CHAPTER XIV

BENWAY’S DISCOVERY

Benway Chase was to prepare a copy of the faulty specification sheet of the Kimberly Binding Company’s order, to be attached to the report on that unfortunate affair filed in the records of the board’s proceedings.

Ethel had not discussed the unfortunate matter with Benway, or with anybody else. That Frank Barton could have allowed such an error--two such errors, indeed--to escape his notice was scarcely in accord with her belief in the general manager’s perspicacity. Her lips merely tightened when anybody mentioned the tragic happening within her hearing.

For it was indeed tragic. Rumors that the factory output was falling behind and that the Hapwood-Diller Company was facing a situation similar to that which had threatened it when Frank Barton had first taken hold as manager, reached Ethel’s ears from all sides.

Although she could not understand how this mistake in the Kimberly order could have happened, she accepted the claim of the ordering company as honestly made, and that without question. The Kimberly Company was not a second Bogata concern. They wanted the goods ordered and were amply able to pay for them. The mistakes in the specifications made much trouble for the purchasing corporation as well as for the Hapwood-Diller Company.

This schedule from the Kimberly Binding Company had been copied in duplicate in the Hapwood-Diller Company’s office, one copy with Frank Barton’s name upon it being returned to the ordering firm, the other filed where only properly accredited members of the Hapwood-Diller Company’s office force supposedly were able to get at it.

The question as to how the two items on the schedule came to be different from those on the sheet sent back to the Kimberly Company bulked just as big in Ethel’s mind as the similar question regarding the Bogata Company’s order. She felt that the same treacherous hand was to be suspected.

It was not Frank Barton’s fault. Of this she was confident. But she could not put an accusing finger on any person. That there was a traitor in the Hapwood-Diller office went without saying. This time Mr. Barton was too far away for her to discuss the point with him, and Hammerly gave her no opportunity of speaking her mind.

Benway came with the copy he was making of the faulty schedule and placed it before her. He was transcribing the paper in his own very exact, upright handwriting. But he had made a mistake.

“Do you think that will be noticed, Ethel?” he asked with a measure of suppressed excitement that she did not at first notice. “See where I made a bull--and used the acid to take the ink out?”

“Why, yes, Benway; I see it--now that you call my attention to it. But really you have made the correction very neatly. I think it will be all right. The paper only shines a little on the surface where you erased the ink marks with the acid.”

“That’s just it, Ethel,” he hissed, close to her ear. “The erasing fluid leaves the surface of this sort of paper glossy. Now look at this!”

He plumped the document he was copying--the schedule in which the two errors had been found--under her eye.

“Why, what is it?”

“See anything wrong about those two mysterious lines?” he demanded, and now she marked his excitement.

“Oh, Benway! That’s been all gone over. You can see there have been no changes made in this original paper. There is no more shine to the surface where those two errors stand than elsewhere. _That_ was taken up in board meeting. I heard them discuss it. And I studied it myself. No. There have surely been no erasures.”

“Sure?”

“You are very obstinate, Benway!” exclaimed Ethel impatiently.

“But look,” he whispered. “Here!” He snapped on the electric light over her desk. “Look at those places on the slant--with the glare of the light on them. Don’t you see that the paper has been roughened under those two faulty lines--and nowhere else on the sheet? And see again! Under the electric light the surface of the paper seems bluer at those places than anywhere else. That is a good quality of paper, too.”

“Is--isn’t it a chance discoloration?” murmured the girl.

“Don’t you think that’s far-fetched?” demanded Benway. “Two blue blots--and just where those wrong items are written?”

“Could they have been caused by drops of water?”

“Huh! Drops of something!” growled Benway. “I own to that belief. But never water. Here! Use this reading glass. Don’t you see the raw fibre of the paper? The surface has been scratched just where those wrong items stand. Not by the sort of erasing fluid we use in this office; but by some means. What do you think?”

Ethel passed the sensitive tips of her fingers lightly over the indicated spots on the sheet. It seemed to her that she could feel the slight roughness of the paper that Benway indicated so assuredly.

“You go back and finish your job, Benway,” she told him finally. “Then bring me this original. Understand? Say nothing to anybody else about it.”

