wasn't being taken  very seriously - was only being used perhaps to "bitch us up" somehow, as Roy would put it. We left Concord at 10:30 PM and all the way to Boston we talked the thing over from every angle until we were going around in circles and finally quit. For a while, Roy was Gus Munster and questioned me and I parried him. We got to the Parker House at 12:30 AM and went into the bar for some more talk and a couple of scotches. 

Roy told me earlier in the day, he couldn't take Charlie Macdonald because he would have to pay him more than than Neil or Doc Millan and he wouldn't do that because it would demoralize the department. Moreover he wasn't satisfied Charlie was a good man - he claimed he had messed up some jobs he had come to Boston on. Tonight in the Parker House bar he said suddenly, "Why don't [[underlined]] you [[/underlined]] come to Boston?" And he proceeded to sell me the idea. He even told me "Whitey" had said he could have me but later he admitted Whitey had said, "I don't think the Boston Office job rates a man of Craton's caliber." So I decided that Whitey definitely had not offered me. I had to tell Roy finally that I felt my future was in Erie - I didn't tell him anything more than that.