CHAPTER XIX

UNCERTAINTIES

Had Ethel Clayton known how deep in wild adventure Barton was as she rode down town in the surface car watching the little lawyer, she would have been utterly disgruntled at the tameness of her quest.

Yet it was with thought of Barton in her mind, as well as of her own personal interest and that of her mother’s, that the girl forged on. She believed that a conspiracy was on foot the intent of which was the ruining of the business structure Frank Barton had labored so hard to build and make secure. He had made the Hapwood-Diller Company a going concern. Somebody was now determined to make abortive all the general manger’s work and, as well, to ruin the smaller stockholders.

Who that somebody was Ethel was not certain, although she had strong suspicions. She believed A. Schuster to be the link connecting her suspicions with the truth. She sat quietly in the car and did not even glance his way after her first hasty appreciation of the man when he had entered.

In front of the Bellevue he left the car, but Ethel went on to the next crossing before alighting. She hurried back. Under the bunch of electric lights before the main door of the hotel she saw A. Schuster pass in.

She had expected this. Both Mr. Grandon Fuller and Jim Mayberry she knew to be habitués of the hotel. There was a public dining-room at one side of the front door and the lobby and office were on the other, with the smoking-room and café back of the clerk’s desk.

Ethel had already made up her mind what she would do in this emergency. She mounted the broad steps briskly and crossed the lobby toward the small ladies’ parlor behind the stairway. A glance to the right showed her the black-haired lawyer approaching the desk.

In one chair lounged the pursy Mr. Fuller. He vouchsafed Schuster no more than a glance. But Jim Mayberry, coming from the smoking-room, hailed the lawyer affably:

“Hi, old man! going to have supper with me? Come on upstairs while I get into my best bib and tucker for the evening.”

He clapped Schuster heartily on the shoulder and led him away toward the little elevator that wheezed upward asthmatically the next moment. Neither had looked at Grandon Fuller nor he at them.

This fact was sufficient to have made Ethel Clayton suspicious had she not been so before. Jim Mayberry was always so very polite and deferential to Mr. Fuller when the latter appeared at the factory offices. It seemed now as though the superintendent of the Hapwood-Diller Company had ignored the presence of the chief stockholder too obviously.

Ethel passed hastily on to the parlor; but nothing of this had escaped her quick eye and understanding. In the parlor she found a girl in cap and apron whom she knew. It was Eliza Boling, who presided over the linen room of the hotel and acted as a sort of floor clerk on the third floor. Ethel had gone to school with the girl.

“Oh, Ethel! come up to my desk so we can talk,” cried Miss Boling, when she caught sight of Miss Clayton. “I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age.”

Ethel was nothing loath under the circumstances, and ran upstairs with her. The slowly moving elevator had scarcely more than deposited Jim Mayberry and the lawyer on the third floor. Ethel saw them approaching one of the doors.

“Isn’t that Mr. Mayberry?” she asked her acquaintance.

“Oh, I suppose it is,” replied the other girl without looking up. “Don’t let him speak to you. He’s so awfully fresh!”

“Is that his room?” Ethel asked.

“Number Eighty? Yes. And I wish it was on another floor.”

Eliza Boling was a somewhat attractive girl, and Ethel could understand easily that the superintendent of the Hapwood-Diller Company would have made himself objectionable to her.

The two girls talked of mutual friends and affairs of mutual interest for some time. Then the elevator door clanged again. Ethel looked quickly. The heavy figure of Mr. Grandon Fuller stepped out into the corridor. He did not glance toward the two girls.

Mr. Fuller walked straight to the door of Number Eighty. He rapped once and then entered the room. It was plain his coming was expected.

Ethel had seen enough to assure her that Fuller, Jim Mayberry, and the sly looking Schuster were engaged in something that they wished to keep secret from people in general.

She believed she had traced the conspirators. The reason for the largest stockholder of the Hapwood-Diller Company seeking to wreck that concern was, however, beyond Ethel Clayton’s powers of divination.

