CHAPTER XVI

THE CLOUDS THICKEN

News of the first raid against American troops in the trenches appeared in the newspapers. There were but three deaths and a few captured and missing; but the fact that a part of the American contingent had been really in action could not fail to fire the imagination and swell patriotic hearts on this side of the ocean.

But to Ethel, when she read, the three stark bodies laid to rest on November the fourth in a little French village far back of the lines loomed a more important thing than all else. To her troubled mind it was only pitiful--not great--that a French general should, standing at salute beside those graves, say: “In the name of France, I thank you. God receive your souls. Farewell!” Nor did it bring aught but tears to her eyes to read the translation of the inscription put at the foot of these graves:

“Here lie the first soldiers of the great Republic of the United States who died on the soil of France for Justice and Liberty, November 3, 1917.”

No. She could not yet feel the exaltation of spirit that had seized Frank Barton and thousands of others in these early months of the war. She had begun to feel her duty toward it, but she deplored the fact of war and could not yet believe in the necessity for it.

It was all a horrid nightmare. The shocking fact that men were being shot down, killed or maimed, still usurped all other thought regarding it in her mind. Even Frank Barton’s letter, in which he pictured the conditions in France and something of what he had already seen of the effect of the German invasion, inspired Ethel with nothing but fear for his safety.

He should be back in Mailsburg and at his desk in the Hapwood-Diller Company offices. That is the way she saw it. And especially now, for Ethel felt that there was some underhand work going on that she could not fathom.

Since taking the Kimberly Binding Company schedule to Mr. Hammerly she had heard nothing from the grain merchant. Nor had she seen him. But Mr. Grandon Fuller came to confer with Jim Mayberry one day, and when the latter sent out for Ethel to come into the private office the girl intuitively knew that immediate trouble was brewing.

But she entered the room with perfect composure. Fuller, lounging in his chair, looked at her with heavily lidded eyes. He left the talking at first to Mayberry, and the latter was brusk indeed.

“Where’s that specification sheet of the Kimberly order, Ethel?”

“There is a copy of it attached to the report made for the Board, Mr. Mayberry,” she said quietly.

“I want the original. I can’t find it on file,” snapped Mayberry.

“I do not know where it is,” she told him quite promptly.

“What! You don’t know whether it is in the office or not?”

“It is not in the office at present. Where it is I do not know. But the copy is exact. Isn’t that sufficient?”

“You know well enough it isn’t what I want,” said the superintendent roughly. “You are taking too much upon yourself, Ethel. You gave that paper to Hammerly.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” she asked.

“Let me tell you that he isn’t manager here----”

“Nor are you, Mr. Mayberry. I prefer not to be spoken to in this manner. I saw no reason to refuse Mr. Hammerly permission to examine the paper. If Mr. Fuller had asked for it I should have considered it quite proper to hand it to him.”

She knew well enough by the expression upon the stockholder’s countenance that she had hit the bull’s-eye. But Mayberry, red-faced and blustering, declared:

“You usurp too much power here, Ethel. It has annoyed me before. I may not be manager in name; but if I can’t be boss of the works without a girl’s interference, I’ll throw up the job entirely.”

“No! Don’t say that, Mayberry!” interposed Fuller significantly. “Wait until the Board meets again. We will see then.”

“You get that paper--get it at once!” ordered Mayberry in his very ugliest tone. “And don’t let another private paper of this company go out of the office--do you hear?”

“I am not deaf, Mr. Mayberry,” she said tartly. “You need not roar at me.”

“Who are you working for, young woman?” Grandon Fuller asked, but in a moderate voice. “The Hapwood-Diller Company, or Macon Hammerly?”

“_I_ am working for the company,” she said with significance.

“You will not be for long,” growled Mayberry. “Get that schedule back from old Hammerly----”

“You will have to ask him for it, Mr. Mayberry,” she said. “If that is all you called me in for, I have plenty to do outside,” and she walked out of the private office.

Ethel was quite sure that she could make herself no more disliked than she was already by both the superintendent and the principal stockholder. But whatever came of the incident she proposed to keep her self-respect. She would not allow any one to bully her.

It was open war now, however, between Jim Mayberry and herself. When Mr. Fuller had gone the angry superintendent strode out to her desk. He took no pains to smother his rage or his voice when he spoke to her.

“You’ll learn mighty soon, Ethel, that Frank Barton has lost his influence in this concern--and there’ll be no come back, either. He’s gone for good, whether the fool dodges a bullet or a bit of shrapnel or not. He’s through here.

“And so you will be, and that very soon, if you don’t take a different tone here. I may lack power to discharge you right now, but I shan’t lack that power long. Then we’ll have a house cleaning,” and he glared over the office as though he felt the enmity of Ethel’s desk-mates.

“Going to clean up for fair, are you, Jim?” asked Sydney, who felt secure in his position, for he had been bookkeeper for the Hapwood-Diller Company when the present superintendent was merely a boy in one of the shops. “You’ll have your hands full if you intend to run both the offices and the shops, won’t you?”

