Читать книгу Duskin (Musaicum Romance Classics) - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 3

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Carol Berkley was still at work in the inner office when the men arrived.

Her fingers flew along the keys of her typewriter with the maximum of speed. She did not even hesitate nor glance at her watch as she heard the office boy seating the two visitors in the outer office and telling them that Mr. Fawcett was expected any minute now, that he never stayed out later than half past two for lunch.

She had been working at top speed since nine o’clock that morning. Her head swam and little black dots danced before her eyes. For Carol had been up late the night before finishing a dress to take away with her on her vacation, and she had risen at five o’clock that morning to put the last things in her trunk and lock it before she went to the office. She was planning to leave on the Bar Harbor Express that night.

It was to be the first real vacation she had had in five years, the dream of her life coming true. Two whole weeks to lie in the sand and watch the rocks and the sea, a fine hotel in which to stay, and two friends to go with her. She was keyed up to the point of intensity with the thought of it all.

But these letters must be finished before she left, vacation or no vacation. And there were so many of them! It was like Mr. Fawcett to give her a lot of extra work on her last afternoon, as if he would force a whole two weeks’ work into a single morning’s dictation.

Mr. Fawcett, too, was going away, and was of course anxious to get these important letters off before he left.

He was a hard master. Carol felt almost a tangible dislike for him as she drove her weary fingers on. He had been unbearable for the last three weeks. The old grouch! Of course he was worried about his business, for things were in a critical condition, but he didn’t have to be such a bear. It wasn’t her fault that he had gotten himself tied up in a contract that he wasn’t going to be able to pull off.

These thoughts hung around her like an atmosphere, depressing her.

There were still several pages of notes to be transcribed into the neat, accurate letters for which she had earned a reputation. Her fingers ached and her head whirled, but she made no mistakes as page after page was reeled off and laid in its immaculate mahogany box ready for Mr. Fawcett’s signature. She was giving her entire attention to her work, for she was deeply conscientious and she realized that these letters contained the crux of all the financial difficulties which the Fawcett Construction Company was now facing. Within a few weeks the issue, which was being discussed in some of these letters, would have to be fought out to a finish, and it would mean a finish to the Fawcett Construction Company if things did not turn their way.

Not that she would care personally.

It would mean that she would lose her job of course, and her unusually good salary; but there were others as good. It might be a wise thing to go to a new place. She was dreadfully tired of the little inner office and Caleb Fawcett’s daily grouches. She longed inexpressibly for cheerful surroundings.

She was just beginning a letter to Philip Duskin, the young construction engineer of a large office building they were putting up in a western state.

The building was contracted for a certain date, and there would be a tremendous amount of money forfeited if it was not done on time. Carol knew that this money would make all the difference between a pleasant margin and absolute insolvency for the Fawcett Construction Company, and she felt that the vitriolic sentences which Caleb Fawcett had framed that morning out of the bitterness of his anxiety were none too keen for the young man who seemed, as far as she could judge by the correspondence, to be allowing himself in the most inane and idiotic ways to be held up at every turn. And by such trifles! Rivets and paint and the like! Why hadn’t he ordered his rivets in time? Why had he put the paint where it could be stolen? Stolen! The idea of a lot of cans of paint being stolen when they had been carefully locked into a room the night before! And even if they were, why didn’t he get more paint, when so much was at stake, instead of writing a whining letter two weeks after it happened complaining of his bad luck? And still persisting in that futile reiteration that in spite of it all they would have the building done in time.

And then that notion that he kept insinuating, that there must be an enemy somewhere working against them! Stuff and nonsense! He must be a reader of dime novels or a fan of the movies! Things like that didn’t happen in these sane, modern times. Why would the Fawcett Construction Company have an enemy? They were an old, respectable firm. The man must be a fool to try to put over such a silly idea on his employer. She had no patience with him anyway. As if a full-grown man couldn’t look after a little paint and get rivets elsewhere even if the first lot ordered had gone astray in delivery.

There was another thing, too. Why did his men continually leave him? That surely showed he was not a good boss. There must be something radically wrong about him. If Mr. Fawcett would ask her, she would suggest that they fire him and get a new construction engineer, one they could trust. No wonder Fawcett looked so worried. It was plain to be seen that this Duskin was utterly inadequate. Surely there must be other men whom they had tried out who could take his place at an hour’s notice and save the day, even late as it was.