For that was exactly the threat of circumstances as the girl saw it. The forcing down of the price of Hapwood-Diller stock must in the end ruin the credit of the corporation. She went home vastly puzzled by the whole situation.

Her mother was utterly unstrung.

“Oh, Ethel, I feel terribly condemned!” she cried. “Where have you been? I wish you had come in earlier so as to hear that Mr. Schuster talk.”

“I don’t want to hear him talk,” declared her daughter.

“It seems to me, Ethel,” complained Mrs. Clayton, “that you are siding against me--against your own interests. I suppose you call that loyalty to your employer. But Frank Barton isn’t there at the offices any more. He never ought to have gone away. I am convinced of that now. The business is on its last legs. You know it is, but you won’t admit it.”

“I know nothing of the kind, Mother!” cried Ethel with exasperation. “Why, you talk about the Hapwood-Diller Company as these pro-Germans do about the war! And just as unreasonably.”

“What do you mean--calling your own mother a pro-German?” demanded Mrs. Clayton. “I guess I’m just as good a patriot as the next one--and I knit as many socks and sweaters, too!

“But about our shares of stock--that’s different. Since you’ve been away Amy Hopper’s been in and she’s sold her shares--she had ten--and has bought a Ford car. At least, she’s got something for her money, while we are likely to lose everything.”

Ethel was just completing her warmed-over supper, and under a steady dropping of her mother’s complaints, when the porch door banged open and Benway Chase rushed in.

“Goodness, Bennie, how you scared me!” Mrs. Clayton ejaculated. “Sit down and have a piece of pie--do!”

“No. But I’ll stand up and eat it--many thanks, Mrs. Clayton!” responded the young fellow, whipping the piece of pie off the plate she offered him and inserting it like a wedge into his mouth for the first bite. Somehow he managed to utter: “Fire at the factory, Ethel. Get on your hat and coat.”

“No! Benway?” she gasped, starting up.

“Surest thing you know! You can see the smoke from the street. I telephoned. It’s confined to Shop Four. The firemen are there. But let’s go down and see that nothing’s damaged around the offices.”

She ran for her coat and hat and they sallied forth, Benway swallowing the last of the pie as they cleared the gate. “Gee! but your mother does make good pie crust, Ethel,” he said.

His boyishness somehow troubled her more than it usually did just then. Perhaps because her own thoughts were so serious. He would make a good match for Mabel Skinner. He would never grow up enough for Ethel to consider him for a moment as a partner in life.

The fire was under control when the two young people reached the factory. Nor had it done much damage. Moreover, it was well covered with insurance; but the delay in work under way would be considerable.

“By jove!” said Benway, “the old H-D Company is up against it for fair. Everything is going wrong with it. You’d think the place was bewitched, wouldn’t you?”

“Hush! Let us not talk about such things. John says it was faulty insulation. But how came there to be faulty insulation in that shop? Somebody is guilty of criminal carelessness. Oh, I wish Frank Barton were here!”

This last wish she did not let Benway hear. And, indeed, what could Barton have done had he been on the spot? The Board of Directors met the next day and even Mr. Hammerly could find nobody to “jack up.”

The grain dealer was in a fine rage, however. The meeting was as acrimonious a session as had ever been held since the reorganization of the corporation. Ethel was only called into the room once and then Hammerly did not speak to her. And after the meeting he pulled his hat down over his ears and stamped out of the offices without a word.

She wondered what he had done with the paper she had given him--the specification sheet of the Kimberly Binding Company order. It seemed strange that he had never taken her into his confidence at all about that matter.

It leaked out in some way, however, after this meeting, that the old grain merchant was beaten by Grandon Fuller and his friends and that Jim Mayberry was likely to be made manager in Barton’s place at the next quarterly meeting. She had noticed that the superintendent left the Board meeting with a smile. He had given Ethel a hard look, and she was well aware of what awaited her in the near future if Mayberry had his way.

