Part 2

“_Bk._” The word came in over the Pasadena wire. Mechanically Ralph ceased his typing, for “bk” meant “break,” or in other words, “don’t put this down.” Then the Pasadena op laboriously thumped out, “I’m going to copy for a while. Hand’s getting tired. Want to change over?”

Ralph looked over at the hook and saw there were perhaps two dozen messages to be sent. A good hour’s work with her as receiver. Oh, well, she wasn’t such a bad scout. She couldn’t help her cramped sending. He touched the key and tapped out his “ok.”

He changed over to the chair next to him and caught the handful of messages off the hook. Before he was midway through the first someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was Hugo DeMars.

“Mignonne’s out in the hall, kid,” DeMars told him. “Wants to see you about something. Here, I’ll take your key till you get back.”

Ralph drew a breath of relief. His nerves had been at high tension the past few days, and he was thankful for a few moments away from the wire. He couldn’t imagine what Mignonne wanted to ask him, but it thrilled him to know she was near. He pointed out to DeMars the place he had left off, and went out into the hall. As he would be gone but a moment he did not trouble to explain to the chief that DeMars was sitting in on Pasadena. It did not occur to him that there was always the chance for a substitute to send through a faked message for which the blame could be laid at the door of the original operator.

Ralph, like other young operators, thought the company’s check system unbeatable. He knew that each message bears a sending number and, after being sent, goes to the checking room to be audited for omissions or duplications, all a part of the telegraph company’s aim for accuracy. Sometimes a number is omitted. An operator may have sent message No. 44 and then sent No. 46. If the error is not detected by the receiving operator at the time, the checking room catches it, and sends through a message: “This represents our No. 45 to you.” Consequently Ralph felt perfectly safe in leaving DeMars in his place while he was talking to Mignonne. For he never once considered the other capable of duplicity.

But DeMars had a plan of action laid out. A plan he had successfully worked before. Finishing the message Ralph had begun, DeMars began on a moneygram as the next one. This he composed from memory while his eyes were on the authentic message for which he was substituting his fraudulent one.

He had the code-words. Mignonne had supplied them, but these without the pay word of the day were worthless. But throughout the day he had watched the money transfers that passed through his hands. Four of them carried the pay word RANKLE. Only one had SIMMER as the pay word. From this he gathered that RANKLE was the payword for the day representing “identification waived” transfers, as the greater majority are sent that way to avoid the delay occasioned by the rigid care exercised by the company in paying vigilant and caution transfers.

So, with message No. 44 before his eyes, he composed and sent the following moneygram from memory in place of it:

REPRESENTING MUTUAL TRUST COMPANY RANKLE MARIE IRVINE PASADENA NULLIFIED OVERTHROW DEBAUCH UNITED LUMBER AND SHIPPING COMPANY.

He then marked off the real No. 44 as having been sent. He went on with the sending, a satisfied smile on his face for, during Ralph’s twenty-minute lunch relief which the boy had stretched to nearly half an hour at the cozy cafe where he and Mignonne were accustomed to lunch together, DeMars had contrived to take Ralph’s place that day. On the Hollywood line he had sent out a moneygram, the duplicate of the one he had just sent to Pasadena. So Mignonne, within the next two hours would visit both the Hollywood and Pasadena offices with letters and other identification from the Mutual Trust where she worked as a stenographer. She would collect the money, practically twenty thousand dollars on the two orders, and the fraud would not be discovered until the moneygrams were checked back to the originating point which was given as “Po”, Portland, Oregon.

When Ralph returned to his key he found DeMars tapping out messages to the Pasadena office. He took his place, and the other went back to his own desk. Out in the streets Mignonne stepped into a taxi, and whirled away toward the Hollywood office to collect the first of the two moneygrams.

A little more than an hour later word came into the superintendent’s office that Mignonne DeMars alias Marie Irvine, had been apprehended at the Pasadena office as she attempted to cash a faked moneygram. She was now en route to Los Angeles in the custody of the special officers who had witnessed her receiving money at the Hollywood office and later followed her to Pasadena as directed to do by Clyde Winship, the company’s representative.

The whole affair had occupied barely thirty minutes of the superintendent’s time. And the DeMars case was entering its zero hour.

Shortly thereafter Clyde Winship slipped into the superintendent’s office and, in response to the official’s nod, took a chair. The superintendent, with a smile at Winship, pressed a buzzer.

The door opened and Ralph Harmon entered, followed by the chief operator. The boy’s face wore a grim look, plainly worried, but with no manifestation of fear. Winship’s opinion of June Harmon’s brother went up considerably.

“Why, hello, Winny,” Ralph greeted Winship surprisedly. “You back looking for a job again?”