But perhaps that was what Fawcett was going to do when he got out there. He was not a man who talked much, behind those shaggy eyebrows and those close-compressed, hard lips. Perhaps he had reason to think that this Duskin himself was the enemy he talked about. Perhaps it was Duskin who had stolen the paint and lost the rivets on purpose. Or very likely he had loafed on the job and knew it wasn’t going to get done on time, and so was preparing excuses for himself beforehand.

She bit the words out on the typewriter with sharp clicks of her fingers, as if by punching the letter keys harder she could give more force to the unpleasant sentences of which she felt no doubt the young man was fully deserving. Why, here he was not only holding up the building for the people who were in a hurry for it and engendering disaster for the Fawcett Construction Company, as well as hurting his own future career by his careless and criminal inefficiency, but he was causing numberless other smaller troubles. Here was even herself being held up from her long-anticipated holiday to write this letter.

Then suddenly she was startled by hearing the name she had just written at the head of her letter, pronounced in furtive syllables in the next room!

“Philip Duskin ”

Her fingers paused for an instant and she looked up, her attention drawn to the blurred shadow of the two men in the outer office thrown across the ground glass partition. One was tall and thin with a hawk nose and very little chin, giving his profile at certain angles as he turned his head to talk with his companion something of the outline of a fox’s face. The other was short and fat, with full lips and baggy eyes, and sneered as he talked.

“That Phil Duskin has got his price, you know! I’ve pretty neatly proved that!” insinuated the voice of the short, fat man.

The typewriter Carol was using was one of the so-called “noiseless” type, and the partition of the inner office was only head-high, a mahogany and ground glass affair, which did little else but screen off one corner of the room. It was quite possible to hear everything that went on in the outer office, even when the keys of her typewriter were clicking at full speed.

For an instant, however, her hands paused, poised above the keyboard, a look of startled question on her face, and then as the importance of the words and the furtiveness of the tone impressed her as something that needed investigation, she suddenly slid back into rhythm and began to write again, easily keeping up with the somewhat detached conversation on the other side of the partition.

As the minutes went by and the clock on the outer desk showed half past two, and then quarter to three, and still the president of the Fawcett Construction Company had not arrived, the visitors hitched their chairs closer together and, it happened, a few inches nearer to the partition, and became more confidential.

Carol forgot that there were still letters to be finished before her employer returned, forgot that her trunk was locked and waiting and that she yet had a few purchases to make at the stores, forgot that the rocks and the sand and the excellent hotel awaited her, forgot everything except that she must take down every word that these two men on the other side of the partition were saying. It might and it might not have any bearing on the case of Philip Duskin, but her conscience would not let her leave the words unwitnessed. When Mr. Fawcett came in she would show them to him, and then he could rave at her if he liked for not having completed the most important letter of all. At least raving was the most he could do and a few minutes more would finish the notes. There were only two more brief letters besides this one and her day’s work was done.

The men were mentioning other names now and chuckling quietly over things that had happened. Carol Berkley wondered whether after all the Fawcett Construction Company did have an enemy, as the young construction engineer suggested. But what could possibly be their object? Duskin’s name figured largely in their talk.

“We could afford to divvy up again,” they murmured. And they mentioned sums in hundreds of thousands that filled the girl with awe. These must be crooks on a grand scale and Duskin in with them, or else she had mightily misinterpreted what they were saying. Her fingers flew faster, and she was not missing anything they said. Under cover of the steady click of the “silent” little rhythm they grew bold and talked more freely.

“Well, it’ll be all over but the shoutin’ in another month or so,” declared one of the men, shoving his chair back with a grinding noise. “Say, when is that bird comin’? You don’t suppose he’s holdin’ us up on purpose, do you? I got a date to play pool with a friend at half past. Better step out and scout around. Mebbe the old bird is out there somewhere!”

Both chairs scraped on the floor now as if the two men had risen. Carol could only see the shadow of the two, a tall, gaunt one with a hawk nose and a short, thick one with a bald spot on his head. One lock stuck up grotesquely as he turned his profile toward the glass for an instant and pouted out a baggy pair of lips above a baggy pair of chins.

Carol paused, quickly drew the sheet of paper from the machine, and dropped it into a drawer beside her. Suppose they should open her door to see if Mr. Fawcett was in there and see Philip Duskin’s name at the top of her letter!

She slipped a new sheet of paper into the roller and adjusted it, trying to summon her senses to a keener alertness.

Quickly she turned to the next letter and began to write. But before she had finished the date she was startled by someone in the outer office calling her name excitedly.