“I’ll show you as well as this blame girl----”

Benway Chase slipped down from his stool and started toward the superintendent. Ethel stood up, her own hands clenched and her eyes aflame.

“As long as I _am_ at work here, Mr. Mayberry, I refuse to be insulted and browbeaten by you. If you have any instructions for me, let me hear them. I don’t wish to hear anything else.”

Mayberry stamped out of the room. Mabel Skinner gave three cheers under her breath.

“Oh, Miss Clayton! Ain’t you lovely! I’d have slapped his face!” she added in approval.

This brought a laugh, and the office quickly simmered down. But Ethel knew the matter was not ended. She could not help feeling worried about the future. If Jim Mayberry had his way she would soon be out of a situation.

Then at home her mother was forever talking about the decreasing value of the Hapwood-Diller shares. She heard of other friends selling out their stock at low prices.

She set her lips more firmly and refused to believe that disaster threatened the concern that Frank Barton had all but sweated blood to put on a paying basis. Yet there were signs enough that affairs were not as they should be. There were little breakdowns in the machinery that never happened before. One shop was closed for two days and the work fell behind thereby. The profit was sliced completely from one job, she knew, because of these handicaps.

And she was helpless to avert these crippling accidents, nor could she point out who was at fault. Certainly there was no happening wherein she could honestly accuse Mayberry of guiltiness, no matter how much she may have believed him to be at the bottom of the trouble.

He had a good and valid excuse to offer the Board of Directors when that body should investigate these petty affairs. Naturally he could not give his attention so closely to the workmen as before. The foremen ran their several departments more to suit themselves than when Mayberry did not have to do two men’s work. It began to be remarked by high and low alike that Jim Mayberry could not be expected to be both superintendent and manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company!

And these whispers pointed to but one thing: The appointment of another superintendent and the establishment of Mayberry in Frank Barton’s place. The situation grew more and more difficult.

The possible end of these things troubled Ethel daily and hourly. Not so much that she feared losing her own position. That would be sad, but not a catastrophe.

Her main thought was for the future of the Hapwood-Diller Company. There was a conspiracy against the concern. Who fathered the traitorous design, and the object of it, she did not know. Jim Mayberry might be only a tool, for, with Macon Hammerly, Ethel considered the superintendent a weakling after all.

She doubted and feared Grandon Fuller. Yet he was the largest stockholder in the concern--or his wife was, and he managed his wife’s affairs. Surely it could not be pleasing to him to see the shares of the company falling in the open market.

These matters were really outside of Ethel Clayton’s province. Yet they would have been vitally troubling to Frank Barton were he at home and in charge of affairs. And Ethel felt herself to be on watch for him.

If she might only confer with him! If she could tell him her suspicions and reveal to him her worry over the Hapwood-Diller Company! This longing obsessed her.

Arriving at home one evening rather early she saw, before reaching the gate, a stranger leaving the premises. He was a small, black-haired man who walked briskly away from the Clayton cottage. Her mother met her at the door.

“He’s been here again, Ethel!” she exclaimed tragically when her daughter ran up the steps.

“Who has been here?”

“That Schuster. The lawyer who wants to buy our shares of stock. But he won’t give us but sixty now. My dear! I am afraid something dreadful is going to happen.”

“There’s something going to happen to him!” ejaculated the girl with emphasis. “Is that he yonder--that little runt?”

“Yes. And he said--”

But Ethel was down the steps and out of the gate without listening to further particulars. She saw the man turn the corner and walk quickly toward the car line. There was a path across the open fields past Benway Chase’s house that brought one more quickly to the car tracks. Ethel went this way.

“It’s the only thing to do,” she told herself. “The only thing to do.”

She was much disturbed in mind, and her course of action was by no means exactly clear to her, just yet. But she was doing some quick thinking.

Ordinarily she would not have minded had she met Benway, but now she did not want to stop to talk, and so watched her chance to slip past the house unobserved.

“Perhaps he’d try to help me, but I guess I don’t want his assistance,” she reasoned.

She almost ran the distance. While yet some rods from the car line, she saw a car bowling along but a short block away. She waved her hand frantically.

The motorman was not looking her way, and consequently did not see her. Then she called to him, and he braked up in a hurry.

“Always willing to accommodate the ladies,” he remarked with a grin.

She was already aboard the car, therefore, when the lawyer swung himself up on the step and entered. There were several passengers and he gave nobody more than a cursory glance. Therefore (and Ethel was glad of the fact) he did not know her or suspect her identity.

There was a scheme afoot either to ruin the Hapwood-Diller Company, or, more probably, to “freeze out” the smaller stockholders. Of this the girl was confident. She believed A. Schuster was doing the secret work for the plotters, and it might be that, if she trailed him, she could learn just who it was who was at the bottom of this dastardly conspiracy.

If Frank Barton were here, and possessed her knowledge of affairs and her suspicions, would he not do the same? She believed so, and she believed the situation called her to the task.