He was a dried-up-looking little fellow
who didn't stand over five feet four, but when he hopped out of an
almost-new sedan outside the shop door of the Model Garage, one sunny spring
morning, Gus Wilson saw that he was nursing a man-size grouch.
"Name's
Barnstable!" he snapped, pulling off an
old hat and running his bony fingers through his spares gray hair. "Maybe
you've heard tell of me."
Gus nodded. He had heard tell of Silas
Barnstable, who, in boom days, cut up his farm into building lots, sold them
for spot cash, and had been living on his money ever since - in an apartment
house.
"Well, if you've heard tell of
me, chances are you've heard I'm a grouch,"
Barnstable went on. "I'm not! But it
makes me good and sore to be skinned. Just because a man is foresighted
enough to have a few dollars laid away is no - What I mean is that when I
pay for anything I want to get what I pay for, and when I don't get it I
raise the devil! Understand, mister?"
"Sure, I understand," Gus told
him. "But what's bothering you - we haven't skinned you, have we?" "You
haven't - yet,"
Barnstable admitted grudgingly. "Maybe
you will, though - every other garage around here has!" Gus started to get
mad, and then grinned instead. "What's bothering you?" he asked again.
Barnstable jerked a thumb at his sedan.
"That's what's bothering me!" he yelled. "That dam' automobile!
It's got the very devil in it! I've had
it in every garage around here, and all they've done is take my money.
Not a one of them has been able to find
out what's the matter with it, let alone fix it, but they've all charged me
plenty. Not a one of those fakes knows his business! Some one told me that
you do. All right, mister. Go right ahead and prove it! You can't get my
car fixed by standing there grinning at me!"
"Just for a starter," Gus suggested
patiently, "suppose you take time out to tell me what's the matter with your
car!"
"Matter with it!"
Barnstable got redder in the face. "The
matter is that ever time I step on the brake the dash light goes on! And
that ain't the worst of it - not near the worst of it! Every time I pull
the hand brake on, the horn honks! Makes a danged fool out of me!"
Gus had to laugh, "I'll see what
I can do about it," he promised. "You come back about
noon and - "
"Come back nothing!" the little fellow
snarled. "I'm going to stay right here and make sure you do something for
what you charge me. I've been stung often enough!"
"Suit yourself," Gus said tolerantly.
"After all, it's your time you'll be wasting. Drive her in, will you?"
While
Barnstable was driving her in, Gus went
over to his workbench. He heard the loud toot of a horn behind him, and
turned in time to see his irate customer climbing out of his car. "She
honked again!" he shouted. "It's driving me crazy!"
Under
Barnstable's angry and suspicious eye Gus
went over the wiring thoroughly. Everything seemed all right except that
every time he pressed down on the brake pedal, the dash light flashed on
and stayed on until he released the pressure. But, although he pulled on
the emergency brake several times, he failed to produce one of the horn
honks that had so enraged
Barnstable.
Gus thought things over while loaded a
pipe. "Well, ain't you going to do anything about it?" demanded the little
man.
Gus grinned at him without replying light
his pipe, went around to the back of the car, took out the tail light lamp,
and examined it for a few seconds.
"Here's half your trouble, anyhow," he
said. "Some one has put a single-contact bulb into that double-contact
socket. As a result, the current back tracks and lights your dash lamp
then ever the stop-light circuit is closed by the foot brake being applied.
It will be all right as soon as I've put in a lamp of the right type."
He substituted a double-contact
bulb. "Try her now," he said.
Barnstable got into the car and stepped on
the brake pedal. The dash light didn't flash on.
"Guess you managed to fix that part of
it," he admitted grudgingly. "But how about that danged horn-honking?"
"Pull your emergency brake on again," Gus
told him. He watched intently. The little man was so short that he had to
twist his body around and reach wide to get hold of the emergency-brake
lever. But he pulled it on with an emphatic jerk, just the same.
Honk!
"What did I tell you!"
Barnstable yapped. "You ain't helped it a
bit. Bad as ever! You automobile fellows are all alike. I swear I'll - "
Gus was laughing. "Take it easy!" he
advised. "Don't you see what happens every time you pull on that hand
brake? You're a little bit - quite a little bit - shorter than the average
driver. When you reach over to get hold of that brake lever, you have to
twist and stretch your body around so far that the front of your left
shoulder comes down on the horn ring and blows the horn!"
It took him ten minutes of
patient argument and demonstration to convince
Barnstable that it was his own contortions
that caused the horn tooting whenever he put on his emergency brake. At
last, the little man gave in with a sour smile. "Well, how much do I owe
you? You ain't done much!" was all he said.
"You owe me just for the new tail light
bulb," Gus told him. "Whenever I get a good laugh out of a job. I take
something off the bill!"
"That's reasonable,"
Barnstable conceded. "Yes sir, I call
that fair," He handed over the money and got into his car. I'll send you
some business, if I get a chance, maybe."
"'Maybe' is right," Gus chuckled to
himself as the customer drove away. "That old codger couldn't say a good
word for anybody."
Several days later, however, as Gus and
his partner, Joe Clark were getting ready to close up for the night, Gus's
doubts about the old codger were given a setback.
