EARLY in March Jimmy was again forced to part with his watch. As he was coming out of the pawn-shop late in the afternoon he almost collided with Little Eva.
"For the love of Mike!" cried that young lady, "where have you been all this time, and what's happened to you? You look as though you'd lost your last friend." And then noting the shop from which he had emerged and the deduction being all too obvious, she laid one of her shapely hands upon the sleeve of his cheap, ill-fitting coat. "You're up against it, kid, ain't you?" she asked.
"Oh, it's nothing," said Jimmy ruefully. "I'm getting used to it."
"I guess you're too square," said the girl. "I heard about that Brophy business." And then she laughed softly. "Do you know who the biggest backers of that graft were?"
"No," said Jimmy.
"Well, don't laugh yourself to death," she admonished. "They were Steve Murray and Feinheimer. Talk about sore pups! You never saw anything like it, and when they found who it was that had ditched their wonderful scheme they threw another fit. Say, those birds have been weeping on each other's shoulders ever since."
"Do you still breakfast at Feinheimer's?" asked Jimmy.
"Once in a while," said the girl, "but not so often now." And she dropped her eyes to the ground in what, in another than Little Eva, might have been construed as embarrassment. "Where you going now?" she asked quickly.
"To eat," said Jimmy, and then prompted by the instincts of his earlier training and without appreciable pause: "Won't you take dinner with me?"
"No," said the girl, "but you are going to take dinner with me. You're out of a job and broke, and the chances are you've just this minute hocked your watch, while I have plenty of money. No," she said as Jimmy started to protest, "this is going to be on me. I never knew how much I enjoyed talking with you at breakfast until after you had left Feinheimer's. I've been real lonesome ever since," she admitted frankly. "You talk to me different from what the other men do." She pressed his arm gently. "You talk to me, kid, just like a fellow might talk to his sister."
Jimmy didn't know just what rejoinder to make, and so he made none. As a matter of fact, he had not realized that he had said or done anything to win her confidence, nor could he explain his attitude toward her in the light of what he knew of her life and vocation. There is a type of man that respects and reveres womanhood for those inherent virtues which are supposed to be the natural attributes of the sex because in their childhood they have seen them exemplified in their mothers, their sisters and in the majority of women and girls who were parts of the natural environment of their early lives.
It is difficult ever entirely to shatter the faith of such men, and however they may be wronged by individuals of the opposite sex their subjective attitude toward woman in the abstract is one of chivalrous respects. As far as outward appearances were concerned Little Eva might have passed readily as a paragon of all the virtues. As yet, there was no sign nor line of dissipation marked upon her piquant face, nor in her consociation with Jimmy was there ever the slightest reference to or reminder of her vocation.
They chose a quiet and eminently respectable dining place, and after they had ordered, Jimmy spread upon the table an evening paper he had purchased upon the street.
"Help me find a job," he said to the girl, and together the two ran through the want columns.
"Here's a bunch of them," cried the girl laughingly, "all in one ad. Night cook, one hundred and fifty dollars; swing man, one hundred and forty dollars; roast cook, one hundred and twenty dollars; broiler, one hundred and twenty dollars. I'd better apply for that. Fry cook, one hundred and ten dollars. Oh, here's something for Steve Murray: chicken butcher, eighty dollars; here's a job I'd like," she cried, "ice-cream man, one hundred dollars."
"Quit your kidding," said Jimmy. "I'm looking for a job, not an acrostic."
"Well," she said, "here are two solid pages of them, but nobody seems to want a waiter. What else can you do?" she asked, smiling up at him.
"I can drive a milk-wagon," said Jimmy, "but the drivers are all on strike."
"Now, be serious," she announced. "Let's look for something really good. Here's somebody wants a finishing superintendent for a string music instrument factory, and a business manager and electrical
engineer in this one. What's an efficiency expert?"
"Oh, he's a fellow who gums up the works, puts you three weeks behind in less than a week and has all your best men resigning inside of a month. I know, because my dad had one at his plant a few years ago."
The girl looked at him for a moment.
"Your father is a business man?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer, "Why don't you work for him?"
It was the first reference that Jimmy had ever made to his connections or his past.
"Oh," he said, "he's a long way off and--if I'm no good to any one here I certainly wouldn't be any good to him."
His companion made no comment, but resumed her reading of the advertisement before her:
WANTED, an Efficiency Expert-- Machine works wants man capable of thoroughly reorganizing large business along modern lines, stopping leaks and systematizing every activity. Call International Machine Company, West Superior Street. Ask for Mr. Compton.
"What do you have to know to be an efficiency expert?" asked the girl,
"From what I saw of the bird I just mentioned the less one knows about anything the more successful he should be as an efficiency expert, for he certainly didn't know anything. And yet the results from kicking everybody in the plant out of his own particular rut eventually worked wonders for the organization. If the man had any sense, tact or diplomacy nothing would have been accomplished."
"Why don't you try it?" asked the girl.
Jimmy looked at her with a quizzical smile. "Thank you," he said.
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," she cried. "But from what you tell me I imagine that all a man needs is a front and plenty of punch. You've got the front all right with your looks and gift of gab, and I leave it to Young Brophy if you haven't got the punch."
"Maybe that's not the punch an efficiency expert needs," suggested Jimmy.
"It might be a good thing to have up his sleeve," replied the girl, and then suddenly, "do you believe in hunches?"
"Sometimes," replied Jimmy.
"Well, this is a hunch, take it from me," she continued. "I'll bet you can land that job and make good."
"What makes you think so?" asked Jimmy.
"I don't know," she replied, "but you know what a woman's intuition is."
"I suppose," said Jimmy, "that it's the feminine of hunch. But however good your hunch or intuition may be it would certainly get a terrible jolt if I presented myself to the head of the International Machine Company in this scenery. Do you see anything about my clothes that indicates efficiency?"
"It isn't your clothes that count, Jimmy," she said, "it's the combination of that face of yours and what you've got in your head. You're the most efficient looking person I ever saw, and if you want a reference I'll say this much for you, you're the most efficient waiter that Feinheimer ever had. He said so himself, even after he canned you."
"Your enthusiasm," said Jimmy, "is contagious. If it wasn't for these sorry rags of mine I'd take a chance on that hunch of yours."
The girl laid her hand impulsively upon his.
"Won't you let me help you?" she asked. "I'd like to, and it will only be a loan if you wanted to look at it that way. Enough to get you a decent-looking outfit, such an outfit as you ought to have to land a good job. I know, and everybody else knows, that clothes do count no matter what we say to the contrary. I'll bet you're some looker when you're dolled up! Please," she continued, "won't you please, just try it for a gamble?"
"I don't see how I can," he objected. "The chances are I could never pay you back, and there is no reason in the world why you should loan me money. You are certainly under no obligation to me."
"I wish you would let me, Jimmy," she said. "It would make me awfully happy!"
The man hesitated.
"Oh," she said, "I'm going to do it, anyway. Wait a minute," and, rising, she left the table.
In a few minutes she returned. "Here," she said, "you've got to take it," and extended her hand toward him beneath the edge of the table.
"I can't," said Jimmy. "It wouldn't be right."
The girl looked at him and flushed.
"Do you mean," she said, "because it's my--because of what I am?"
"Oh, no," said Jimmy; "please don't think that!" And impulsively he took her hand beneath the table. At the contact the girl caught her breath with a little quick-drawn sigh.
"Here, take it!" she said, and drawing her hand away quickly, left a roll of bills in Jimmy's hand.
THAT afternoon Mr. Harold Bince had entered his superior's office with an afternoon paper in his hand.
"What's the idea of this ad, Mr. Compton?" he asked. "Why do we need an efficiency expert? I wish you had let me know what you intended doing."
"I knew that if I told you, Harold, you would object," said the older man, "and I thought I would have a talk with several applicants before saying anything about it to any one. Of course, whoever we get will work with you, but I would rather not have it generally known about the plant. There seems to be a leak somewhere and evidently we are too close to the work to see it ourselves. It will require an outsider to discover it."
"I am very much opposed to the idea," said Bince. "These fellows usually do nothing more than disrupt an organization. We have a force that has been here, many of them, for years. There is as little lost motion in this plant as in any in the country, and if we start in saddling these men with a lot of red-tape which will necessitate their filling out innumerable forms for every job, about half their time will be spent in bookkeeping, which can just as well be done here in the office as it is now. I hope that you will reconsider your intention and let us work out our own solution in a practical manner, which we can do better in the light of our own experience than can an outsider who knows nothing of our peculiar problems."
"We will not permit the organization to be disrupted," replied Mr. Compton. "It may do a lot of good to get a new angle on our problems and at least it will do no harm."
"I can't agree with you," replied Bince. "I think it will do a lot of harm."
Compton looked at his watch. "It is getting late, Harold," he said, "and this is pay-day. I should think Everitt could help you with the pay-roll." Everitt was the cashier.
"I prefer to do it myself," replied Bince. "Everitt has about all he can do, and anyway, I don't like to trust it to any one else." And realizing that Compton did not care to discuss the matter of the efficiency expert further Bince returned to his own office.
The following afternoon the office boy entered Mr. Compton's office. "A gentleman to see you, sir," he announced. "He said to tell you that he came in reply to your advertisement."
"Show him in," instructed Compton, and a moment later Jimmy entered--a rehabilitated Jimmy. Upon his excellent figure the ready-made suit had all the appearance of faultlessly tailored garments. Compton looked up at his visitor, and with the glance he swiftly appraised Jimmy--a glance that assured him that here might be just the man he wanted, for intelligence, aggressiveness and efficiency were evidently the outstanding characteristics of the young man before him. After Jimmy had presented himself the other motioned him to a chair.
"I am looking," said Mr. Compton," for an experienced man who can come in here and find out just what is wrong with us. We have an old-established business which has been making money for years. We are taking all the work that we can possibly handle at the highest prices we have ever received, and yet our profits are not at all commensurate with the volume of business. It has occurred to me that an experienced man from the outside would be able to more quickly put his finger on the leaks and stop them. Now tell me just what your experience has been and we will see if we can come to some understanding."
From his pocket Jimmy drew a half-dozen envelopes, and taking the contents from them one by one laid them on the desk before Mr. Compton. On the letterheads of half a dozen large out-of-town manufacturers in various lines were brief but eulogistic comments upon the work done in their plants by Mr. James Torrance, Jr. As he was reading them Mr. Compton glanced up by chance to see that the face of the applicant was slightly flushed, which he thought undoubtedly due to the fact that the other knew he was reading the words of praise contained in the letters, whereas the truth of the matter was that Jimmy's color was heightened by a feeling of guilt.
"These are very good," said Mr. Compton, looking up from the letters. "I don't know that I need go any further. A great deal depends on a man's personality in a position of this sort, and from your appearance I should imagine that you're all right along that line and you seem to have had the right kind of experience. Now, what arrangement can we make?"
Jimmy had given the matter of pay considerable thought, but the trouble was that he did not know what an efficiency expert might be expected to demand. He recalled vaguely that the one his father had employed got something like ten dollars a day, or one hundred a day, Jimmy couldn't remember which, and so he was afraid that he might ask too much and lose the opportunity, or too little and reveal that he had no knowledge of the value of such services.
"I would rather leave that to you," he said. "What do you think the work would be worth to you?"
"Do you expect to continue in this line of work?" asked Mr. Compton. "When this job is finished you would want to go somewhere else, I suppose?"
Jimmy saw an opening and leaped for it. "Oh, no!" he replied. "On the contrary, I wouldn't mind working into a permanent position, and if you think there might be a possibility of that I would consider a reasonable salary arrangement rather than the usual contract rate for expert service."
"It is very possible," said Mr. Compton, "that if you are the right man there would be a permanent place in the organization for you. With that idea in mind I should say that two hundred and fifty dollars a month might be a mutually fair arrangement to begin with."
Two hundred and fifty dollars a month! Jimmy tried to look bored, but not too bored.
"Of course," he said, "with the idea that it may become a permanent, well-paying position I think I might be inclined to consider it--in fact, I am very favorably inclined toward it," he added hastily as he thought he noted a sudden waning of interest in Compton's expression. "But be sure yourself that I am the man you want. For instance, my methods--you should know something of them first."
In Jimmy's pocket was a small book he had purchased at a second-hand bookshop the evening before, upon the cover of which appeared the title "How to Get More Out of Your Factory." He had not had sufficient time to study it thoroughly, but had succeeded in memorizing several principal headings on the contents page.
"At first," he explained, "I won't seem to be accomplishing much, as I always lay the foundation of my future work by studying my men. Some men have that within them which spurs them on; while some need artificial initiative--outside encouragement," he quoted glibly from "How to Get More Out of Your Factory."
"Some men extend themselves under stern discipline; some respond only to a gentle rein. I study men--the men over me, under me, around me. I study them and learn how to get from each the most that is in him. At the same time I shall be looking for leaks and investigating time-keeping methods, wage-paying systems and planning on efficiency producers. Later I shall start reducing costs by studying machines, handling material economically and producing power at lowest cost; keeping the product moving, making environment count on the balance-sheet and protecting against accident and fire." This was as far as Jimmy had memorized, and so he stopped.
"I think," said Mr. Compton, "that you have the right idea. Some of your points are not entirely clear to me, as there are many modern methods that I have not, I am sorry to say, investigated sufficiently."
Jimmy did not think it necessary to explain that they were not clear to him either.
"And now," said Compton, "if you are satisfied with the salary, when can you start?"
Jimmy rose with a brisk and businesslike manner. "I am free now," he said, "with the exception of a little personal business which I can doubtless finish up to-morrow--suppose I come Thursday?"
"Good," exclaimed Compton, "but before you go I want you to meet our assistant general manager, Mr. Bince." And he led Jimmy toward Bince's office.
