William "Billy" McKnight stepped from the taxi and slipped the phedora over his reddish-brown hair before he rewrapped the long scarf about his neck. The wool strip had been with him since his days as a pilot during the Great War and while it might show some wear in places, he refused to give it up.<br/><br/>"Hey Man, how about paying up?" the driver said from under the yellow combination cap with a scowl.<br/><br/>"Oh!, sure thing." Billy said and pulled a few bills from his pocket and passed them to the driver. As the old man started to make change, billy simply said "Keep it." and walked toward the entrance to the big house.<br/><br/>Under the long coat with it's warm lining, Billy had dressed for the occasion in his best suit, a mid-line gray 3 piece, complete with pocket watch and chain, and shoes that cost half of his income for the month. As a recently mustered out test pilot for the US Army Air Core, he had been looking for work, preferably with enough pay to aquire his own aircraft and get into the growing airlines industry.... lots of cash to be made there, he thought and you didn't need much more than a plane to get started... and Billy knew planes... he had aced within a few months of his first combat patrol and that had only been the beginning. This telegram offer had been too good to refuse since it promised a plane to his specifications; those specifics had been quite detailed by the time he had returned the telegraph... but he hadn't seen any DC-2's on the local airfield when he had hitched a ride in the trainer seat of the hot new ship that the Navy was playing with... it was a monster of a plain, but it had flown well all the same... Curtis was making good planes these days.<br/><br/>The handsome 6' man paused at the door, checked the time and taken with the old fashioned pull, gave it a yank.