"Sorry to bother you so late,"
came a voice at the office door as a young man who had driven his car up in
front of the garage stepped in unexpectedly. "Old geezer name
Barnstable - lives in my apartment - sent
me here. Said you could fix my car if anyone could."
"Barnstable!"
exploded Gus, in amazement. "He said that" Well I'll be...!"
Gus's face broke into a broad grin.
"The shop's really closed," he said, but
we're always glad to oblige. I'm Gus Wilson. What seems to the trouble?"
"I'll have to do a little explaining,"
the newcomer said and Joe motioned him to a chair. "My name's Hubbard. I'm
a salesman, and I travel this part of the state in my car. As I have to be
on my way pretty early most mornings, and there's no garage at all handy to
the Hillcrest Court Apartment, where I live, I park the car at night on the
street at the side of the apartment house. Probably you know it. It has a
pretty steep grade, and even late at night there's quite a lot of traffic on
it That means I have to pull my hand brake on hard, and leave my cowl and
tail lights burning all night.
"This evening I took my wife to the
movies. When we got home about an hour ago, I let her out at the main
entrance, and then drove around to the side street and parked my car as
usual. But when I turned off the ignition switch, the engine kept right on
running!
"I've been driving long enough to know a
little something about cars, and I fussed around for quite a while trying to
find a way of turning off that engine. Before I got through I found two
ways of stopping it - but neither of them was any good to me. "If I left
the lights on and released the hand brake, the engine would stop. But the
grade is so steep on that side street that I didn't dare just put the car in
gear and, without the hand brake on, trust that it wouldn't start rolling.
"I also found that the engine stopped
when I turned the lights off. But parking a car all night without lights in
this town means a sure ticket in the morning, and a half day wasted in court
and, probably, a five-dollar fine. Anyhow, I figured that there must be a
short circuit somewhere in the wiring and that, if I left the car stand
overnight without getting it fixed, I'd be sure to run down the battery.
"While I was wondering what the deuce to
do about it, old Barnstable came along, asked some fool questions, and then
told me about your garage. So here I am. Think that you can help me out?"
"We can try, anyhow," Gus said.
He walked over to the window, looked out, and with a glance identified the
make and model of Hubbard's car. Then he strolled back to his hair, sat
down, and began puffing at his pipe. Gus carries around in his head a set
of mental diagrams of the wiring systems of all the cars that are built in
America, and sometimes it takes
him as much as a minute to sort out the one he wants. Hubbard stared at
him, but, before he could ask a question. Gus began to make his diagnosis.
"On your car," he said, "and on lots of
other cars, the hand brake operates the stop light switch. The stop light
circuit is connected to the battery at the ignition switch - the wire to the
coil and the wire to the stop-light switch are fastened to the same post on
the back of the ignition switch. The reason that your engine continues to
run after you've turned off the ignition, while your hand brake is on and
your lights are burning, must be that current is feeding into the ignition
system through the lighting system. The stop-light switch must have
something to do with the trouble, because it's operated by the hand brake.
"Let's see now - your combination tail
and stop light has a two-filament lamp, and your stop-light switch connects
the lighting circuit to the ignition coil. So, Mr. Hubbard, your mysterious
trouble must be in the tail-light lamp."
"Ignition trouble in a tail lamp! That's
a new one on me!" said Joe Clark. Hubbard was beginning to look as if he
felt decidedly doubtful that he had come to the right place. "Trouble is
where you find it," Gus said placidly. "I'll tell you what must be
happening. The lighting current must be traveling through the filament of
the tail-light bulb, through the filament of the stop-light bulb, through
the stop light switch and wire up to the coil side of the ignition switch ,
and through the coil and points to ground. By doing that it provides enough
ignition current to keep the engine running after the switch has been
turned."
"But why," demanded Hubbard doubtfully,
"has the lighting current just begun to do that? I've never had any trouble
of this sort before."
"Normally," Gus explained, "the lighting
current grounds at the tail lamp. But it isn't grounding there now.
Something - some little thing, in all probability - has happened that
prevents it from grounding." He got up and switched on the shop lights.
"If you'll just drive your car into the shop, Mr. Hubbard," he suggested,
"I'll have the trouble cured in ten minutes."
Hubbard drove in. Without even glancing
at anything else, Gus examined the tail lamp. Then he nodded.
"The bolts that hold the lamp to the
bracket have shaken loose," he said, "and the bracket itself is very dirty.
The lighting current can't ground. That's the full extent of your trouble."
He cleaned the bracket, and tightened the
bolts. "Now try her," he said.
Hubbard started his engine, turned on the
lights, applied his hand brake hard, and switched off the engine.
The engine stopped. "Now it's all
right," Gus said. "The lighting current is grounding through the lamp
bracket, as it should, instead of going on to the coil. You won't have any
more trouble, Mr. Hubbard."
"If I do," said Hubbard, "I know where
I'll come with it."
"Queer, wasn't it?" Gus said when Hubbard
had left. "We haven't had a job in which a tail light was causing the
trouble in two or three years, and now we get two of them in one week."
"More important," Joe said, "we get two
new customers."
Gus grinned. "How much a year
do you figure," he inquired, "we'll make out of old
Barnstable?"
END