"This is Mr. Torrance, Harold," said Mr. Compton as they entered, "Mr. Bince, Mr. Torrance. Mr. Torrance is going to help us systematize the plant. He will report directly to me and I know you will do everything in your power to help him. You can go to Mr. Bince for anything in the way of information you require, and Harold, when Mr. Torrance comes Thursday I wish you would introduce him to Everitt and the various department heads and explain that they are to give him full cooperation. And now, as I have an appointment, I shall have to ask you to excuse me. I will see you Thursday. If there are any questions you want to ask, Mr. Bince will be glad to give you any information you wish or care for."
Jimmy had felt from the moment that he was introduced to Bince that the latter was antagonistic and now that the two were alone together he was not long left in doubt as to the correctness of his surmise. As soon as the door had closed behind Mr. Compton Bince wheeled toward Jimmy.
"I don't mind telling you, Mr. Torrance," he said, "that I consider the services of an expert absolutely unnecessary, but if Mr. Compton wishes to experiment I will interfere in no way and I shall help you all I can, but I sincerely hope that you, on your part, will refrain from interfering with my activities. As a matter of fact, you won't have to leave this office to get all the information you need, and if you will come to me I can make it easy for you to investigate the entire workings of the plant and save you a great deal of unnecessary personal labor. I suppose that you have had a great deal of experience along this line?"
Jimmy nodded affirmatively.
"Just how do you purpose proceeding?"
"Oh, well," said Jimmy, "each one of us really has a system of his turn. At first I won't seem to be accomplishing much, as I always lay the foundation of my future work by studying my men. Some men have that within them which spurs them on; while some need artificial initiative--outside encouragement." He hoped that the door to Compton's office was securely closed.
"Some men extend themselves under stern discipline; some respond only to a gentle rein. I study men--the men over me, under me, around me. I study them and learn how to get from each the most that is in him. At the same time I shall be looking for leaks and investigating timekeeping methods"--he was looking straight at Bince and he could not help but note the slight narrowing of the other's lids--"wage-paying systems and planning on efficiency producers."
Here he hesitated a moment as though weighing his words, though as a matter of fact he had merely forgotten the title of the next chapter, but presently he went on again:
"Later I shall start reducing costs by studying machines, handling material economically and producing power at lowest costs: keeping the product moving, making environment count on the balance-sheet and protecting against accident and fire."
"Is that all?" asked Mr. Bince.
"Oh, no, indeed!" said Jimmy. "That's just a very brief outline of the way I shall start."
"Ah!" said Mr. Bince. "And just how, may I ask, do you make environment count on the balance-sheet? I do not quite understand."
Jimmy was mentally gasping and going down for the third time. He had wondered when he read that chapter title just what it might mean.
"Oh," he said, "you will understand that thoroughly when we reach that point. It is one of the steps in my method. Other things lead up to it. It is really rather difficult to explain until we have a concrete example, something that you can really visualize, you know. But I assure you that it will be perfectly plain to you when we arrive at that point.
"And now," he said, rising, "I must be going. I have a great deal to attend to this afternoon and to-morrow, as I wish to get some personal matters out of the way before I start in here Thursday."
"All right," said Mr. Bince, "I suppose we shall see you Thursday, but just bear in mind, please, that you and I can work better together than at cross-purposes."
AS Jimmy left the office he discovered that those last words of Bince's had made a considerable and a rather unfavorable impression on him. He was sure that there was an underlying meaning, though just what it portended he was unable to imagine.
From the International Machine Company Jimmy went directly to the restaurant where he and Little Eva had dined the night before. He found her waiting for him, as they had agreed she would.
"Well, what luck?" she asked as he took the chair next to her.
"Oh, I landed the job all right," said Jimmy, "but I feel like a crook. I don't know how in the world I ever came to stand for those letters of recommendation. They were the things that got me the job all right, but I honestly feel just as though I had stolen something."
"Don't feel that way," said the girl. "You'll make good, I know, and then it won't make any difference about the letters."
"And now," said Jimmy, "tell me where you got them. You promised me that you would tell me afterward."
"Oh," said the girl, "that was easy. A girl who rooms at the same place I do works in a big printing and engraving plant and I got her to get me some samples of letterheads early this morning. In fact, I went down-town with her when she went to work, and then I went over to the Underwood offices and wrote the recommendations out on a machine--I used to be a stenographer."
"And you forged these names?" asked Jimmy, horrified.
"I didn't forge anybody's name," replied the girl. "I made them up."
"You mean there are no such men?"
"As far as I know there are not," she replied, laughing.
Slowly Jimmy drew the letters from his inside pocket and read them one by one, spreading them out upon the table before him. Presently he looked up at the girl.
"Why don't you get a position again as a stenographer?" he asked.
"I have been thinking of it," she said; "do you want me to?"
"Yes," he said, "I want you to very much."
"It will be easy," she said. "There is no reason why I shouldn't except that there was no one ever cared what I did."
As she finished speaking they were both aware that a man had approached their table and stopped opposite them. Jimmy and the girl looked up to see a large man in a dark suit looking down at Eva. Jimmy did not recognize the man, but he knew at once what he was.
"Well, O'Donnell, what's doing?" asked the girl.
"You know what's doing," said the officer. "How miny toimes do the capt'in have to be afther isshuin' orrders tellin' you janes to kape out uv dacent places?"
The girl flushed. "I'm not working here," she said.
"Tu hell ye ain't," sneered O'Donnell. "Didn't I see ye flag this guy whin he came in?"
"This young lady is a friend of mine," said Jimmy. "I had an appointment to meet her here."
O'Donnell shifted his gaze from the girl to her escort and for the first time appraised Jimmy thoroughly. "Oh, it's you, is it?" he asked.
"It is," said Jimmy; "you guessed it the first time, but far be it from me to know what you have guessed, as I never saw you before, my friend."
"Well, I've seen you before," said O'Donnell, "and ye put one over on me that time all roight, I can see now. I don't know what your game was, but you and the Lizard played it pretty slick when you could pull the wool over Patrick O'Donnell's eyes the way ye done."
"Oh," said Jimmy, "I've got you now. You're the bull who interfered with my friend and me on Randolph and La Salle way back last July."
"I am," said O'Donnell, "and I thought ye was a foine young gentleman, and you are a foine one," he said with intense sarcasm.
"Go away and leave us alone," said the girl. "We're not doing anything. We ate in here last night together. This man is perfectly respectable. He isn't what you think him, at all."
"I'm not going to pinch him," said O'Donnell; "I ain't got nothin' to pinch him for, but the next time I see him I'll know him."
"Well," said the girl, "are you going to beat it or are you going to stick around here bothering us all evening? There hasn't anybody registered a complaint against me in here."
"Naw," said O'Donnell, "they ain't, but you want to watch your step or they will."
"All right," said the girl, "run along and sell your papers." And she turned again to Jimmy, and as though utterly unconscious of the presence of the police officer, she remarked, "That big stiff gives me a pain, He's the original Buttinsky Kid."
O'Donnell flushed. "Watch your step, young lady," he said as he turned and walked away.
"I thought," said Jimmy, "that it was the customary practise to attempt to mollify the guardians of the law."
"Mollify nothing," returned the girl. "None of these big bruisers knows what decency is, and if you're decent to them they think you're afraid of them. When they got something on you you got to be nice, but when they haven't, tell them where they get off. I knew he wouldn't pinch me; he's got nothing to pinch me for, and he'd have been out of luck if he had, for there hasn't one of them got anything on me."
"But won't he have it in for you?" asked Jimmy.
"Sure, he will," said the girl. "he's got it in for everybody. That's what being a policeman does to a man. Say, most of these guys hate themselves. I tell you, though," she said presently and more seriously, "I'm sorry on your account. These dicks never forget a face. He's got you catalogued and filed away in what he calls his brain alongside of a dip and--a"--she hesitated--"a girl like me, and no matter how high up you ever get if your foot slips up will bob O'Donnell with these two facts."
"I'm not worrying," said Jimmy. "I don't intend to let my foot slip in his direction."
"I hope not," said the girl.
Thursday morning Jimmy took up his duties as efficiency expert at the plant of the International Machine Company. Since his interview with Compton his constant companion had been "How to Get More Out of Your Factory," with the result that he felt that unless he happened to be pitted against another efficiency expert he could at least make a noise like efficiency, and also he had grasped what he considered the fundamental principle of efficiency, namely, simplicity.
"If," he reasoned, "I cannot find in any plant hundreds of operations that are not being done in the simplest manner it will be because I haven't even ordinary powers of observation or intelligence," for after his second interview with Compton, Jimmy had suddenly realized that the job meant something to him beside the two hundred and fifty dollars a month--that he couldn't deliberately rob Compton, as he felt that he would be doing unless he could give value received in services, and he meant to do his best to accomplish that end.
He knew that for a while his greatest asset would be bluff, but there was something about Mason Compton that had inspired in the young man a vast respect and another sentiment that he realized upon better acquaintance might ripen into affection. Compton reminded him in many ways of his father, and with the realization of that resemblance Jimmy felt more and more ashamed of the part he was playing, but now that he had gone into it he made up his mind that he would stick to it, and there was besides the slight encouragement that he had derived from the enthusiasm of the girl who had suggested the idea to him and of her oft-repeated assertion relative to her "hunch" that he would make good.
UNLIKE most other plants the International Machine Company paid on Monday, and it was on the Monday following his assumption of his new duties that Jimmy had his first clash with Bince. He had been talking with Everitt, the cashier, whom, in accordance with his "method," he was studying. From Everitt he had learned that it was pay-day and he had asked the cashier to let him see the payroll.
"I don't handle the pay-roll," replied Everitt a trifle peevishly. "Shortly after Mr. Bince was made assistant general manager a new rule was promulgated, to the effect that all salaries and wages were to be considered as confidential and that no one but the assistant general manager would handle the pay-rolls. All I know is the amount of the weekly check. He hires and fires everybody and pays everybody."
"Rather unusual, isn't it?" commented Jimmy.
"Very," said Everitt. "Here's some of us have been with Mr. Compton since Bince was in long clothes, and then he comes in here and says that we're not to be trusted with the pay-roll."
"Well," said Jimmy, "I shall have to go to him to see it then."
"He won't show it to you," said Everitt.
"Oh, I guess he will," said Jimmy, and a moment later he knocked at Bince's office door. When Bince saw who it was he turned back to his work with a grunt.
"I am sorry, Torrance," he said, "but I can't talk with you just now. I'm very busy."
"Working on the pay-roll?" said Jimmy.
"Yes," snarled Bince.
"That's what I came in to see," said the efficiency expert.
"Impossible," said Bince. "The International Machine Company's pay-roll is confidential, absolutely confidential. Nobody sees it but me or Mr. Compton if he wishes to."
"I understood from Mr. Compton," said Jimmy, "that I was to have full access to all records."
"That merely applied to operation records," said Bince. "It had nothing to do with the pay-roll."
"I should consider the pay-roll very closely allied to operations," responded Jimmy.
"I shouldn't," said Bince.
"You won't let me see it then?" demanded Jimmy.
"Look here," said Bince, "we agreed that we wouldn't interfere with each other. I haven't interfered with you. Now don't you interfere with me. This is my work, and my office is not being investigated by any efficiency expert or any one else."
"I don't recall that I made any such agreement," said Jimmy. "I must insist on seeing that pay-roll."
Bince turned white with suppressed anger, and then suddenly slamming his pen on the desk, he wheeled around toward the other.
"I might as well tell you something," he said, "that will make your path easier here, if you know it. I understand that you want a permanent job with us. If you do you might as well understand now as any other time that you have got to be satisfactory to me. Of course, it is none of your business, but it may help you to understand conditions when I tell you that I am to marry Mr. Compton's daughter, and when I do that he expects to retire from business, leaving me in full charge here. Now, do you get me?"
Jimmy had involuntarily acquired antipathy toward Bince at their first meeting, an antipathy which had been growing the more that he saw of the assistant general manager. This fact, coupled with Bince's present rather nasty manner, was rapidly amusing the anger of the efficiency expert.
"I didn't come in here," he said, "to discuss your matrimonial prospects, Mr. Bince. I came in here to see the pay-roll, and you will oblige me by letting me see it."
"I tell you again," said Bince, "once and for all, that you don't see the pay-roll nor anything else connected with my office, and you will oblige me by not bothering me any longer. As I told you when you first came in, I am very busy."
Jimmy turned and left the room. He was on the point of going to Compton's office and asking for authority to see the pay-roll, and then it occurred to him that Compton would probably not take sides against his assistant general manager and future son-in-law.
"I've got to get at it some other way," said Jimmy, "but you bet your life I'm going to get at it. It looks to me as though there's something funny about that payroll."
On his way out he stopped at Everitt's cage. "What was the amount of the check for the pay-roll for this week, Everitt?" he asked.
"A little over ninety-six hundred dollars."
"Thanks," said Jimmy, and returned to the shops to continue his study of his men, and as he studied them he asked many questions, made many notes in his little note-book, and always there were two questions that were the same: "What is your name? What wages do you get?"
"I guess" said Jimmy, "that in a short time I will know as much about the payroll as the assistant general manager."
Nor was it the pay-roll only that claimed Jimmy's attention. He found that several handlings of materials could be eliminated by the adoption of simple changes, and that a rearrangement of some of the machines removed the necessity for long hauls from one part of the shop to another. After an evening with the little volume he had purchased for twenty-five cents in the second-hand bookshop he ordered changes that enabled him to cut five men from the payroll and at the same time do the work more expeditiously and efficiently.
"Little book," he said one evening, "I take my hat off to you. You are the best two-bits' worth I ever purchased."
The day following the completion of the changes he had made in the shop he was in Compton's office.
"Patton was explaining some of the changes you have made," remarked Compton. Patton was the shop foreman. "He said they were so simple that he wondered none of us had thought of them before. I quite agree with him."
"So do I," returned Jimmy, "but, then, my whole method is based upon simplicity." And his mind traveled to the unpretentious little book on the table in his room on Indiana Avenue.