“Sure!” he returned, his eyes snapping.

“Then if you are asked about it,” she added quietly, “you may say that you gave me the paper and know nothing at all about it.”

He looked at her with more seriousness.

“Say, are you figuring on getting into trouble with----”

Ethel held up her hand. “You are not supposed to figure on this at all. Just do as I say, Benway.”

“Oh! All right, Ma’am,” he said with a mocking little smile and a twinkle in his eye.

Even he did not wholly understand the seriousness of the discovery; but Ethel appreciated it fully. When he brought the original sheet of specifications back to her she hid it in her dress and at noon instead of going to lunch she caught a southbound car and rode to the Stone Bridge.

On either side of the creek there were docks and warehouses; but Macon Hammerly’s general store and row of storehouses for feed and grain and such other things as he dealt in were beyond the bridge and some distance along what was called the Creek Road. The Creek Road debouched into the fanning country that adjoined Mailsburg somewhat abruptly, at the south end of the town.

Really, Mr. Hammerly was a country merchant, always had been such, and always would be. He had come into possession of his father’s store when he was a young man, and it was said that his grandfather had first engaged in business--the trading of general merchandise for pelts and farm produce--on this very spot. However, the Macon Hammerly store and warehouses were well known over a large area.

Being on the edge of the city the farming people were likely to trade with him largely. And yet he was not considered a “good fellow.” He was too sharp and severe in his business methods.

To his docks the sluggishly moving canal-boats came bringing grain and feed and coal and other merchandise that he dealt in more largely. And he was a wholesale dealer in many articles that other merchants in Mailsburg sold at retail. For one thing, his was the largest seed house in the county.

Ethel hurried over the arch of the Stone Bridge and down the narrow, bricked walk across from the head of the several docks and the doors of the warehouses upon them. This was an old, old part of the town; indeed, it had been known as Stone Bridge once; but Mailsburg had grown out to it and had all but enveloped it with new buildings and better streets. Only down the Creek Road the land still was checkered with open fields and patches of wood.

Before the weather-beaten building in which was Macon Hammerly’s general store, was a wide, roofed porch. Several bewhittled armchairs, just “wabbly” enough to be comfortable, stood about upon the platform. Sometimes these were filled with Hammerly’s ancient cronies--cynics of a former generation who had been in this world so long that they seemed to believe they knew better how to run it than Omnipotence!

Mr. Hammerly was alone at one end of the porch. This was egg-buying day, and as he dealt largely in eggs--shipping quantities to the larger cities--the old man usually looked after the buying while his clerks packed the boxes inside.

Hammerly believed if a thing was worth doing at all it was worth doing well. Likewise he believed in that other old saw relative to a man’s doing anything himself if he wanted to be sure it was done right. He could not do everything of importance about his store and warehouses; but he could--and did--buy eggs.

He watched the farmers and their wives cannily as they brought their baskets up to the platform. He handled many of the eggs himself. It was his inflexible rule to refuse all pullet eggs, and he had always in his pocket a wooden curtain-pole ring of a certain size. If an egg would slip through that, it was discarded.

Ethel chanced to arrive at a moment when there was a let-up in the activities of egg buying. The grain dealer pushed up his spectacles with that familiar gesture of his and grinned at the girl.

“You ain’t come away down here on no party call, Ethel?” he said questioningly. “You know I ain’t in the swagger set, and I don’t serve pink tea here.”

“No, sir,” she said, smiling in spite of her serious mood. “I know you are a perfect barbarian.”

The man chuckled, but said only:

“Heard from Frank Barton yet?”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“I got you beat, then,” he said, with twinkling eye. “Not direct; but from Washington. Got a friend there and he’s kept me posted. The troop ship _Tecumseh_ got over safely--as they all did, in fact. Them German undersea boats seem to have been too far under the sea to catch ’em. Frank’s safe in France.”

“Until he gets into the trenches,” said the girl bitterly.

“Don’t you be like these other folks, Ethel. Grouchers, every one! Knocking the war, and looking on the black side of every cloud instead of on the silver. The good Lord knows I’m no optimist by nature; but these are the times when every one of us should stretch our cheerfulness to the breaking point.