Before Winship could reply the superintendent turned on Ralph abruptly. “Your name is Ralph Harmon, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long have you been with this company?”

“I was a messenger three years while I finished school, then was on as student operator. I’ve been working here as an operator for a year.”

“What wires did you work today?”

Something of his assurance left the boy’s face at this question. He hesitated, fingering a button on his coat before replying. “Well,” he began slowly, “I worked on El Paso and Tucson this morning. Then I worked some of the way circuits, after lunch, and after that----”

“That’s enough. You say you worked way circuits. What wires were they?”

A look of fear crept into the boy’s eyes. He glanced wonderingly at the official, and then at Winship and the old chief operator. “I don’t remember. I--oh, yes, I was on Redlands and San Bernardino and Pasadena----”

Instantly the superintendent whipped a telegram from his desk and held it before the boy’s eyes.

“And you sent this?”

Ralph examined it, his face drawn. It was the moneygram Hugo DeMars had sent. As Ralph read the code words that he himself had given Mignonne his eyes sought the door. His mind flashed to the moment DeMars had taken his place on the Pasadena wire. Mignonne had been in the hall waiting to tell him that she and her brother Hugo were expecting to go down to Tia Juana that evening after work and be gone for two days. She had said they were going to collect the money from those crooked gamblers. Ralph recognized that he could scarcely prove that it had not been he who sent that moneygram, so cleverly had DeMars’s work been planned.

Suddenly he determined not to try. Ralph pictured Mignonne in prison as a result of his having obtained the code words for her. Somehow it seemed to him that had he not secured the code from Fred, Mignonne would still be innocent of crime. He sought only to protect her.

“What have you to say?” the superintendent demanded sharply.

“Yes. I--I sent it,” Ralph faltered.

The superintendent was unrelenting. “Portland never sent such a message,” he went on severely. “Harmon, you’ve committed a fraud against the company, and if you get off with less than ten years you’re lucky. Do you confess to sending this message, and the one to Hollywood?”

Ralph caught his breath. That another such message should have gone to Hollywood was beyond his belief, but he thought of the code and again of Mignonne.

“Yes,” he repeated mechanically, “Yes, I sent them.”

The superintendent leaned back with a sigh of relief. He eyed the youth appraisingly. “You’re a liar,” he said good naturedly. “Young man, I’m mighty glad to tell you that you’re a liar.”

Ralph broke down completely. He sobbed and buried his face in his arms.

“You’ve been in bad company, young man,” the superintendent said. “You’ve had a good record with us, but that woman and her husband--” He paused to let the full significance of this information sink into the boy’s stunned consciousness. “Her husband, Hugo DeMars, took occasion to substitute for you and sent these two wires.

“Thanks to Mr. Winship, he knew of the plan, and now we’ve got the pair, along with evidence enough to send them up for twenty years. We don’t blame you for trying to shield the woman--you’re a young fool like most young men. But we can’t risk having you here. We know how you filched the code words under the impression they could not be used to defraud the company. But you see it didn’t work. And we can’t take chances on you here. You’re fired. And you’re lucky we don’t send you to the pen along with your--your friends.”

When the superintendent had finished Ralph looked up. “It’s a lesson I’ll remember all my life,” he choked childishly. “I’m glad they didn’t get to rob the company, and I p-promise never t-to do anything wrong again. I d-don’t know how to th-thank you.”

“The company holds no ill will toward you,” the superintendent went on impressively. “Only, we can’t afford to keep weak sisters on the job. But I’ll give you a tip. We’re putting in a new manager out at the Pasadena branch, and he is looking for an assistant. He says he will take you in charge, and guarantee to keep you in line. He is a man we have faith in, and if he’s willing to take the responsibility we’re going to let him.”

Ralph straightened perceptibly. A steadier light came into his eyes.

“Just tell me where I can find that new manager. I want that job. I want a chance to show the company that I can go straight. All I want is another chance to----”

“Well, you’ll get it,” Winship interrupted kindly. He rose and held out his hand to the boy. “I’m taking over the Pasadena branch, and you’re hired. Come along, let’s go out and look it over.”

A week later Ralph invited his new manager home to dinner. June was having some of her friends in, and the little dinner was assuming the air of a gay party.

“You’ve only been around Los Angeles two months?” one of them spoke to Winship. “And do you think you will like it here?”

“I think I’m going to,” Winship replied hopefully, and his glance strayed across the table to June. Her larkspur blue eyes met his own.

“Yes, I know darn well I am,” but his words were lost in the chatter of glad voices about him.

[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the February 25, 1924 issue of _Short Stories Magazine_.]