"The feature that appeals to me most strongly is that you have been able to get the cooperation of the men," continued Compton; "that's what I feared--that they wouldn't accept your suggestions. How did you do it?"
"I showed them how they could turn out more work and make more money by my plan. This appealed to the piece-workers. I demonstrated to the others that the right way is the easiest way--I showed them how they could earn their wages with less effort."
"Good," said Compton. "You are running into no difficulties then? Is there any way in which I can help you?"
"I am getting the best kind of cooperation from the men in the shop, practically without exception," replied Jimmy, "although there is one fellow, a straw boss named Krovac, who does not seem to take as kindly to the changes I have made as the others, but he really doesn't amount to anything as an obstacle." Jimmy also thought of Bince and the pay-roll, but he was still afraid to broach the subject. Suddenly an inspiration came to him.
"Yes," he said, "I believe your accounting system could be improved--it will take me months to get around to it, as my work is primarily in the shop, at first, at least. You can save both time and money by having your books audited by a firm of public accountants who can also suggest a new and more up-to-date system."
"Not a bad idea," said Compton. "I think we will do it."
For another half-hour they discussed Jimmy's work, and then as the latter was leaving Compton stopped him.
"By the way, you don't happen to know of a good stenographer, do you? Miss Withe is leaving me Saturday."
Jimmy thought a moment. Instantly he thought of Little Eva and what she had said of her experience as a stenographer, and her desire to abandon her present life for something in the line of her former work. Here was a chance to repay her in some measure for her kindness to him.
"Yes," he said, "I do know of a young lady who, I believe, could do the work. Shall I have her call on you?"
"If you will, please," replied Compton. As Jimmy left the office Compton rang for Bince, and when the latter came, told him of his plan to employ a firm of accountants to renovate their entire system of bookkeeping.
"Is that one of Torrance's suggestions?" asked Bince.
"Yes, the idea is his," replied Compton, "and I think it is a good one."
"It seems to me," said Bince, "that Torrance is bailing things up sufficiently as it is without getting in other theorizers who have no practical knowledge of our business. The result of all this will be to greatly increase our overhead by saddling us with a lot of red-tape in the accounting department similar to that which, Torrance is loading the producing end with."
"I am afraid that you are prejudiced, Harold," said Compton. "I cannot discover that Torrance is doing anything to in any way complicate the shop work. As a matter of fact, a single change which he has just made has resulted in our performing certain operations in less time and to better advantage with five less men than formerly. Just in this one thing he has not only more than earned his salary, but is really paying dividends on our investment."
Bince was silent for a moment. He had walked to the window and was looking out on the street below, then he turned suddenly toward Compton.
"Mr. Compton," he said, "you have made me assistant general manager here and now, just when I am reaching a point where I feel I can accomplish something, you are practically taking the authority out of my hands and putting it in that of a stranger. I feel not only that you are making a grave mistake, but that it is casting a reflection on my work. It is making a difference in the attitude of the men toward me that I am afraid can never be overcome, and consequently while lessening my authority it is also lessening my value to the plant. I am going to ask you to drop this whole idea. As assistant general manager, I feel that it is working injury to the organization, and I hope that before it is too late--that, in fact, immediately, you will discharge Torrance and drop this idea of getting outsiders to come in and install a new accounting system."
"You're altogether too sensitive, Harold," replied Compton. "It is no reflection on you whatsoever. The system under which we have been working is, with very few exceptions, the very system that I evolved myself through years of experience in this business. If there is any reflection upon any one it is upon me and not you. You must learn to realize, if you do not already, what I realize--that no one is infallible. Just because the system is mine or yours we must not think that no better system can be devised. I am perfectly satisfied with what Mr. Torrance is doing, and I agree with his suggestion that we employ a firm of accountants, but I think no less of you or your ability on that account."
Bince saw that it was futile to argue the matter further.
"Very well, sir," he said. "I hope that I am mistaken and that no serious harm will result. When do you expect to start these accountants in?"
"Immediately," replied Compton. "I shall get in touch with somebody to-day."
Bince shook his head dubiously as he returned to his own office.
THE following Monday Miss Edith Hudson went to work for the International Machine Company as Mr. Compton's stenographer. Nor could the most fastidious have discovered aught to criticise in the appearance or deportment of "Little Eva."
The same day the certified public accountants came. Mr. Harold Bince appeared nervous and irritable, and he would have been more nervous and more irritable had he known that Jimmy had just learned the amount of the pay-check from Everitt and that he had discovered that, although five men had been laid off and no new ones employed since the previous week, the payroll check was practically the same as before--approximately one thousand dollars more than his note-book indicated it should be.
"Phew!" whistled Jimmy. "These C.P.A.'s are going to find this a more interesting job than they anticipated. Poor old Compton! I feel mighty sorry for him, but he had better find it out now than after that grafter has wrecked his business entirely."
That afternoon Mr. Compton left the office earlier than usual, complaining of a headache, and the next morning his daughter telephoned that he was ill and would not come to the office that day. During the morning as Bince was walking through the shop he stopped to talk with Krovac.
Pete Krovac was a rat-faced little foreigner, looked upon among the men as a trouble-maker. He nursed a perpetual grievance against his employer and his job, and whenever the opportunity presented, and sometimes when it did not present itself, he endeavored to inoculate others with his dissatisfaction. Bince had hired the man, and during the several months that Krovac had been with the company, the assistant general manager had learned enough from other workers to realize that the man was an agitator and a troublemaker. Several times he had been upon the point of discharging him, but now he was glad that he had not, for he thought he saw in him a type that in the light of present conditions might be of use to him.
In fact, for the past couple of weeks he had been using the man in an endeavor to get some information concerning Torrance and his methods that would permit him to go to Compton with a valid argument for Jimmy's discharge.
"Well, Krovac," he said as he came upon the man, "is Torrance interfering with you any now?"
"He hasn't got my job yet," growled the other, "but he's letting out hard-working men with families without any reason. The first thing you know you'll have a strike on your hands."
"I haven't heard any one else complaining," said Bince.
"You will, though," replied Krovac. "They don't any of us know when we are going to be canned to give Compton more profit, and men are not going to stand for that long."
"Then," said Bince, "I take it that he really hasn't interfered with you much?"
"Oh, he's always around asking a lot of fool questions," said Krovac. "Last week he asked every man in the place what his name was and what wages he was getting. Wrote it all down in a little book. I suppose he is planning on cutting pay."
Bince's eyes narrowed. "He got that information from every man in the shop?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Krovac.
Bince was very pale. He stood in silence for some minutes, apparently studying the man before him. At last he spoke.
"Krovac," he said, "you don't like this man Torrance, do you?"
"No," said the other, "I don't."
"Neither do I," said Bince. "I know his plans even better than you. This shop has short hours and good pay, but if we don't get rid of him it will have the longest hours and lowest pay of any shop in the city."
"Well?" questioned Krovac.
"I think," said Bince, "that there ought to be some way to prevent this man doing any further harm here."
He looked straight into Krovac's eyes.
"There is," muttered the latter.
"It would be worth something of course," suggested Bince.
"How much?" asked Krovac.
"Oh, I should think it ought to be worth a hundred dollars," replied Bince. Krovac thought for a moment.
"I think I can arrange it," he said, "but I would have to have fifty now."
"I cannot give it to you here," said Bince, "but if I should happen to pass through the shop this afternoon you might find an envelope on the floor beside your machine after I have gone."
The following evening as Jimmy alighted from the Indiana Avenue car at Eighteenth Street, two men left the car behind him. He did not notice them, although, as he made his way toward his boarding-house, he heard footsteps directly in his rear, and suddenly noting that they were approaching him rapidly, he involuntarily cast a glance behind him just as one of the men raised an arm to strike at him with what appeared to be a short piece of pipe.
Jimmy dodged the blow and then both men sprang for him. The first one Jimmy caught on the point of the chin with a blow that put its recipient out of the fight before he got into it, and then his companion, who was the larger, succeeded in closing with the efficiency expert. Inadvertently, however, he caught Jimmy about the neck, leaving both his intended victim's arms free with the result that the latter was able to seize his antagonist low down about the body, and then pressing him close to him and hurling himself suddenly forward, he threw the fellow backward upon the cement sidewalk with his own body on top. With a resounding whack the attacker's head came in contact with the concrete, his arms relaxed their hold upon Jimmy's neck, and as the latter arose he saw both his assailants, temporarily at least, out of the fighting.
Jimmy glanced hastily in both directions. There was no one in sight. His boarding-house was but a few steps away, and two minutes later he was safe in his room.
"A year ago," he thought to himself, smiling, "my first thought would have been to have called in the police, but the Lizard has evidently given me a new view-point in regard to them," for the latter had impressed upon Jimmy the fact that whatever knowledge a policeman might have regarding one was always acquired with the idea that eventually it might be used against the person to whom it pertained.
"What a policeman don't know about you will never hurt you," was one way that the Lizard put it.
When Jimmy appeared in the shop the next morning he noted casually that Krovac had a cut upon his chin, but he did not give the matter a second thought. Bince had arrived late. His first question, as he entered the small outer office where Mr. Compton's stenographer and his worked, was addressed to Miss Edith Hudson.
"Is Mr. Torrance down yet?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the girl, "he has been here some time. Do you wish to see him?"
Edith thought that the "No" which he snapped at her was a trifle more emphatic than the circumstances seemed to warrant, nor could she help but notice after he had entered his office the vehement manner in which he slammed the door.
"I wonder what's eating him," thought Miss Hudson to herself. "Of course he doesn't like Jimmy, but why is he so peeved because Jimmy came to work this morning--I don't quite get it."
Almost immediately Bince sent for Krovac, and when the latter came and stood before his desk the assistant general manager looked up at him questioningly.
"Well?" he asked.
"Look at my chin," was Krovac's reply, "and he damn near killed the other guy."
"Maybe you'll have better luck the next time," growled Bince.
"There ain't goin' to be no next time," asserted Krovac. "I don't tackle that guy again."
Bince held out his hand.
"All right," he said, "you might return the fifty then."
"Return nothin'," growled Krovac. "I sure done fifty dollars' worth last night."
"Come on," said Bince, "hand over the fifty."
"Nothin' doin'," said Krovac with an angry snarl. "It might be worth another fifty to you to know that I wasn't going to tell old man Compton."
"You damn scoundrel!" exclaimed Bince.
"Don't go callin' me names," admonished Krovac. "A fellow that hires another to croak a man for him for one hundred bucks ain't got no license to call nobody names."
Bince realized only too well that he was absolutely in the power of the fellow and immediately his manner changed.
"Come," he said, "Krovac, there is no use in our quarreling. You can help me and I can help you. There must be some other way to get around this."
"What are you trying to do?" asked Krovac. "I got enough on you now to send you up, and I don't mind tellin' yuh," he added, "that I had a guy hid down there in the shop where he could watch you drop the envelope behind my machine. I got a witness, yuh understand!"
Mr. Bince did understand, but still he managed to control his temper.
"What of it?" he said. "Nobody would believe your story, but let's forget that. What we want to do is get rid of Torrance."
"That isn't all you want to do," said Krovac. "There is something else."
Bince realized that he was compromised as hopelessly already as he could be if the man had even more information.
"Yes," he said, "there is something beside Torrance's interference in the shop. He's interfering with our accounting system and I don't want it interfered with just now."
"You mean the pay-roll?" asked Krovac.
"It might be," said Bince.
"You want them two new guys that are working in the office croaked, too?" asked Krovac.
"I don't want anybody 'croaked,'" replied Bince. "I didn't tell you to kill Torrance in the first place. I just said I didn't want him to come back here to work."
"Ah, hell, what you givin' us?" growled the other. "I knew what you meant and you knew what you meant, too. Come across straight. What do you want?"
"I want all the records of the certified public accountants who are working here," said Bince after a moment's pause. "I want them destroyed, together with the pay-roll records."
"Where are they?"
"They will all be in the safe in Mr. Compton's office."
Krovac knitted his brows in thought for several moments. "Say," he said, "we can do the whole thing with one job."
"What do you mean?" asked Bince.
"We can get rid of this Torrance guy and get the records, too."
"How?" asked Bince.
"Do you know where Feinheimer's is?"
"Yes."
"Well, you be over there to-night about ten thirty and I'll introduce you to a guy who can pull off this whole thing, and you and I won't have to be mixed up in it at all."
"To-night at ten thirty," said Bince.
"At Feinheimer's," said Krovac.
AS the workman passed through the little outer office Edith Hudson glanced up at him.
"Where," she thought after he had gone, "have I seen that fellow before?"
Jimmy was in the shop applying "How to Get More Out of Your Factory" to the problems of the International Machine Company when he was called to the telephone.
"Is this Mr. Torrance?" asked a feminine voice.
"It is," replied Jimmy.
"I am Miss Compton. My father will probably not be able to get to the office for several days, and as he wishes very much to talk with you he has asked me to suggest that you take dinner with us this evening."
"Thank you," said Jimmy. "Tell Mr. Compton that I will come to the house right after the shop closes to-night."
"I suppose," said Elizabeth Compton as she turned away from the phone, "that an efficiency expert is a very superior party and that his conversation will be far above my head."
Compton laughed. "Torrance seems to be a very likable chap," he said, "and as far as his work is concerned he is doing splendidly."
"Harold doesn't think so," said Elizabeth. "He is terribly put out about the fellow. He told me only the other night that he really believed that it would take years to overcome the bad effect that this man has had upon the organization and upon the work in general."
"That is all poppycock," exclaimed Compton, rather more irritably than was usual with him. "For some reason Harold has taken an unwarranted dislike to this man, but I am watching him closely, and I will see that no very serious mistakes are made."