“Frank’s going to be all right. He’s going to do his duty, and he’s going through with it all and come back to us. That’s my belief, Ethel.”

“Oh, Mr. Hammerly! I hope you are right.”

“If things go as smooth here with us as they do over there with him,” he added, with twinkling eyes, “I reckon all will be well.”

“Oh, Mr. Hammerly!” she exclaimed again, “things are not going smoothly here. At least, not with the Hapwood-Diller Company.”

“So that’s what brings you down here? I ain’t so flattered as I was, Ethel,” he said good-naturedly. “Let’s hear your trouble.”

“Oh, you mustn’t think I’m not glad to see you,” she said, hurriedly.

“O’ course you’re glad,” he said, with something of a grin on his wrinkled face. He stroked his chin reflectively. “Great times these, an’ no mistake. If I was only younger----”

“You’d get into the war, I suppose.”

“Certain sure, I would. An’ you would, too, if you was a young man.”

“Perhaps--I really don’t know--it’s all so horrible.”

“So ’tis, an’ that German Kaiser has got a pile to answer for, believe me. But now to business. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m not sure that it’s really wrong. But it looks queer to me.”

“I see. Got some papers, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see ’em.”

She displayed the specification sheet and explained hurriedly Benway’s discovery. The appearance of erasure in two places on the document seemed plainer to Ethel each time she looked at it.

“I dunno,” drawled Hammerly, at first doubtful. But the longer he looked at the two bluish marks the more deeply he was impressed with the significance of them. “Can it be that we’ve got him at last?” he finally questioned vigorously.

“_Him?_” repeated Ethel, curiously.

“There’s a dirty traitor in this business, Ethel,” declared the grain dealer.

“Who do you think it is? Jim Mayberry?” she asked outright.

“He never did this,” declared Hammerly with emphasis. “He wouldn’t have brains enough. That’s scarcely seeable, that rubbing out. And see how close the handwriting has been copied.

“I see. That is Josephine Durand’s work--the original writing of the sheet, I mean. We never use the typewriter on these specification papers, because of the uneven ruling. She wrote both this and the copy that went back to the Kimberly people with Mr. Barton’s name on it.”

“I know,” growled Hammerly, still staring closely at the paper.

“And Josephine is perfectly trustworthy, I am sure. Besides, it does not seem possible that Mr. Barton did not closely compare the two papers. Those figures were changed, I am sure, after Mr. Barton left.”

“Not a doubt on it! Not a doubt on it!” agreed Hammerly. “I’ve seen something like this afore,” he added, more to himself than to the girl. “You let me keep this paper, Ethel. We’ll see. How’s your ma?”

“Worried a good deal, Mr. Hammerly. That lawyer who came around to buy her shares in the Hapwood-Diller Company really scared mother.”

“What lawyer?” snapped Macon Hammerly, instantly interested.

Ethel told of the incident and gave Mr. Hammerly the name and address of the attorney, Mr. Schuster. “I believe he did secure a few shares from some of the small stockholders,” Ethel said. “You know Abel Rawlins had seven shares and Mrs. Henry Cutt a dozen. They sold, mother says, and she is worried for fear the company is going to smash and we may lose everything.”

“How many’s she got, Ethel?” asked the old man, a heavy frown on his brow. And when Ethel told him, he added: “So? Israel Diller ought to’ve done better by her than that. She was just as close’t kin to the old man as Grandon Fuller’s wife.”

“Oh, we won’t talk about that,” said Ethel, with a gesture of dismissal. “What is done, is done.”

“Humph! Mebbe! If it stays done!” grunted Macon Hammerly. “But it’s been ten years and more now, ain’t it? Well! Howsomever, you let me keep this paper a spell and see if I can make anything out of it. I want to compare it with something I saw once--an’ had suspicions about.”

He bought no more eggs personally that day--and probably some of pullet size slipped by. Instead, when Ethel left him, he walked up into the business section of High Street and there, near the court-house, went into the office of Alfred Gainor, who, as Mr. Mestinger’s chief clerk, had fallen heir to most of his clients and their business when the older attorney died.

Mr. Mestinger had been the legal adviser of Israel Diller and had drawn the latter’s will.