There was a streak of fair weather for her in a day or two, however. Another letter arrived from France, and this time it was not merely an impersonal narrative of the absent’s manager’s adventures in uniform. There was an intimate note to the missive that warmed Ethel’s heart to a glow. Yet she realized that not a phrase went beyond proper friendliness.

She read it all to the others in the office, although it was not just the same as his first letter had been. She did not let the sheets go out of her own hands, however. There was a personal atmosphere to it which made her fold the letter finally and hide it in her blouse. This betrayed a softness that would have angered Ethel had anybody accused her of it.

Other people heard about the letter, however, and she was stopped for several days upon the street by friends of Barton asking after him. Secretly she was proud that it was she whom he had selected as a correspondent among all those who knew and were interested in him here in Mailsburg.

Then Mrs. Trevor came to the office to see her. The boarding-house mistress who had housed and fed Frank Barton so long was a rather grim woman in an old-fashioned Paisley shawl and arctics. Her hands were red and gnarled and her back was as curveless as a ramrod.

When she strode into the Hapwood-Diller offices she was as stern as a grenadier. Her mere appearance quelled even Mabel Skinner. But when she came close to Ethel Clayton’s desk the girl saw that her eyelids were red-rimmed and that she had difficulty in keeping her lips from trembling.

“Miss Clayton--you’re Miss Clayton, ain’t you?” she began. “Ethel Clayton?”

“Yes,” agreed Ethel. “You are Mrs. Trevor?”

The woman nodded. Then said: “What do you know about Frank Barton? I hear you got a letter from him?”

“Yes, Mrs. Trevor.”

“When was it writ?”

Ethel told her, understanding too well to consider Mrs. Trevor at all impertinent. She told her most of what was in the letter, too, for it was burned into her memory too clearly for her to forget what Frank Barton had said.

“Well,” said the woman, with a sigh, “I had to know. I expect I’m an old fool. But that boy was with me long, Miss Clayton.”

“I think I understand,” the girl said gently.

“You see, I got to dreaming of him. Night afore last I had a terrible dream. I saw him with his face all bloody, his empty hands in the air--sort of clutching like--and him falling down just like he was dead. And there was smoke and fire all about, just as though he was in battle. It’s worried me a lot.”

“I should think it would, Mrs. Trevor,” Ethel said. “But you know, they say dreams go by contraries.”

“So they say, but I don’t know as it is always true. I’ve had dreams----”

“Oh, you mustn’t let dreams get on your nerves,” broke in Ethel hastily.

“Well, the dear boy meant so much to me. You can’t imagine what a good boarder he was--no trouble at all--leas’wise not alongside o’ some of ’em. Lordy! what a lot of trouble some of ’em do make, to be sure. But Frank Barton--he’s one boy out of a thousand, yes, he is;” and the old boarding-house mistress bobbed her head vigorously.

“You mustn’t worry. It will be all right, I’m sure,” answered the girl, but rather weakly.

“You feel sure, Miss Clayton?”

“You must look on the bright side. It will be all right.”

“Well, I hope so!” The woman then tramped out of the office. She was plainly relieved and comforted. But Ethel was not.

Of course she did not believe in dreams. But what Mrs. Trevor had said remained in the girl’s mind--stuck to her memory like a burr. She was constantly seeing Frank Barton falling down, his face masked in blood. She almost accepted Mrs. Trevor’s vision as prophetic.

Then came the day when the Mailsburg _Clarion_ printed an afternoon extra edition. Those in the office heard the boys shouting it under the windows and Benway Chase ran out to buy a paper. Across the sheet was the headline:

GERMAN AIR RAID ON AMERICAN CAMP! METEOR DIVISION BOMBED!

The Field Artillery with which Frank Barton served was a part of the so-styled Meteor Division.

Ethel Clayton realized this while the paper was still across the room from her. She sat perfectly still at her desk, clutching the edge of it to keep down the cry that rose to her lips.