When Jimmy arrived at the Compton home he was ushered into the library where Mr. Compton was sitting. In a corner of the room, with her back toward the door, Elizabeth Compton sat reading. She did not lay aside her book or look in his direction as Jimmy entered, for the man was in no sense a guest in the light of her understanding of the term. He was merely one of her father's employees here on business to see him, doubtless a very ordinary sort of person whom she would, of course, have to meet when dinner was announced, but not one for whom it was necessary to put oneself out in any way.
Mr. Compton rose and greeted Jimmy cordially and then turned toward his daughter.
"Elizabeth," he said, "this is Mr. Torrance, the efficiency expert at the plant."
Leisurely Miss Compton laid aside her book. Rising, she faced the newcomer, and as their eyes met, Jimmy barely stifled a gasp of astonishment and dismay. Elizabeth Compton's arched brows raised slightly and involuntarily she breathed a low ejaculation, "Efficiency expert!"
Simultaneously there flashed through the minds of both in rapid succession a series of recollections of their previous meetings. The girl saw the clerk at the stocking-counter, the waiter at Feinheimer's, the prizefighter at the training quarters and the milkwagon driver. All these things passed through her mind in the brief instant of the introduction and her acknowledgment of it. She was too well-bred to permit any outward indication of her recognition of the man other than the first almost inaudible ejaculation that had been surprised from her.
The indifference she had felt prior to meeting the efficiency expert was altered now to a feeling of keen interest as she realized that she held the power to relieve Bince of the further embarrassment of the man's activities in the plant, and also to save her father from the annoyance and losses that Bince had assured her would result from Torrance's methods. And so she greeted Jimmy Torrance pleasantly, almost cordially.
"I am delighted," she said, "but I am afraid that I am a little awed, too, as I was just saying to father before you came that I felt an efficiency expert must be a very superior sort of person."
If she placed special emphasis on the word "superior" it was so cleverly done that it escaped the notice of her father.
"Oh, not at all," replied Jimmy. "We efficiency experts are really quite ordinary people. One is apt to meet us in any place that nice people are supposed to go."
Elizabeth felt the color rising slowly to her cheek. She realized then that if she had thrown down the gage of battle the young man had lost no time in taking it up.
"I am afraid," she said, "that I do not understand very much about the nature or the purpose of your work, but I presume the idea is to make the concern with which you are connected more prosperous--more successful?"
"Yes," said her father, "that is the idea, and even in the short time he has been with us Mr. Torrance has effected some very excellent changes."
"It must be very interesting work," commented the girl; "a profession that requires years of particular experience and study, and I suppose one must be really thoroughly efficient and successful himself, too, before he can help to improve upon the methods of others or to bring them greater prosperity."
"Quite true," said Jimmy. "Whatever a man undertakes he should succeed in before he can hope to bring success to others."
"Even in trifling occupations, I presume," suggested the girl, "efficiency methods are best--an efficiency expert could doubtlessly drive a milk-wagon better than an ordinary person?" And she looked straight into Jimmy's eyes, an unquestioned challenge in her own.
"Unquestionably," said Jimmy. "He could wait on tables better, too."
"Or sell stockings?" suggested Elizabeth. It was at this moment that Mr. Compton was called to the telephone in an adjoining room, and when he had gone the girl turned suddenly upon Jimmy Torrance. There was no cordiality nor friendship in her expression; a sneer upcurved her short upper lip.
"I do not wish to humiliate you unnecessarily in the presence of my father," she said. "You have managed to deceive him into believing that you are what you claim to be. Mr. Bince has known from the start that you are incompetent and incapable of accomplishing the results father thinks you are accomplishing. Now that you know that I know you to be an impostor, what do you intend to do?"
"I intend to keep right on with my work in the plant, Miss Compton," replied Jimmy.
"How long do you suppose father would keep you after I told him what I know of you? Do you think that he would for a moment place the future of his business in the hands of an ex-waiter from Feinheimer's--that he would let a milk-wagon driver tell him how to run his business?"
"It probably might make a difference," said Jimmy, "if he knew, but he will not know--listen, Miss Compton, I have discovered some things there that I have not even dared as yet to tell your father. The whole future of the business may depend upon my being there during the next few weeks. If I wasn't sure of what I am saying I might consider acceding to your demands rather than to embarrass you with certain knowledge which I have."
"You refuse to leave, then?" she demanded.
"I do," he said.
"Very well," she replied; "I shall tell father when he returns to this room just what I know of you."
"Will you tell him," asked Jimmy," that you went to the training quarters of a prizefighter, or that you dined unescorted at Feinheimer's at night and were an object of the insulting attentions of such a notorious character as Steve Murray?"
The girl flushed. "You would tell him that?" she demanded. "Oh, of course, I might have known that you would. It is difficult to realize that any one dining at my father's home is not a gentleman. I had forgotten for the moment."
"Yes," said Jimmy, "I would tell him, not from a desire to harm you, but because this is the only way that I can compel you to refrain from something that would result in inestimable harm to your father."
MR. COMPTON returned to the room before Jimmy had discovered whether the girl intended to expose him or not. She said nothing about the matter during dinner, and immediately thereafter she excused herself, leaving the two men alone.
During the conversation that ensued Jimmy discovered that Bince had been using every argument at his command to induce Compton to let him go, as well as getting rid of the certified public accountants.
"I can't help but feel," said Compton, "that possibly there may be some reason in what Mr. Bince says, for he seems to feel more strongly on this subject than almost any question that has ever arisen in the plant wherein we differed, and it may be that I am doing wrong to absolutely ignore his wishes in the matter.
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Torrance, I have reached the point where I don't particularly relish a fight, as I did in the past. I would rather have things run along smoothly than to have this feeling of unrest and unpleasantness that now exists in the plant. I do not say that you are to blame for it, but the fact remains that ever since you came I have been constantly harassed by this same unpleasant condition which grows worse day by day. There is no question but what you have accomplished a great deal for us of a practical nature, but I believe in view of Mr. Bince's feelings in the matter that we had better terminate our arrangement."
Jimmy suddenly noted how old and tired his employer looked. He realized, too, that for a week he had been fighting an incipient influenza and that doubtless his entire mental attitude was influenced by the insidious workings of the disease, one of the marked symptoms of which he knew to be a feeling of despondency and mental depression, which sapped both courage and initiative.
They were passing through the hallway from the dining-room to the library, and as Compton concluded what was equivalent to Jimmy's discharge, he had stopped and turned toward the younger man. They were standing near the entrance to the music-room in which Elizabeth chanced to be, so that she overheard her father's words, and not without a smile of satisfaction and relief.
"Mr. Compton," replied Jimmy, "no matter what you do with me, you simply must not let those C.P.A.'s go until they have completed their work. I know something of what it is going to mean to your business, but I would rather that the reports come from them than from me."
"What do you mean?" asked Compton.
"I didn't want to be the one to tell you," replied Jimmy. "I preferred that the C.P.A.'s discover it, as they will within the next day or two--you are being systematically robbed. I suspected it before I had been there ten days, and I was absolutely sure of it at the time I suggested you employ the C.P.A.'s. You are being robbed at the rate of approximately one thousand dollars a week."
"How?" asked Compton.
"I would rather you would wait for the report of the C.P.A.'s," returned Jimmy.
"I wish to know now," said Compton, "how I am being robbed."
Jimmy looked straight into the older man's eyes. "Through the pay-roll," he replied.
For a full minute Compton did not speak.
"You may continue with your work in the plant," he said at last, "and we will keep the accountants, for a while at least. And now I am going to ask you to excuse me. I find that I tire very quickly since I have been threatened with influenza."
Jimmy bid his employer good night, and Mr. Compton turned into the library as the former continued along across the ball to the entrance. He was putting on his overcoat when Elizabeth Compton emerged from the music-room and approached him.
"I overheard your conversation with father," she said. "It seems to me that you are making a deliberate attempt to cause him worry and apprehension--you are taking advantage of his illness to frighten him into keeping you in his employ. I should think you would be ashamed of yourself."
"I am sorry that you think that," said Jimmy. "If it was not for your father and you I wouldn't have urged the matter at all."
"You are just doing it to hold your position," retorted the girl, "and now, by threats of blackmail you prevent me from exposing you----you are a despicable cur."
Jimmy felt the blood mounting to his face. He was mortified and angry, and yet he was helpless because his traducer was a woman. Unconsciously he drew himself to his full height.
"You will have to think about me as you please," he said; "I cannot influence that, but I want you to understand that you are not to interfere with my work. I think we understand one another perfectly, Miss Compton. Good night."
And as he closed the door behind him he left a very angry young lady biting her lower lip and almost upon the verge of angry tears.
"The boor," she exclaimed; "he dared to order me about and threaten me."
The telephone interrupted her unhappy train of thoughts. It was Bince.
"I am sorry, Elizabeth," he said, "but I won't be able to come up this evening. I have some important business to attend to. How is your father?"
"He seems very tired and despondent," replied Elizabeth. "That efficiency expert was here to dinner. He just left."
She could not see the startled and angry expression of Bince's face as he received this information. "Torrance was there?" he asked. "How did that happen?"
"Father asked him to dinner, and when he wanted to discharge the fellow Torrance told him something that upset father terribly, and urged that he be kept a little while longer, to which father agreed."
"What did he tell him?" asked Bince.
"Oh, some alarmist tale about somebody robbing father. I didn't quite make out what it was all about, but it had something to do with the pay-roll."
Bince went white. "Don't believe anything that fellow says," he exclaimed excitedly: "he's nothing but a crook. Elizabeth, can't you make your father realize that he ought to get rid of the man, that he ought to leave things to me instead of trusting an absolute stranger?"
"I have," replied the girl, "and he was on the point of doing it until Torrance told him this story."
"Something will have to be done," said Bince, "at once. I'll be over to see your father in the morning. Good-by, dear," and he hung up the receiver.
After Jimmy left the Compton home he started to walk down-town. It was too early to go to his dismal little room on Indiana Avenue. The Lizard was still away. He had seen nothing of him for weeks, and with his going he had come to realize that he had rather depended upon the Lizard for company. He was full of interesting stories of the underworld and his dry humor and strange philosophy amused and entertained Jimmy.
And now as he walked along the almost deserted drive after his recent unpleasant scene with Elizabeth Compton he felt more blue and lonely than he had for many weeks. He craved human companionship, and so strong was the urge that his thoughts naturally turned to the only person other than the Lizard who seemed to have taken any particularly kindly interest in him. Acting on the impulse he turned West at the first cross street until he came to a drugstore. Entering a telephone-booth he called a certain number and a moment later had his connection.
"Is that you, Edith?" he asked, and at the affirmative reply, "this is Jimmy Torrance. I'm feeling terribly lonesome. I was wondering if I couldn't drag you out to listen to my troubles?"
"Surest thing you know," cried the girl. "Where are you?"
He told her.
"Take a Clark Street car," she told him, "and I'll be at the corner of North Avenue by the time you get there."
As the girl hung up the receiver and turned from the phone a slightly quizzical expression reflected some thought that was in her mind. "I wonder," she said as she returned to her room, "if he is going to be like the rest?"
She seated herself before her mirror and critically examined her reflection in the glass. She knew she was good-looking. No need of a mirror to tell her that. Her youth and her good looks had been her stock in trade, and yet this evening she appraised her features most critically, and as with light fingers she touched her hair, now in one place and now in another, she found herself humming a gay little tune and she realized that she was very happy.
When Jimmy Torrance alighted from the Clark Street car he found Edith waiting for him.
"It was mighty good of you," he said. "I don't know when I have had such a fit of blues, but I feel better already."
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"I just had a talk with Mr. Compton," he replied. "He sent for me and I had to tell him something that I didn't want to tell him, although he's got to find it out sooner or later anyway."
"Is there something wrong at the plant?" she asked.
"Wrong doesn't describe it," he exclaimed bitterly. "The man that he has done the most for and in whose loyalty he ought to have the right of implicit confidence, is robbing him blind."
"Bince?" asked the girl.
Jimmy nodded.
"I didn't like that pill," she said, "from the moment I saw him."
"Nor I," said Jimmy, "but he is going to marry Miss Compton and inherit the business. He's the last man in the place that Compton would suspect. It was just like suggesting to a man that his son was robbing him."
"Have you got the goods on him?" asked Edith.
"I will have as soon as the C.P.A.'s get to digging into the pay-roll," he replied, "and I just as good as got the information I need even without that. Well, let's forget our troubles. What shall we do?"
"What do you want to do?" she asked. He could not tell by either her tone or expression with what anxiety she awaited his reply.
"Suppose we do something exciting, like going to the movies," he suggested with a laugh.
"That suits me all right," said the girl. "There is a dandy comedy down at the Castle."
And so they went to the picture show, and when it was over he suggested that they have a bite to eat.
"I'll tell you," Edith suggested. "Suppose we go to Feinheimer's restaurant and see if we can't get that table that I used to eat at when you waited on me?"
They both laughed.
"If old Feinheimer sees me he will have me poisoned," said Jimmy.
"Not if you have any money to spend in his place."
It was eleven thirty when they reached Feinheimer's. The table they wanted was vacant, a little table in a corner of the room and furthest from the orchestra. The waiter, a new man, did not know them, and no one had recognized them as they entered.
Jimmy sat looking at the girl's profile as she studied the menu-card. She was very pretty. He had always thought her that, but somehow to-night she seemed to be different, even more beautiful than in the past. He wished that he could forget what she had been. And he realized as he looked at her sweet girlish face upon which vice had left no slightest impression to mark her familiarity with vice, that it might be easy to forget her past. And then between him and the face of the girl before him arose the vision of another face, the face of the girl that he had set upon a pedestal and worshiped from afar. And with the recollection of her came a realization of the real cause of his sorrow and depression earlier in the evening.
He had attributed it to the unpleasant knowledge he had been forced to partially impart to her father and also in some measure to the regrettable interview he had with her, but now he knew that these were only contributory causes, that the real reason was that during the months she had occupied his thoughts and in the few meetings he had with her there had developed within him, unknown to himself, a sentiment for her that could be described by but one word--love.
