noon
From outside manufactories he could obtain the other essential parts , but his own production of engines held him back . The only solution for the present was to find some one to make engines to his specifications , and he turned to Bonbright Foote , Incorporated . Whatever might be said of the Foote methods , their antiquity , their lack of modern efficiency , they turned out work whose quality none might challenge -- and Malcolm Lightener looked first to quality . He reached his determination at noon , while he was eating his luncheon , and to Mrs. Lightener 's amazement sprang up from the table and lunged out of the room without so much as a glance at her or a word of good-by . In some men of affairs this might not be remarkable , but in Malcolm Lightener it was remarkable . Granite he might be ; crude in his manner , perhaps , more dynamic than comfortable , but in all the years of his married life he had never left the house without kissing his wife good-by . He drove his runabout recklessly to his office , rushed into the engineering department , and snatched certain blue prints and specifications from the files .