“Miss Berkley, Miss Berkley, where are you? Come quick! There’s been an accident. Mr. Fawcett’s hurt. They’re bringing him up here. They want you to phone for the doctor!”

She was on her feet in an instant, but even as she opened the door her eye took in the two men and identified them. The short, stout one with the bagging eyes and lips had been the one who said that Philip Duskin had his price!

She sprang to Mr. Fawcett’s telephone and called up a doctor, found out where he was at the hospital, capably called the hospital, and arranged to have him come at once. Then she turned to the big leather divan and cleared it. Among other things was an open traveling bag showing a bundle of papers and a checkbook on the top. How careless Mr. Fawcett was sometimes! She snapped the bag shut and swept all the other things into a corner of the room. She plumped up the leather pillows and then turned on the two visitors who were watching her with significant looks at each other and an appearance of waiting to be in on whatever was about to happen.

“It would be better for you to go outside and wait in the other room,” she said to them coldly. “The doctor will want quiet in here. I will let you know later if Mr. Fawcett will be able to see you.”

She stepped to the door and swung it open.

They hesitated.

“We’re here by appointment!” the tall man said with an ugly look like the snarl of a dog that had been denied a bone.

Carol, haughty in her consciousness of what she had just heard him say, pointed briefly.

“You can wait out there on that bench!”

Reluctantly, the two obeyed her, but as the elevator clashed its door open and the men from the general office came slowly bringing their burden between them, she saw the two visitors approach the aisle down which the little procession must come and stretch their necks to see. Carol felt like telephoning for the police and having them removed, only that there was no time now to bother with mere criminals. There was need for her instant ministrations.

The president of the Fawcett Construction Company had fainted with the pain of being carried into his office. His gray hair fell back from his furrowed forehead, and the sour lines of his lips sagged wearily. One big-knuckled hand that had always been so vigorous in its impatient gestures hung limply down at his side as they carried him.

Carol was efficiency itself. She sent the office boy flying down to the drugstore for smelling salts; she brought water from the cooler and produced a clean, folded handkerchief to bathe his face and lips. She adjusted the pillows and started the electric fan.

The doctor came almost immediately, but the injured man’s eyes had opened wonderingly, just before he came, and looked around the office uncomprehendingly and then intelligently.

“I’m quite all right!” he snapped. “I’ve got to go in a few minutes. Have you got those letters done, Miss Berkley? If you’ll bring them I can sign them while I lie here and rest a minute. It was that cursed car ran into us. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

His voice tailed off weakly and he almost faded out again, but the doctor knelt by his side and wafted something pungent before his face.

“You’re all right, Mr. Fawcett,” he said in his cool voice. “Steady, there, steady! I wouldn’t sign any letters just now. Let them wait a bit till I see what you’ve done to yourself.”

“But I’ve got to!” demanded Fawcett excitedly, trying to raise his head and failing miserably. “I’m going to leave on the six o’clock train, and those letters must be signed!”

“Steady there, my dear fellow! There’s plenty of time. And you’re not going to leave on any train, not today. I’m sorry, but you’ve got a little vacation coming to you, friend, and I’m afraid you’ve got to take it in bed this time.”

“But I can’t, Doctor, I tell you I can’t! I’m in a position of trust, you know; this whole company depends on me, and it will mean heavy loss irretrievable loss if I don’t go at once and straighten things out.”

“I’m sorry, old fellow, but I’ll have to tell you the truth. You’ve broken the fibula near your knee and you’re very badly bruised, perhaps internally. It might mean the loss of your leg if you attempted to take a journey now, even if it were possible for you to get around on it.”

“Then I can get a wooden leg!” snapped Fawcett impatiently. “Leg or no leg, I’ve got to go.”

“It might even mean the loss of your life, Fawcett,” said the doctor more gravely now.

“Then at least I’d die honorably. Let me up! There are no bones broken. I know. I stood up by myself for a whole minute after the car was righted. I couldn’t have done that if my leg was broken. I’m going to get up right now. Please, all of you get out of my office; I’ve got work to do! Miss Berkley, have you brought those letters?”

He attempted to sit up and sank back suddenly with a moan. The doctor laid a firm hand on his patient.

“Now see here, sir!” he said in a tone which people did not lightly disobey. “I’m in command here. You’re my patient and I’m going to be obeyed. Miss Berkley, will you telephone Mrs. Fawcett? This man should be in the hospital right now. He’ll be getting a fever.”