Always, though he had realized that she was unattainable, there must have lingered within his breast a faint spark of hope that somehow, some time, there would be a chance, but after to-night he knew there could never be a chance. She had openly confessed her contempt for him, and how would she feel later when she realized that through his efforts her happiness was to be wrecked, and the man she loved and was to marry branded as a criminal?
THE girl opposite him looked up from the card before her. The lines of her face were softened by the suggestion of a contented smile. "My gracious!" she exclaimed. "What's the matter now? You look as though you had lost your last friend."
Jimmy quickly forced a smile to his lips. "On the contrary," he said, "I think I've found a regular friend in you."
It was easy to see that his words pleased her.
"No," continued Jimmy; "I was thinking of what an awful mess I make of everything I tackle."
"You're not making any mess of this new job," she said. "You're making good. You see, my hunch was all right."
"I wish you hadn't had your hunch," he said with a smile. "It's going to bring a lot of trouble to several people, but now that I'm in it I'm going to stick to it to a finish."
The girl's eyes were wandering around the room, taking in the faces of the diners about them. Suddenly she extended her hand and laid it on Jimmy's.
"For the love of Mike!" she exclaimed. "Look over there."
Slowly Jimmy turned his eyes in the direction she indicated.
"What do you know about that?" he ejaculated. "Steve Murray and Bince!"
"And thick as thieves," said the girl.
"Naturally," commented Jimmy.
The two men left the restaurant before Edith and Jimmy had finished their supper, leaving the two hazarding various guesses as to the reason for their meeting.
"You can bet it's for no good," said the girl. "I've known Murray for a long while, and I never knew him to do a decent thing in his life."
Their supper over, they walked to Clark Street and took a northbound car, but after alighting Jimmy walked with the girl to the entrance of her apartment.
"I can't thank you enough," he said, "for giving me this evening. It is the only evening I have enjoyed since I struck this town last July."
He unlocked the outer door for her and was holding it open.
"It is I who ought to thank you," she said. Her voice was very low and filled with suppressed feeling. "I ought to thank you, for this has been the happiest evening of my life," and as though she could not trust herself to say more, she entered the hallway and closed the door between them.
As Jimmy turned away to retrace his steps to the car-line he found his mind suddenly in a whirl of jumbled emotions, for he was not so stupid as to have failed to grasp something of the significance of the girl's words and manner.
"Hell!" he muttered. "Look what I've done now!"
The girl hurried to her room and turned on the lights, and again she seated herself before her mirror, and for a moment sat staring at the countenance reflected before her. She saw lips parted to rapid breathing, lips that curved sweetly in a happy smile, and then as she sat there looking she saw the expression of the face before her change. The lips ceased to smile, the soft, brown eyes went wide and staring as though in sudden horror. For a moment she sat thus and then, throwing her body forward upon her dressing-table, she buried her face in her arms.
"My God!" she cried through choking sobs.
Mason Compton was at his office the next morning, contrary to the pleas of his daughter and the orders of his physician. Bince was feeling more cheerful. Murray had assured him that there was a way out. He would not tell Bince what the way was.
"Just leave it to me," he said. "The less you know, the better off you'll be. What you want is to get rid of this fresh guy and have all the papers in a certain vault destroyed. You see to it that only the papers you want destroyed are in that vault, and I'll do the rest."
All of which relieved Mr. Harold Bince's elastic conscience of any feeling of responsibility in the matter. Whatever Murray did was no business of his. He was glad that Murray hadn't told him.
He greeted Jimmy Torrance almost affably, but he lost something of his self-composure when Mason Compton arrived at the office, for Bince had been sure that his employer would be laid up for at least another week, during which time Murray would have completed his work.
The noon mail brought a letter from Murray.
"Show the enclosed to Compton," it read. "Tell him you found it on your desk, and destroy this letter." The enclosure was a crudely printed note on a piece of soiled wrapping-paper:
TREAT YOUR MEN RIGHT OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES
I.W.W.
Bince laid Murray's letter face down upon the balance of the open mail, and sat for a long time looking at the ominous words of the enclosure. At first he was inclined to be frightened, but finally a crooked smile twisted his lips. "Murray's not such a fool, after all," he soliloquized. "He's framing an alibi before he starts."
With the note in his hand, Bince entered Compton's office, where he found the latter dictating to Edith Hudson. "Look at this thing!" exclaimed Bince, laying the note before Compton. "What do you suppose it means?"
Compton read it, and his brows knitted. "Have the men been complaining at all?" he asked.
"Recently I have heard a little grumbling," replied Bince. "They haven't taken very kindly to Torrance's changes, and I guess some of them are afraid they are going to lose their jobs, as they know he is cutting down the force in order to cut costs."
"He ought to know about this," said Compton. "Wait; I'll have him in," and he pressed a button on his desk. A moment later Jimmy entered, and Compton showed him the note.
"What do you think of it?" asked Compton.
"I doubt if it amounts to much," replied Jimmy. "The men have no grievance. It may be the work of some fellow who was afraid of his job, but I doubt if it really emanates from any organized scheme of intimidation. If I were you, sir, I would simply ignore it."
To Jimmy's surprise, Bince agreed with him. It was the first time that Bince had agreed with anything Jimmy had suggested.
"Very well," assented Compton, "but we'll preserve this bit of evidence in case we may need it later," and he handed the slip of paper to Edith Hudson. "File this, please, Miss Hudson," he said; and then, turning to Bince:
"It may be nothing, but I don't like the idea of it. There is apt to be something underlying this, or even if it is only a single individual and he happens to be a crank he could cause a lot of trouble. Suppose, for instance, one of these crack-brained foreigners in the shop got it into his head that Torrance here was grinding him down in order to increase our profits? Why, he might attack him at any time! I tell you, we have got to be prepared for such a contingency, especially now that we have concrete evidence that there is such a man in our employ. I think you ought to be armed, Mr. Torrance. Have you a pistol?"
Jimmy shook his head negatively.
"No, sir," he said; "not here."
Compton opened a desk drawer.
"Take this one," he said, and handed Jimmy an automatic.
The latter smiled. "Really, Mr. Compton," he said, "I don't believe I need such an article."
"I want you to take it," insisted Compton. "I want you to be on the safe side."
A moment later Bince and Jimmy left the office together. Jimmy still carried the pistol in his hand.
"You'd better put that thing in your pocket," cautioned Bince.
They were in the small office on which Compton's and Bince's offices opened, and Jimmy had stopped beside the desk that had been placed there for him.
"I think I'll leave it here," he said. "The thing would be a nuisance in my pocket," and he dropped it into one of the desk drawers, while Bince continued his way toward the shop.
Compton was looking through the papers and letters on his desk, evidently searching for something which he could not find, while the girl sat awaiting for him to continue his dictation.
"That's funny," commented Compton. "I was certain that letter was here. Have you seen anything of a letter from Mosher."
"No, sir," replied Edith.
"Well, I wish you would step into Mr. Bince's office, and see if it is on his desk."
Upon the assistant general manager's desk lay a small pile of papers, face down, which Edith proceeded to examine in search of the Mosher letter. She had turned them all over at once, commencing at what had previously been the bottom of the pile, so that she ran through them all without finding the Mosher letter before she came to Murray's epistle.
As its import dawned upon her, her eyes widened at first in surprise and then narrowed as she realized the value of her discovery. At first she placed the letter back with the others just as she had found them, but on second thought she took it up quickly and, folding it, slipped it inside her waist. Then she returned to Compton's office.
"I cannot find the Mosher letter," she said.
HARRIET HOLDEN was sitting in Elizabeth's boudoir. "And he had the effrontery," the latter was saying, "to tell me what I must do and must not do! The idea! A miserable little milk-wagon driver dictating to me!"
Miss Holden smiled.
"I should not call him very little," she remarked.
"I didn't mean physically," retorted Elizabeth. "It is absolutely insufferable. I am going to demand that father discharge the man."
"And suppose he asks you why?" asked Harriet. "You will tell him, of course, that you want this person discharged because he protected you from the insults and attacks of a ruffian while you were dining in Feinheimer's at night--is that it?"
"You are utterly impossible, Harriet!" cried Elizabeth, stamping her foot. "You are as bad as that efficiency person. But, then, I might have expected it! You have always, it seems to me, shown a great deal more interest in the fellow than necessary, and probably the fact that Harold doesn't like him is enough to make you partial toward him, for you have never tried to hide the fact that you don't like Harold."
"If you're going to be cross," said Harriet, "I think I shall go home."
At about the same time the Lizard entered Feinheimer's. In the far corner of the room Murray was seated at a table. The Lizard approached and sat down opposite him. "Here I am," he said. "What do you want, and how did you know I was in town?"
"I didn't know," said Murray. "I got a swell job for you, and so I sent out word to get you."
"You're in luck then," said the Lizard. "I just blew in this morning. What kind of a job you got?"
Murray explained at length.
"They got a watchman," he concluded, "but I've got a guy on de inside that'll fix him."
"When do I pull this off?" asked the Lizard.
"In about a week. I'll let you know the night later. Dey ordinarily draw the payroll money Monday, the same day dey pay, but dis week they'll draw it Saturday and leave it in the safe. It'll be layin' on top of a bunch of books and papers. Dey're de t'ings you're to destroy. As I told you, it will all be fixed from de inside. Dere's no danger of a pinch. All you gotta do is crack de safe, put about a four or five t'ousand dollar roll in your pocket, and as you cross de river drop a handful of books and papers in. Nothin' to it--it's the easiest graft you ever had."
"You're sure dat's all?" asked the Lizard.
"Sure thing!" replied Murray. "Where's de place?"
"Dat I can't tell you until the day we're ready to pull off de job."
At four o'clock that afternoon Jimmy Torrance collapsed at his desk. The flu had struck him as suddenly and as unexpectedly as it had attacked many of its victims. Edith Hudson found him, and immediately notified Mr. Compton, with the result that half an hour later Jimmy Torrance was in a small private hospital in Park Avenue.
That night Bince got Murray over the phone. He told him of Jimmy's sickness.
"He's balled up the whole plan," he complained. "We've either got to wait until he croaks or is out again before we can go ahead, unless something else arises to make it necessary to act before. I think I can hold things off, though, at this end, all right."
For four or five days Jimmy was a pretty sick man. He was allowed to see no one, but even if Jimmy had been in condition to give the matter any thought he would not have expected to see any one, for who was there to visit him in the hospital, who was there who knew of his illness, to care whether he was sick or well, alive or dead? It was on the fifth day that Jimmy commenced to take notice of anything. At Compton's orders he had been placed in a private room and given a special nurse, and to-day for the first time he learned of Mr. Compton's kindness and the fact that the nurse was instructed to call Jimmy's employer twice a day and report the patient's condition.
"Mighty nice of him," thought Jimmy, and then to the nurse: "And the flowers, too? Does he send those?"
The young woman shook her head negatively.
"No," she said; "a young lady comes every evening about six and leaves the flowers. She always asks about your condition and when she may see you."
Jimmy was silent for some time. "She comes every evening?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the nurse.
"May I see her this evening?" asked Jimmy.
"We'll ask the doctor," she replied; and the doctor must have given consent, for at six o'clock that evening the nurse brought Edith Hudson to his bedside.
The girl came every evening thereafter and sat with Jimmy as long as the nurse would permit her to remain. Jimmy discovered during those periods a new side to her character, a mothering tenderness that filled him with a feeling of content and happiness the moment that she entered the room, and which doubtless aided materially in his rapid convalescence, for until she had been permitted to see him Jimmy had suffered as much from mental depression as from any other of the symptoms of his disease.
He had felt utterly alone and uncared for, and in this mental state he had brooded over his failures to such an extent that he had reached a point where he felt that death would be something of a relief. Militating against his recovery had been the parting words of Elizabeth Compton the evening that he had dined at her father's home, but now all that was very nearly forgotten--at least crowded into the dim vistas of recollection by the unselfish friendship of this girl of the streets.
Jimmy's nurse quite fell in love with Edith.
"She is such a sweet girl," she said, "and always so cheerful. She is going to make some one a mighty good wife," and she smiled knowingly at Jimmy.
The suggestion which her words implied came to Jimmy as a distinct shock. He had never thought of Edith Hudson in the light of this suggestion, and now he wondered if there could be any such sentiment as it implied in Edith's heart, but finally he put the idea away with a shrug.
"Impossible," he thought. "She thinks of me as I think of her, only as a good friend."
AT the office of the International Machine Company the work of the C.P.A.'s was drawing to a close. Their report would soon be ready to submit to Mr. Compton, and as the time approached Bince's nervousness and irritability increased. Edith noticed that he inquired each day with growing solicitude as to the reports from the hospital relative to Jimmy's condition. She knew that Bince disliked Jimmy, and yet the man seemed strangely anxious for his recovery and return to work.
In accordance with Jimmy's plan, the C.P.A.'s were to give out no information to any one, even to Mr. Compton, until their investigation and report were entirely completed. This plan had been approved by Mr. Compton, although he professed to be at considerable loss to understand why it was necessary. It was, however, in accordance with Jimmy's plan to prevent, if possible, any interference with the work of the auditors until every available fact in the case had been ascertained and recorded. In the investigation of the pay-roll Bince had worked diligently with the accountants. As a matter of fact, he had never left them a moment while the pay-roll records were in their hands, and had gone to much pain to explain in detail every question arising therefrom.
Although the investigators seemed to accept his statements at their face value, the assistant general manager was far from being assured that their final report would redound to his credit.
On a Thursday they informed him that they had completed their investigation, and the report would be submitted to Mr. Compton on Saturday.
When Edith reached the hospital that evening she found Jimmy in high spirits. He was dressed for the first time, and assured her that he was quite able to return to work if the doctor would let him, but the nurse shook her head. "You ought to stay here for another week or ten days," she admonished him.
"Nothing doing," cried Jimmy. "I'll be out of here Monday at the latest." But when Edith told him that the C.P.A.'s had finished, and that their report would be handed in Saturday, Jimmy announced that he would leave the hospital the following day.
"But you can't do it," said the nurse.
"Why not?" asked Jimmy.
"The doctor won't permit it."
Edith tried to dissuade him, but he insisted that is was absolutely necessary for him to be at the office when the C.P.A.'s report was made.
"I'll be over there Friday evening or Saturday morning at the latest," he said as she bid him good-by.
And so it was that, despite the pleas of his nurse and the orders of his physician Jimmy appeared at the plant Friday afternoon. Bince greeted him almost effusively, and Mr. Compton seemed glad to see him out again.
That evening Harold Bince met Murray at Feinheimer's, and still later the Lizard received word that Murray wanted to see him.
"Everything's ready," the boss explained to the Lizard. "The whole thing's framed for to-morrow night. The watchman was discharged to-day. Another man is supposed to have been hired to take the job, but of course he won't show up. You meet me here at seven thirty to-morrow night, and I'll give you your final instructions and tell you how to get to the plant."
The C.P.A.'s were slow in completing their report. At noon on Saturday it looked very much to Bince that there would be no report ready before Monday. He had spent most of the forenoon pacing his office, and at last, unable longer to stand the strain, he had announced that he was going out to his country club for a game of golf.
He returned to his down-town club about dinner-time, and at eight o'clock he called up Elizabeth Compton.
"Come on up," said the girl. "I'm all alone this evening. Father went back to the office to examine some reports that were just finished up late this afternoon."
"I'll be over," said Bince, "as soon as I dress." If there was any trace of surprise or shock in his tones the girl failed to notice it.
At ten o'clock that night a figure moved silently through the dark shadows of an alleyway in the rear of the International Machine Company's plant on West Superior Street. As he moved along he counted the basement windows silently, and at the fifth window he halted. Just a casual glance he cast up and down the alley, and then, kneeling, he raised the sash and slipped quietly into the darkness of the basement.
At about the same time Jimmy's landlady called him to the telephone, where a man's voice asked if "this was Mr. Torrance?" Assured that such was the fact, the voice continued: "I am the new watchman at the plant. There's something wrong here. I can't get hold of Mr. Compton. I think you better come down. I'll be in Mr. Compton's office--" The message ceased as though central had disconnected them.
"Funny," thought Jimmy, "that he should call me up. I wonder what the trouble can be." But he lost no time in getting his hat and starting for the works.
Although the Lizard knew that there was no danger of detection, yet from long habit he moved through the plant of the International Machine Company with the noiselessness of a disembodied spirit. Occasionally, and just for the briefest instant, he flashed his lamp ahead of him, but though he had never been in the place before he found it scarcely necessary, so minute had been his instructions for reaching the office from the fifth basement window.
The room he sought was on the second floor, and the Lizard had mounted the steps from the basement to the first floor when he was brought to a sudden stop by a noise from the floor above him. The Lizard listened intently. No, he could not be mistaken. Too often had he heard a similar sound.
Some one was tiptoeing across the floor above. The Lizard was in the hallway close beside the stairs when he realized the footsteps were coming toward the stairway, and a moment later that they were cautiously descending. The Lizard flattened himself against the wall, and if he breathed his lungs gave forth no sound.
If one may interpret footsteps--and the Lizard, from the fund of a great experience, felt that he could--those descending the stairway from above him might have been described as nervous and repressed; for at least they gave the Lizard the impression of one who desired to flee in haste and yet dared not do so, for fear of attracting attention by the increased noise that greater speed might entail.
At least the Lizard knew that those were the footsteps of no watchman, but whether it be guardian of the law or fellow criminal the Lizard had no wish to be discovered. He wondered what had gone wrong with Murray's plans, and, suddenly imbued with the natural suspicion of the criminal, it occurred to him that the whole thing might be a frame-up to get him; and yet why Murray should wish to get him he could not imagine. He ran over in his mind a list of those who might feel enmity toward him, but among them all the Lizard could cast upon none who might have sufficient against him to warrant such an elaborate scheme of revenge.
The footsteps passed him and continued on toward the foot of the stairs where was the main entrance which opened upon the street. At the door the footsteps halted, and as the Lizard's eyes bored through the darkness in the direction of the other prowler the latter struck a match upon the panel of the door and lighted a cigarette, revealing his features momentarily but distinctly to the watcher in the shadow of the stairway. Then he opened the door and passed out into the night.
The Lizard, listening intently for a few moments to assure himself that there was no one else above, and that the man who had just departed was not returning, at last continued his way to the foot of the stairs, which he ascended to the second floor. Passing through the outer office, he paused a moment before the door to Compton's private office, and then silently turning the knob he gently pushed the door open and stepped into the room. 
Beyond the threshold he halted and pressed the button of his flash-lamp. For just an instant its faint rays illumined the interior of the room, and then darkness blotted out the scene. But whatever it was that the little flash-lamp had revealed was evidently in the nature of a surprise, and perhaps something of a shock, to the Lizard, for he drew back with a muttered oath, backed quietly out of the room, closed the door after him, and, moving much more swiftly than he had entered, retraced his steps to the fifth window on the alley, and was gone from the scene with whatever job he had contemplated unexecuted.
A half-hour later detective headquarters at the Central Station received an anonymous tip: "Send some one to the office of the International Machine Company, on the second floor of ---- West Superior Street."
It was ten thirty when Jimmy reached the plant. He entered the front door with his own latchkey, pressed the button which lighted the stairway and the landing above, and, ascending, went straight to Mr. Compton's office, turned the knob, and opened the door, to find that the interior was dark.
"Strange," he thought, "that after sending for me the fellow didn't wait." As these thoughts passed through his mind he fumbled on the wall for the switch, and, finding it, flooded the office with light.
As he turned again toward the room he voiced a sudden exclamation of horror, for on the floor beside his desk lay the body of Mason Compton! As Jimmy stepped quickly toward Compton's body and kneeled beside it a man tiptoed quietly up the front stairway, while another, having ascended from the rear, was crossing the outer office with equal stealth.
Jimmy felt of Compton's face and hands. They were warm. And then he placed his ear close against the man's breast, in order to see if he could detect the beating of the heart. He was in this position when he was startled by a gruff voice behind him.
"Put 'em up!" it admonished curtly, and Jimmy turned to see two men standing in the doorway with pistols leveled at him.
AT first Jimmy thought they were the perpetrators of the deed, but almost immediately he recognized one of them as O'Donnell, the erstwhile traffic officer who had been promoted to a detective sergeancy since Jimmy had first met him.
"Compton has been murdered," said Jimmy dully. "He is dead."
"Put up your hands," snapped O'Donnell for the second time, "and be quick about it!"
It was then for the first time that Jimmy realized the meaning that might be put upon his presence alone in the office with his dead employer. O'Donnell's partner searched him, but found no weapon upon him.
"Where's the gat?" he asked.
"Whoever did this probably took it with him," said Jimmy. "Find the watchman."
They made Jimmy sit down in a corner, and while one of them guarded him the other called up central, made his report, and asked for an ambulance and the wagon. Then O'Donnell commenced to examine the room. A moment later he found an automatic behind the door across the room from where Compton's body lay.
"Ever see this before?" asked O'Donnell, holding the pistol up to Jimmy.
"If you're asking me if it's mine, no," said Jimmy. "I have a gun, but it's home. I never carry it. I didn't do this, O'Donnell," he continued. "There was no reason why I should do it, so instead of wasting your time on me while the murderer escapes you'd better get busy on some other theory, too. It won't do any harm, anyway."
The wagon came and took Jimmy to the station, and later he was questioned by the lieutenant in charge.
"You say this is not your pistol?" asked the police officer.
"It is not," replied Jimmy.
"You never saw it before?"
"No, I have not."
The lieutenant turned to one of his men, who went to the door, and, opening it, returned almost immediately with Bince.
"Do you know this man, Mr. Bince?" asked the lieutenant.
"I certainly do," said Bince.
"Did you ever see this pistol before?"
Bince took the weapon and examined it. "Yes," he said.
"Under what circumstances?" asked the lieutenant.
"It was one of two that Mr. Compton had in his desk. This one he loaned to Torrance two or three weeks ago. I was in the office at the time."
The officer turned toward Jimmy. "Now do you recognize it?" he asked.
"I haven't denied," said Jimmy, "that Mr. Compton had loaned me a pistol. As a matter of fact, I had forgotten all about it. I do not particularly recognize this one as the weapon he loaned me, though it is of the same type. There is no way that I could identify the particular weapon he handed me."
"But you admit he loaned you one?"
"Yes," said Jimmy.
"What did you do with it?" asked the policeman.
"I put it in my desk within five minutes after he gave it to me, and I haven't seen it since."
"You say you couldn't identify the pistol?" said the officer.
Jimmy nodded.
"Well, we can, and have. The number of this pistol was recorded when Mr. Compton bought it, as was the number of the other one which is still in his desk. These were the only two pistols he ever bought, according to Mr. Bince, and his daughter, aside from one which he had at home, which has also been accounted for. The drawer in which Mr. Bince saw you place this pistol we found open and the pistol gone. It looks pretty bad for you, young fellow, and if you want a chance to dodge the rope you'd better plead guilty and tell us why you did it."
Jimmy was given little opportunity for sleep that night. A half-dozen times he was called back to the lieutenant's office for further questioning. He commenced to realize that the circumstantial evidence was strongly against him, and now, as the girl had warned him, his entirely innocent past was brought up against him simply because his existence had been called to the attention of a policeman, and the same policeman an inscrutable Fate had ordained should discover him alone with a murdered man.
O'Donnell made the most of his meager knowledge of Jimmy. He told the lieutenant with embellishments of Jimmy's association with such characters as the Lizard and Little Eva; but the police were still at a loss to discover a motive.
This, however, was furnished the next morning, when Elizabeth Compton, white and heavy-eyed, was brought to the station to identify Jimmy. There was deep compassion in the young man's face as he was ushered into the presence of the stricken girl, while at sight of him her's mirrored horror, contempt, and hatred.
"You know this man?" asked the lieutenant.
"Yes," she replied. "His name is Torrance. I have seen him a number of times in the past year. He worked as a clerk in a store, in the hosiery department, and waited on me there. Later I"--she hesitated--"I saw him in a place called Feinheimer's. He was a waiter. Then he was a sparring partner, I think they call it, for a prizefighter. Some of my friends took me to a gymnasium to see the fighter training, and I recognized this man.
"I saw him again when he was driving a milk-wagon. He delivered milk at a friend's house where I chanced to be. The last time I saw him was at my father's home. He had obtained employment in my father's plant as an efficiency expert. He seemed to exercise some strange power over father, who believed implicitly in him, until recently, when he evidently commenced to have doubts; for the night that the man was at our house I was sitting in the music-room when they passed through the hallway, and I heard father discharge him. But the fellow pleaded to be retained, and finally father promised to keep him for a while longer, as I recall it, at least until certain work was completed at the plant. This work was completed yesterday. That's all I know. I do not know whether father discharged him again or not."
Harriet Holden had accompanied her friend to the police station, and was sitting close beside her during the examination, her eyes almost constantly upon the face of the prisoner. She saw no fear there, only an expression of deep-seated sorrow for her friend.
The lieutenant was still asking questions when there came a knock at the door, which was immediately opened, revealing O'Donnell with a young woman, whom he brought inside.
"I guess we're getting to the bottom of it," announced the sergeant. "Look who I found workin' over there as Compton's stenographer."
"Well, who is she?" demanded the lieutenant.
"A jane who used to hang out at Feinheimer's. She has been runnin' around with this bird. They tell me over there that Compton hired her on this fellow's recommendation. Get hold of the Lizard now, and you'll have the whole bunch."
Thus did Sergeant Patrick O'Donnell solve the entire mystery with Sherlockian ease and despatch.
At Jimmy's preliminary hearing he was held to the grand jury, and on the strength of the circumstantial evidence against him that body voted a true bill. Edith Hudson, against whom there was no evidence of any nature, was held as a witness for the State, and a net was thrown out for the Lizard which dragged in nearly every pickpocket in town except the man they sought.
Jimmy had been in jail for about a week when he received a visitor. A turnkey brought her to his cell. It was Harriet Holden. She greeted him seriously but pleasantly, and then she asked the turnkey if she might go inside.
"It's against the rules, miss," he said "but I guess it will be all right." He recalled that the sheriff had said that the girl's father was a friend of his, and so he assumed that it would be safe to relax the rules in her behalf. He had been too long an employee of the county not to know that rules are often elastic to the proper pressure.
"I have been wanting to talk to you," said the girl to Jimmy, "ever since this terrible thing happened. Somehow I cannot believe that you are guilty, and there must he some way in which you can prove your innocence."
"I have been trying to think out how I might," said Jimmy, "but the more I think about it the more damning the circumstantial evidence against me appears."
"There must always be a motive for a crime like that," said Harriet. "I cannot believe that a simple fear of his discharge would be sufficient motive for any man to kill his employer."
"Not to kill a man who had been as good to me as Mr. Compton was," said Jimmy, "or a man whom I admired so much as I did him. As a matter of fact, he was not going to discharge me, Miss Holden, and I had an opportunity there for a very successful future; but now that he is dead there is no one who could verify such a statement on my part."
"Who could there be, then, who might wish to kill him, and what could the motive be?"
"I can only think," said Jimmy, "of one man; and even in his case the idea is too horrible--too preposterous to be entertained."
Harriet Holden looked up at him quickly, a sudden light in her eyes, and an expression of almost horrified incredulity upon her face. "You don't mean--" she started.
"I wouldn't even use his name in connection with the thought," Jimmy interrupted; "but he is the only man of whom I know who could have profited by Mr. Compton's death, and, on the other hand, whose entire future would have been blasted possibly had Mr. Compton lived until the following morning."
The girl remained for half an hour longer, and when she left she went directly to the home of Elizabeth Compton.