“No! No! Don’t call my wife!” said Fawcett weakly. “I tell you I’ve got to go! The devil will be to pay it is now somebody’s got to get out there and stop it. Nobody else understands it.”

“That’s all right!” soothed the doctor, taking out a little vial and dropping some dark liquid into the glass of water that Carol brought. “I guess we’ll find somebody else to send. You can give them careful directions. We’ll see that everything is attended to all right, my dear fellow. There’ll be somebody ”

“There’s nobody!” thundered the injured man. “Nobody knows anything about it but myself! Miss Berkley, you tell him. Make him understand that it is imperative for me to go. Tell him nobody knows the situation.”

“Oh, you can easily explain the situation,” said the doctor lightly. “I’m sure I can find a dozen people willing to help you out just now, and when you get nicely settled in the hospital and feeling comfortable and have had a little nap and a little nourishment you can have a brief talk and give all directions.”

“But I don’t want anybody to know. I couldn’t possibly explain the situation Oh h h!”

The helpless, angry tears were beginning to course down the strong old bear’s cheeks. He was actually looking at his pretty, young secretary as if he was a troubled little boy and Carol Berkley was his mother.

What was it in his look that suddenly made summer breezes and rocks and sand and excellent hotels recede entirely from the picture and gave Carol Berkley strength for a sudden resolve? Something in the pleading, angry eyes of her impatient old tyrant had actually tugged at her heartstrings or was it that she was possessed of knowledge that he did not have and which would have made him all the more troubled and anxious to go himself? She did not stop to consider. She stepped forward.

“Mr. Fawcett,” she said in a cool little voice that surprised herself, for every nerve was throbbing with a particular jangle of its own and her head felt light and whirly, “Mr. Fawcett I know all about things! Couldn’t I go out there and do what you want done? I think I understand everything.”

He turned from his boyish tears and became a man again, a bitter, old, cross tyrant.

“You!” he said, contemptuously. “How could a woman possibly do what I have to do?”

Carol laughed.

“I’ll go,” she said, still calmly. “I think I know what’s to be done. If I can’t make that man hurry up and do his work in time, I’ll fire him and get another engineer.”

He stared at her blankly, the actual practicality of her words bringing him to see that she was not altogether devoid of sense.

“But we have a contract with him ” he objected, his brow drawing again into its accustomed frown.

“I know,” she said, “but if he hasn’t kept his part of that ”

A twinge of pain brought a sudden ghastly whiteness.

“Now, look here,” said the doctor fiercely, “this thing has to stop! Whether this young woman goes or whether she doesn’t go doesn’t matter to me. This man has got to get quiet or he’ll have a fever before I can do anything for him. Young woman, if there’s anything you think ought to be done, do it, and say no more about it. Get ready to go, and when Mr. Fawcett feels better perhaps he can talk with you for five minutes”

“Oh,” broke in the impatient patient, “I’ve got to go myself!”

“Now look here, Caleb,” broke in a calm, commanding voice, as Mrs. Fawcett suddenly loomed up beside the couch, a comfortably stout little woman with a face that had been pretty once and a mouth grown gentle by long practice of living with a pettish tyrant, “you know that’s nonsense. You know you’re not fit to go anywhere, and what’s the use of pretending any longer that you are? You’ve got to the point at last where you have to lie still and take orders, and you might as well do it pleasantly. Doctor, what hospital is it you want him to go to?”

Like magic, things fell into order. The quiet, stout little woman with the placid mouth took command, and Caleb like a lamb protested no more.

When the doctor had completed his examination and given his verdict, Carol was called once more to the couch to confer with her boss. Before she came, however, she beckoned to the doctor and asked him a question privately.

“Doctor, something has come to my knowledge since Mr. Fawcett left the office this morning which quite materially changes some aspects of the business. Would it be right to tell him this? Or mustn’t he be disturbed?”

“Are they of a disturbing nature?”

“I’m afraid they are.” Carol looked troubled.

“Is there anybody else in the firm in whom you could confide?”

“Only Mr. Edgar Fawcett, his brother, and he is in Europe this summer.”

“Do you think you could cope with the situation yourself? Do you know all there is to know about it?”

“I think so… .” Carol hesitated. “I’ve written all the letters; still, there will be great loss to the business involved if ”

“The business be hanged! Excuse me, Miss Berkley, but my patient has had a great shock. I doubt if the fracture he has sustained is the worst of his troubles. If he has anything more to worry about than he has now I can’t answer for his life. You’ll have to do the best you can and let it go at that. But mind you, you make him think everything’s going fine!”