"I told you, Elizabeth," she said, "that I was going to see Mr. Torrance. You dissuaded me for some time, but I finally went to-day, and I am glad that I went. No one except yourself could have loved your father more than I, or have been more horrified or grieved at his death; but that is no reason why you should aid in the punishment of an innocent man, as I am confident that this man Torrance is, and I tell you Elizabeth if you were not prejudiced you would agree with me.
"I have talked with Torrance for over half an hour to-day; and since then nothing can ever make me believe that that man could commit a cold-blooded murder. Harold has always hated him--you admit that yourself--and now you are permitting him to prejudice you against the man purely on the strength of that dislike. I am going to help him. I'm going to do it, not only to obtain justice for him, but to assist in detecting and punishing the true murderer."
"I don't see, Harriet, how you can take any interest in such a creature," said Elizabeth. You know from the circumstances under which we saw him before father employed him what type of man he is, and it was further exemplified by the evidence of his relationship with that common woman of the streets."
"He told me about her to-day," replied Harriet. "He had only known her very casually, but she helped him once--loaned him some money when he needed it--and when he found that she had been a stenographer and wanted to give up the life she had been leading and be straight again, he helped her.
"I asked Sergeant O'Donnell particularly about that, and even he had to admit that there was no evidence whatever to implicate the girl or show that the relations between her and Mr. Torrance had been anything that was not right; and you know yourself how anxious O'Donnell has been to dig up evidence of any kind derogatory to either of them."
"How are you going to help him?" asked Elizabeth. "Take flowers and cake to him in jail?"
There was a sneer on her face and on her lips.
"If he cares for flowers and cakes," replied Harriet, "I probably shall; but I have another plan which will probably be more practical."
SO it befell that the next day a well-known criminal attorney called on Jimmy Torrance at the county jail. "I understand," he said to Jimmy, "that you have retained no attorney. I have been instructed by one of my clients to take your case."
Jimmy looked at him in silence for a moment.
"Who is going to pay you?" he asked with a smile. "I understand attorneys expect to be paid."
"That needn't worry you." replied the lawyer.
"You mean that your client is going to pay for my defense? What's his name?"
"That I am not permitted to tell you," replied the lawyer.
"Very well. Tell your client that I appreciate his kindness, but I cannot accept it."
"Don't be a fool," said the attorney. "This client of mine can well afford the expense, and anyway, my instructions are to defend you whether you want me to or not, so I guess you can't help yourself."
Jimmy laughed with the lawyer. "All right," he said. "The first thing I wish you'd do is to get Miss Hudson out of jail. There is doubtless some reason for suspicion attaching to me because I was found alone with Mr. Compton's body, and the pistol with which he was shot was one that had been given to me and which I kept in my desk, but there is no earthly reason why she should be detained. She could have had absolutely nothing to do with it."
"I will see what can be done," replied the attorney, "although I had no instructions to defend her also."
"I will make that one of the conditions under which I will accept your services," said Jimmy.
The result was that within a few days Edith was released. From the moment that she left the jail she was aware that she was being shadowed.
"I suppose," she thought, "that they expect to open up a fund of new clues through me," but she was disturbed nevertheless, because she realized that it was going to make difficult a thing that she had been trying to find some means to accomplish ever since she had been arrested.
She went directly to her apartment and presently took down the telephone-receiver, and after calling a public phone in a building down-town, she listened intently while the operator was getting her connection, and before the connection was made she hung up the receiver with a smile, for she had distinctly heard the sound of a man's breathing over the line, and she knew that in all probability O'Donnell had tapped in immediately on learning that she had been released from jail.
That evening she attended a local motion-picture theater which she often frequented. It was one of those small affairs the width of a city block, with a narrow aisle running down either side and an emergency exit upon the alley at the far end of each aisle. The theater was darkened when she entered and, a quick glance apprizing her that no one followed her in immediately, she continued on down one of the side aisles and passed through the doorway into the alley.
Five minutes later she was in a telephone booth in a drug-store two blocks away.
"Is this Feinheimer's?" she asked after she had got her connection. "I want to talk to Carl." She asked for Carl because she knew that this man who had been headwaiter at Feinheimer's for years would know her voice.
"Is that you, Carl?" she asked as a man's voice finally answered the telephone. "This is Little Eva."
"Oh, hello!" said the man. "I thought you were over at the county jail."
"I was released to-day," she explained. "Well, listen, Carl; I've got to see the Lizard. I've simply got to see him to-night. I was being shadowed, but I got away from them. Do you know where he is?"
"I guess I could find him," said Carl in a low voice. "You go out to Mother Kruger's. I'll tell him you'll be there in about an hour."
"I'll be waiting in a taxi outside," said the girl.
"Good," said Carl. "If he isn't there in an hour you can know that he was afraid to come. He's layin' pretty low."
"All right," said the girl, "I'll be there. You tell him that he simply must come." She hung up the receiver and then called a taxi. She gave a number on a side street about a half block away, where she knew it would be reasonably dark, and consequently less danger of detection.
Three-quarters of an hour later her taxi drew up beside Mother Kruger's, but the girl did not alight. She had waited but a short time when another taxi swung in beside the road-house, turned around and backed up alongside hers. A man stepped out and peered through the glass of her machine. It was the Lizard.
Recognizing the girl he opened the door and took a seat beside her. "Well," inquired Lizard, "What's on your mind?"
"Jimmy," replied the girl.
"I thought so," returned the Lizard.
"It looks pretty bad for him, don't it? I wish there was some way to help him."
"He did not do it," said the girl.
"It didn't seem like him," said the Lizard, "but I got it straight from a guy who knows that he done it all right."
"Who?" asked Edith.
"Murray."
"I thought he knew a lot about it," said the girl. "That's why I sent for you. You haven't got any love for Murray, have you?"
"No," replied the Lizard; "not so you could notice it."
"I think Murray knows a lot about that job. If you want to help Jimmy I know where you can get the dope that will start something, anyway."
"What is it?" asked the Lizard.
"This fellow Bince, who is assistant general manager for Compton, got a letter from Murray two or three weeks before Compton was killed. Murray enclosed a threat signed I.W.W., and his letter instructed Bince to show the threat to Compton. I haven't got all the dope on it, but I've got a hunch that in some way it is connected with this job. Anyway, I've got both Murray's letter and the threat he enclosed. They're hidden in my desk at the plant. I can't get them, of course; they wouldn't let me in the place now, and Murray's so strong with the police that I wouldn't trust them, so I haven't told any one. What I want is for you to go there to-night and get them."
The Lizard was thinking fast. The girl knew nothing of his connection with the job. She did not know that he had entered Compton's office and had been first to find his dead body; in fact, no one knew that. Even Murray did not know that the Lizard had succeeded in entering the plant, as the latter had told him that he was delayed, and that when he reached there a patrol and ambulance were already backed up in front of the building. He felt that he had enough knowledge, however, to make the conviction of Jimmy a very difficult proposition, but if he divulged the knowledge he had and explained how he came by it he could readily see that suspicion would be at once transferred from Jimmy to himself.
The Lizard therefore was in a quandary. Of course, if Murray's connection was ever discovered the Lizard might then he drawn into it, but if he could keep Murray out the Lizard would be reasonably safe from suspicion, and now the girl had shown him how he might remove a damaging piece of evidence against Murray.
"You will get it, won't you?" asked the girl.
"Where are these papers?" he asked.
"They are in the outer office which adjoins Mr. Compton's. My desk stands at the right of the door as you enter from the main office. Remove the right-hand lower drawer and you will find the papers lying on the little wooden partition directly underneath the drawer."
"All right," said the Lizard; "I'll get them."
"Bless you, Lizard," cried the girl. "I knew you would help. You and I are the only friends he has. If we went back on him he'd be sent up, for there's lots of money being used against him. He might even be hanged. I know from what I have heard that the prosecuting attorney intends to ask for the death penalty."
The Lizard made no reply as he started to leave the taxi.
"Take them to his attorney," said the girl, and she gave him the name and address.
The Lizard grunted and entered his own cab. As he did so a man on a motorcycle drew up on the opposite side and peered through the window. The driver had started his motor as the newcomer approached. From her cab the girl saw the Lizard and the man on the motorcycle look into each other's face for a moment, then she heard the Lizard's quick admonition to his driver, "Beat it, bo!"
A sharp "Halt!" came from the man on the motorcycle, but the taxicab leaped forward, and, accelerating rapidly, turned to the left into the road toward the city. The girl had guessed at the first glance that the man on the motorcycle was a police officer. As the Lizard's taxi raced away the officer circled quickly and started in pursuit. "No chance," thought the girl. "He'll get caught sure." She could hear the staccato reports from the open exhaust of the motorcycle diminishing rapidly in the distance, indicating the speed of the pursued and the pursuer.
And then from the distance came a shot and then another and another. She leaned forward and spoke to her own driver. "Go on to Elmhurst," she said, "and then come back to the city on the St. Charles Road."
It was after two o'clock in the morning when the Lizard entered an apartment on Ashland Avenue which he had for several years used as a hiding-place when the police were hot upon his trail. The people from whom he rented the room were eminently respectable Jews who thought their occasional roomer what he represented himself to be, a special agent for one of the federal departments, a vocation which naturally explained the Lizard's long absences and unusual hours.
Once within his room the Lizard sank into a chair and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, although it was by no means a warm night. He drew a folded paper from his inside pocket, which, when opened, revealed a small piece of wrapping paper within. They were Murray's letter to Bince and the enclosure.
"Believe me," muttered the Lizard, "that was the toughest job I ever pulled off and all I gets is two pieces of paper, but I don't know but what they're worth it."
He sat for a long time looking at the papers in his hand, but he did not see them. He was thinking of other things: of prison walls that he had eluded so far through years of crime; of O'Donnell, whom he knew to be working on the Compton case and whose boast it had been that sooner or later he would get the Lizard; of what might naturally be expected were the papers in his hands to fall into the possession of Torrance's attorney. It would mean that Murray would be immediately placed in jeopardy, and the Lizard knew Murray well enough to know that he would sacrifice his best friend to save himself, and the Lizard was by no means Murray's best friend.
He realized that he knew more about the Compton murder case than any one else. He was of the opinion that he could clear it up if he were almost any one other than the Lizard, but with the record of his past life against him, would any one believe him? In order to prove his assertion it would be necessary to make admissions that might incriminate himself, and there would be Murray and the Compton millions against him; and as he pondered these things there ran always through his mind the words of the girl, "You and I are the only friends he has."
"Hell," ejaculated the Lizard as he rose from his chair and prepared for bed.
EDITH HUDSON spent a restless night, and early in the morning, as early as she thought she could reach him, she called the office of Jimmy's attorney. She told the lawyer that some new evidence was to have been brought in to him and asked if he had received it. Receiving a negative reply she asked that she be called the moment it was brought in.
All that day and the next she waited, scarcely leaving her room for fear that the call might come while she was away. The days ran into weeks and still there was no word from the Lizard.
Jimmy was brought to trial, and she saw him daily in the court-room and as often as they would let her she would visit him in jail. On several occasions she met Harriet Holden, also visiting him, and she knew that the other young woman was as constant an attendant at court as she.
The State had established as unassailable a case as might be built on circumstantial evidence. Krovac had testified that Torrance had made threats against Compton in his presence, and there was no way in which Jimmy's attorneys could refute the perjured statement. Jimmy himself had come to realize that his attorney was fighting now for his life, that the verdict of the jury was already a foregone conclusion and that the only thing left to fight for now was the question of the penalty.
Daily he saw in the court-room the faces of the three girls who had entered so strangely into his life. He noticed, with not a little sorrow and regret, that Elizabeth Compton and Harriet Holden always sat apart and that they no longer spoke. He saw the effect of the strain of the long trial on Edith Hudson. She looked wan and worried, and then finally she was not in court one day, and later, through Harriet Holden, he learned that she was confined to her room with a bad cold.
Jimmy's sentiments toward the three women whose interests brought them daily to the court-room had undergone considerable change. The girl that he had put upon a pedestal to worship from afar, the girl to whom he had given an idealistic love, he saw now in another light. His reverence for her had died hard, but in the face of her arrogance, her vindictiveness and her petty snobbery it had finally succumbed, so that when he compared her with the girl who had been of the street the latter suffered in no way by the comparison.
Harriet Holden's friendship and loyalty were a never-ending source of wonderment to him, but he accepted her own explanation, which, indeed, was true enough; that her innate sense of justice had compelled her to give him her sympathy and assistance.
Just how far that assistance had gone Jimmy did not know, though of late he had come to suspect that his attorney was being retained by Harriet Holden's father.
Bince appeared in the court-room only when necessity compelled his presence on the witness stand. The nature of the man's testimony was such that, like Krovac's, it was difficult of impeachment, although Jimmy was positive that Bince perjured himself, especially in a statement that he made of a conversation he had with Mr. Compton the morning of the murder, in which he swore that Compton stated that he intended to discharge Torrance that day.
The effect of the trial seemed to have made greater inroads upon Bince than upon Jimmy. The latter gave no indication of nervous depression or of worry, while Bince, on the other hand, was thin, pale and haggard. His hands and face continually moved and twitched as he sat in the courtroom or on the witness chair. Never for an instant was he at rest.
Elizabeth Compton had noticed this fact, too, and commented upon it one evening when Bince was at her home.
"What's the matter with you, Harold?" she asked. "You look as though you are on the verge of nervous prostration."
"I've had enough to make any man nervous," retorted Bince irritably. "I can't get over this terrible affair, and in addition I have had all the weight and responsibility of the business on my shoulders since, and the straightening out of your father's estate, which, by the way, was in pretty bad shape.
"I wish, Elizabeth," he went on, "that we might be married immediately. I have asked you so many times before, however, and you have always refused, that I suppose it is useless now. I believe that I would get over this nervous condition if you and I were settled down here together. I have no real home, as you know--the club is just a stopping place. I might as well be living at a hotel. If after the day's work I could come home to a regular home it would do me a world of good, I know. We could be married quietly. There is every reason why we should, especially now that you are left all alone."
"Just what do you mean by immediately?" she asked.
"To-morrow," he replied.
For a long time she demurred, but finally she acceded to his wishes, for an early marriage, though she would not listen to the ceremony being performed the following day. They reached a compromise on Friday morning, a delay of only a few days, and Harold Bince breathed more freely thereafter than he had for a long time before.
Mr. and Mrs. Harold Bince entered the court-room late on Friday morning following the brief ceremony that had made them man and wife. It had been generally supposed that to-day the case would go to the jury as the evidence was all in, and the final arguments of the attorneys, which had started the preceding day, would be concluded during the morning session. It had been conceded that the judge's charge would be brief and perfunctory, and there was even hope that the jury might return a verdict before the close of the afternoon session, but when Bince and his bride entered the court-room they found Torrance's attorney making a motion for the admission of new evidence on the strength of the recent discovery of witnesses, the evidence of whom he claimed would materially alter the aspect of the case.
An hour was consumed in argument before the judge finally granted the motion. The first of the new witnesses called was an employee of the International Machine Company. After the usual preliminary questions the attorney for the defense asked him if he was employed in the plant on the afternoon of March 24. The reply was in the affirmative.
"Will you tell the jury, please, of any occurrence that you witnessed there that afternoon out of the ordinary?"
"I was working at my machine," said the witness, "when Pete Krovac comes to me and asks me to hide behind a big drill-press and watch what the assistant general manager done when he comes through the shop again. So I hides there and I saw this man Bince come along and drop an envelope beside Krovac's machine, and after he left I comes out as Krovac picks it up, and I seen him take some money out of it."
"How much money?" asked the attorney.
"There was fifty dollars there. He counted it in front of me."
"Did he say what it was for?"
"Yes, he said Bince gave it to him to croak this fellow"--nodding toward Jimmy.
"What fellow?" asked the attorney.
"You mean Mr. Torrance, the defendant?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what else? What happened after that?"
"Krovac said he'd split it with me if I'd go along and help him."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"The guy beat up Krovac and come near croaking me, and got away."
"That is all," said the attorney.
The prosecuting attorney, whose repeated objections to the testimony of the witness had been overruled, waived cross-examination.
Turning to the clerk, "Please call Stephen Murray," said Jimmy's attorney.
Murray, burly and swaggering, took the witness chair. The attorney handed him a letter. It was the letter that Murray had written Bince enclosing the supposed I.W.W. threat.
"Did you ever see that before?" he asked.
Murray took the letter and read it over several times. He was trying to see in it anything which could possibly prove damaging to him.
"Sure," he said at last in a blustering tone of voice. "I wrote it. But what of it?"
"And this enclosure?" asked the attorney. He handed Murray the slip of soiled wrapping paper with the threat lettered upon it. "This was received with your letter."
Murray hesitated before replying. "Oh," he said," that ain't nothing. That was just a little joke."
"You were seen in Feinheimer's with Mr. Bince on March-- Do you recall the object of this meeting?"
"Mr. Bince thought there was going to be a strike at his plant and he wanted me to fix it up for him," replied Murray.
"You know the defendant, James Torrance?"
"Yes."
"Didn't he knock you down once for insulting a girl?" Murray flushed, but was compelled to admit the truth of the allegation.
"You haven't got much use for him, have you?" continued the attorney.
"No, I haven't," replied Murray.
"You called the defendant on the telephone a half or three-quarters of an hour before the police discovered Mr. Compton's body, did you not?"
Murray started to deny that he had done so. Jimmy's attorney stopped him. "Just a moment, Mr. Murray," he said, "if you will stop a moment and give the matter careful thought I am sure you will recall that you telephoned Mr. Torrance at that time, and that you did it in the presence of a witness," and the attorney pointed toward the back of the court-room. Murray looked in the direction that the other indicated and again he paled and his hand trembled where it rested on the arm of his chair, for seated in the back of the courtroom was the head-waiter from Feinheimer's. "Now do you recall?" asked the attorney.
Murray was silent for a moment. Suddenly he half rose from his chair. "Yes, I remember it," he said. "They are all trying to double-cross me. I had nothing to do with killing Compton. That wasn't in the deal at all. Ask that man there; he will tell you that I had nothing to do with killing Compton. He hired me and he knows," and with shaking finger Murray pointed at Mr. Harold Bince where he sat with his wife beside the prosecuting attorney.
FOR a moment there was tense silence in the court-room which was broken by the defense's perfunctory "Take the witness" to the prosecuting attorney, but again cross-examination was waived.
"Call the next witness, please," and a moment later the Lizard emerged from the witness-room.
"I wish you would tell the jury," said the counsel for defense after the witness had been sworn, "just what you told me in my office yesterday afternoon."
"Yes, sir," said the Lizard. "You see, it was like this: Murray there sent for me and tells me that he's got a job for me. He wants me to go and crack a safe at the International Machine Company's plant. He said there was a fellow on the inside helping him, that there wouldn't be any watchman there that night and that in the safe I was to crack was some books and papers that was to be destroyed, and on top of it was three or four thousand dollars in pay-roll money that I was to have as my pay for the job. Murray told me that the guy on the inside who wanted the job done had been working some kind of a payroll graft and he wanted the records destroyed, and he also wanted to get rid of the guy that was hep to what he had been doin'. All that I had to do with it was go and crack the safe and get the records, which I was to throw in the river, and keep the money for myself, but the frame-up on the other guy was to send him a phony message that would get him at the plant after I got through, and then notify the police so they could catch him there in the room with the cracked safe.
"I didn't know who they were framin' this job on. If I had I wouldn't have had nothin' to do with it.
"Well, I goes to the plant and finds a window in the basement open just as they tells me it will be, but when I gets on the first floor just before I go up-stairs to the office, which is on the second floor, I heard some one walking around up-stairs. I hid in the hallway while he came down. He stopped at the front door and lighted a cigarette and then he went on out, and I went up-stairs to finish the job.
"When I gets in Compton's office where the safe is I flashes my light and the first thing I sees is Compton's body on the floor beside his desk. That kind of stuff ain't in my line, so I beats it out without crackin' the safe. That's all I know about it until I sees the papers, and then for a while I was afraid to say anything because this guy O'Donnell has it in for me, and I know enough about police methods to know that they could frame up a good case of murder against me. But after a while Miss Hudson finds me and puts it up to me straight that this guy Torrance hasn't got no friends except me and her.
"Of course she didn't know how much I knew, but I did, and it's been worryin' me ever since. I was waiting, though, hopin' that something would turn up so that he would be acquitted, but I been watchin' the papers close, and I seen yesterday that there wasn't much chance, so here I am."
"You say that a man came down from Mr. Compton's office just before you went up? What time was that?"
"It was about ten o'clock, about half an hour before the cops finds Torrance there."
"And then you went up-stairs and found Mr. Compton dead?"
"Yes, sir."
"You say this man that came downstairs stopped and lighted a cigarette before he left the building. Did you see his face?"
"Yes, I did."
"Would you recognize him if you saw him again?"
"Sure."
"Look around the court-room and see if you can find him here."
"Sure I can find him. I seen him when I first came in, but I can't see his face because he's hiding behind the prosecuting attorney."
All eyes were turned in the direction of the prosecuting attorney to see Bince leap suddenly to his feet and lean forward upon the desk before him, supported by a trembling arm as he shook his finger at the Lizard, and in high-pitched tones screamed, "It's a lie! It's a lie!"
For a moment longer he stood looking wildly about the room, and then with rapid strides he crossed it to an open window, and before any one could interfere he vaulted out, to fall four stories to the cement sidewalk below.
For several minutes pandemonium reigned in the court-room. Elizabeth Compton Bince swooned, and when she regained consciousness she found herself in the arms of Harriet Holden.
"Take me home, Harriet," she asked; "take me away from this place. Take me to your home. I do not want to go back to mine yet."
Half an hour later, in accordance with the judge's charge to the jury, a verdict of "Not guilty" was rendered in the case of the People of Illinois versus James Torrance, Jr. Mr. Holden and Jimmy's attorney were the first to congratulate him, and the former insisted that he come home with him to dinner.
"I am sorry," said Jimmy; "I should like to immensely, but there is some one I must see first. If I may I should like to come out later in the evening to thank you and Miss Holden."
Jimmy searched about the court-room until he found the Lizard. "I don't know how to thank you," he said.
"Don't then," said the Lizard. "Who you ought to thank is that little girl who is sick in bed up on the North side."
"That's just where I am going now," said Jimmy. "Is she very sick?"
"Pneumonia," said the Lizard. "I telephoned her doctor just before I came over here, and I guess if you want to see her at all you'd better hurry."
"It's not that bad, is it?" Jimmy said.
"I'm afraid it is," said the Lizard.
Jimmy lost no time in reaching the street and calling a taxi. A nurse admitted him to the apartment. "How is she?" he asked.
The nurse shook her head.
"Can she see any one?"
"It won't make any difference now," said the nurse, and Jimmy was led into the room where the girl, wasted by fever and suffering, lay in a half-comatose condition upon her narrow bed. Jimmy crossed the room and laid his hand upon her forehead, and at the touch she opened her eyes and looked up at him. He saw that she recognized him and was trying to say something, and he kneeled beside the bed so that his ear might be closer to her lips.
"Jimmy," she whispered, "you are free? Tell me."
He told her briefly of what had happened.
"I am so happy," she murmured. "Oh, Jimmy, I am so happy!"
He took one of her wasted hands in his own and carried it to his lips.
"Not on the hand," she said faintly. "Just once, Jimmy, on the lips, before I die."
He gathered her in his arms and lifted her face to his. "Dear little girl," he said, "you are not going to die. It is not as bad as that."
She did not reply, but only clung to him tightly, and against his cheek he felt her tears and a little choking sob before she relaxed, and he laid her back again on her pillow. He thought she was dead then and he called the nurse, but she still breathed, though her eyes were closed. Jimmy sat down on the edge of the bed beside her and stroked her hand. After a while she roused again and opened her eyes.
"Jimmy," she said, "will you stay with me until I go?" The man could make no articulate response, but he pressed her hand reassuringly. She was silent again for some time. Once more she whispered faintly, so faintly that he had to lean close to catch her words:
"Miss Holden," she whispered, "she is a--good girl. It is--she--who hired--the attorney for you. Go to her--Jimmy-when I--am gone----she loves--you." Again there was a long pause. "Good-by--Jimmy," she whispered at last.
The nurse was standing at the foot of the bed. She came and put her hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "It is too bad," she said; "she was such a good girl."
"Yes," said Jimmy, "I think she was the best little girl I ever knew."
It was after nine o'clock when Jimmy, depressed and sorrowing, arrived at the Holden home. The houseman who admitted him told him that Mr. Holden had been called out, but that Miss Holden was expecting him, and he ushered Jimmy to the big living-room, and to his consternation he saw that Elizabeth Compton was there with Harriet. The latter came forward to greet him, and to his surprise the other girl followed her.
"I discovered to-day, Mr. Torrance," she said, "that I have wronged you. However unintentionally it was the fact remains that I might have done you a very great harm and injustice. I realize now how very different things might have been if I had listened to you and believed in you at first. Harriet told me that you were coming tonight and I asked to see you for just a moment to tell you this and also to ask you if you would continue with the International Machine Company.
"There is no one now whom I feel I would have so much confidence in as you. I wish you would come back and take charge for me. If you will tell me that you will consider it we will arrange the details later."
If an archangel had suddenly condescended to honor him with an invitation to assist in the management of Heaven Jimmy could not have been more surprised. He realized at what cost of pride and self-esteem the offer must have been made and acknowledgment of error. He told her that he would be very glad to assist her for the present, at least, and then she excused herself on the plea of nervous exhaustion and went to her room.
"Do you know," said Harriet, after Elizabeth had gone, "she really feels worse over her past attitude toward you than she does over Harold's death? I think she realizes now what I have told her from the first, that she never really loved him. Of course, her pride has suffered terribly, but she will get over that quickly enough.
"But do you know I have not had an opportunity before to congratulate you? I wish that I might have been there to have heard the verdict, but really you don't look half as happy as I should think you would feel."
"I am happy about that," said Jimmy, "but on top of my happiness came a sorrow. I just came from Edith's apartment. She died while I was there."
Harriet gave a little cry of shocked surprise. "Oh, Jimmy," she cried, laying her hand upon his arm. "Oh, Jimmy, I am so sorry!" It was the first time that she had ever addressed him by his given name, but there seemed nothing strange or unusual in the occurrence.
"She was such a good little girl," said Harriet.
It was strange that so many should use these same words in connection with Edith Hudson, and even this girl, so far removed from the sphere in which Little Eva had existed and who knew something of her past, could yet call her "good."
It gave Jimmy a new insight into the sweetness and charity of Harriet Holden's character. "Yes," he said, "her soul and her heart were good and pure."
"She believed so in you," said the girl. "She thought you were the best man who ever lived. She told me that you were the only really good man she had ever known, and her confidence and belief in you were contagious. You will probably never know all that she did for you. It was really she that imbued my father and his attorney with a belief in your innocence, and it was she who influenced the Lizard to take the stand in your behalf. Yes, she was a very good friend."
"And you have been a good friend," said Jimmy. "In the face of the same circumstances that turned Miss Compton against me you believed in me. Your generosity made it possible for me to be defended by the best attorney in Chicago, but more than all that to me has been your friendship and the consciousness of your sympathy at a time when, above all things, I needed sympathy. And now, after all you have done for me I came to ask still more of you."
"What do you want?" she asked.
She was standing very close to him, looking up in his face.
"You, Harriet," he said.
She smiled tremulously. "I have been yours for a long time, Jimmy, but you didn't know it."