“But those letters ” Fawcett was protesting faintly as Carol came back to the office. “They’ve got to be signed!”

“That’s all right,” said Carol brightly. “I’ll type them all with the company’s signature and put your name under, as president. I’ll fix that up. Nobody will notice it isn’t as usual. I suppose, though, you’ll have to give me power to act in your stead. I’ve written this. I think it’s what you wrote for me once before when you were away in Maine.”

She handed him a paper, neatly typed, which would answer as her credential, and put his fountain pen in his hand.

He seemed somehow to take heart at the sight of the businesslike sentences. After all, he had trained her, and she was an unusually good secretary. But how would she do when she was on her own? He drew a long sigh that seemed to be rent from the depths of his soul. How could a mere slip of a woman take his place?

“The papers are there in the top of my bag.” He motioned toward the corner where she had put his things. “You’ll find my wallet in the safe with money and tickets. I have reservations for the six o’clock train. Can you make it?”

“Yes of course,” she said crisply. “My bag is all packed, you know.” She smiled, and he suddenly remembered, and his face went blank. Perhaps he was not such a heartless old bear after all.

“Your vacation!” he said. “You can’t go! You mustn’t go of course! I had forgotten.”

“Nonsense!” said Carol with a quick gulp of renunciation in her throat. “What’s a mere vacation? One can have that any time.”

As if she hadn’t been waiting for hers a whole lifetime! For the rocks and the sand and the excellent hotel and her pretty new clothes faultless they were, for she had been working on them all winter and the two friends But what folly!

“You want me to go straight to the building itself and find out with my own eyes just how far things have progressed?” she said in a businesslike voice. “And this Mr. Duskin why shouldn’t I carry this letter to him instead and tell him you sent me? Of course, I know you were intending to stop over in Chicago and expected the letter to get there ahead of you, but that won’t be necessary now, will it? I can wire the Chicago people to meet me at the station with the papers and ask those questions you had me write out. That will save a whole day.”

He looked at her wonderingly. She did know what she was doing even if she was only a woman, and a young, pretty one at that.

After all he found he needed to give her very few directions. Armed with money, tickets, reservations, and the other necessary papers, she stood aside as the orderlies from the ambulance came to take her employer downstairs, and her eyes filled with unaccountable tears.

“Good-bye!” said Fawcett, suddenly rousing and putting out his hand quite humanly. “I know it’s a raw deal for you. It’s pretty nervy of you to offer to go, but I suppose really the game’s up!” He dropped back with a strange hopeless expression as if the worst had come.

“Oh, no!” cried Carol brightly, suddenly anxious to lift that burden from his tired face. “The game’s not up at all. I’m in it to win! You’ll see me coming back with flying colors to help you get well!”

He cast a sudden, unexpected smile up at her, strangely sweet on the harsh old face that was gray with pain now, as if he had cast away all pretenses.

“Good-bye, little girl,” he said gently. “Thank you!”

They carried him out on a stretcher to the elevator. The doctor lingered an instant.

“You’re a good little sport!” he said. “Keep the wires hot with comforting messages home and we’ll pull him through. Let me know if you have any difficulties, and if you need to ask him any questions, wire them to me, not to him! I can keep my mouth shut as well as the next one, so you needn’t be afraid.”

They were off, and suddenly Carol felt very old and sorry, as if she were going to cry, and very much weighted down with care and responsibility. Here but an hour before she had been reviling Mr. Fawcett for being cross and bearish and hard, though all the time she knew he was carrying an immense burden, and now here she was with the tables turned, her vacation gone, and in its place Mr. Fawcett’s burden thrust without warning upon her young shoulders. And besides that burden, she carried new knowledge that she had overheard from the two men. Then suddenly she remembered them and looked around for them, but the office boy said they were gone.

As Carol turned to go back to her inner office, she heard the elevator stop on its way up, but she did not turn back to see who was getting off.

Later, when she came out with a sheaf of papers for the treasurer, she had a vague impression of two figures, one tall and one short, moving along in the far end of the big room, but when she passed her hand over her eyes wearily and looked again there was no one in the room but the regular men at their desks, hard at work as usual.

If there were only someone to whom she might turn now for a strong word of guidance and encouragement before she went out alone on this strange, wild errand! Or, perhaps if she knew God, the way her mother did, it might help. She felt strangely alone.