Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  “Principally the increased cost of labor,” replied Bince. “The same holds true of everybody else. Every manufacturer in the country is in the same plight we are.”

  “I know,” agreed Compton, “that that is true to some measure. Both labor and raw materials have advanced, but we have advanced our prices correspondingly. In some instances it seems to me that our advance in prices, particularly on our specialties, should have given us even a handsomer profit over the increased cost of production than we formerly received.

  “In the last six months since I appointed you assistant manager I am afraid that I have sort of let things get out of my grasp. I have a lot of confidence in you, Harold, and now that you and Elizabeth are engaged I feel even more inclined to let you shoulder the responsibilities that I have carried alone from the inception of this organization. But I’ve got to be mighty sure that you are going to do at least as well as I did. You have shown a great deal of ability, but you are young and haven’t had the advantage of the years of experience that made it possible for me to finally develop a business second to none in this line in the West.

  “I never had a son, and after Elizabeth’s mother died I have lived in the hope somehow that she would marry the sort of chap who would really take the place of such a son as every man dreams of — some one who will take his place and carry on his work when he is ready to lay aside his tools. I liked your father, Harold. He was one of the best friends that I ever had, and I can tell you now what I couldn’t have you a month ago: that when I employed you and put you in this position it was with the hope that eventually you would fill the place in my business and in my home of the son I never had.”

  “Do you think Elizabeth guessed what was in your mind?” asked Bince.

  “I don’t know,” replied the older man. “I have tried never to say anything to influence her. Years ago when she was younger we used to talk about it half jokingly and shortly after you told me of your engagement she remarked to me one day that she was happy, for she knew you were going to be the sort of son I had wanted.

  “I haven’t anybody on earth but her, Harold, and when I die she gets the business. I have arranged it in my will so you two will share and share alike in profits after I go, but that will be some time. I am far from being an old man, and I am a mighty healthy one. However, I should like to be relieved of the active management. There are a lot of things that I have always wanted to do that I couldn’t do because I couldn’t spare the time from my business.

  “And so I want you to get thoroughly into the harness as soon as possible, that I may turn over the entire management to you. But I can’t do it, Harold, while the profits are diminishing.”

  As the older man’s gaze fell again to statements before him the eyes of the younger man narrowed just a trifle as they rested upon Mason Compton, and then as the older man looked up Bince’s expression changed.

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” he said, smiling. “Of course I realize, as you must, that I have tried to learn a great deal in a short time. I think I have reached a point now where I pretty thoroughly grasp the possibilities and requirements of my work, and I am sure that from now on you will note a decided change for the better on the right side of the ledger.”

  “I am sure of it, my boy,” said Compton heartily. “Don’t think that I have been finding fault with anything you have done. I just wanted to call your attention to these figures. They mean something, and it’s up to you to find out just what they do mean.”

  And then there came a light tap on the door, which opened immediately before any summons to enter had been given, and Elizabeth Compton entered, followed by another young woman.

  “Hello, there!” exclaimed Compton. “What gets us out so early? And Harriet too! There is only one thing that would bring you girls in here so early.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Elizabeth.

  “You are going shopping, and Elizabeth wants some money.”

  They all laughed. “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes!” exclaimed Harriet Holden.

  “How much?” asked Compton of his daughter, still smiling.

  “How much have you?” asked Elizabeth. “I am utterly broke.”

  Compton turned to Bince. “Get her what she needs, Harold,” he said.

  The young man started to the door.

  “Come with me, Elizabeth,” he said; “we will go out to the cashier’s cage and get you fixed up.”

  They entered Bince’s office, which adjoined Compton’s.

  “Wait here a minute, Elizabeth,” said Bince. “How much do you want? I’ll get it for you and bring it back. I want to see you a moment alone before you go.”

  She told him how much she wanted, and he was back shortly with the currency.

  “Elizabeth,” he said, “I don’t know whether you have noticed it or not, because your father isn’t a man to carry his troubles home, but I believe that he is failing rapidly, largely from overwork. He worries about conditions here which really do not exist. I have been trying to take the load off his shoulders so that he could ease up a bit, but he has got into a rut from which he cannot be guided.

  “He will simply have to be lifted completely out of it, or he will stay here and die in the harness. Everything is running splendidly, and now that I have a good grasp of the business I can handle it. Don’t you suppose you could persuade him to take a trip? I know that he wants to travel. He has told me so several times, and if he could get away from here this fall and stay away for a year, if possible, it would make a new man of him. I am really very much worried about him, and while I hate to worry you I feel that you are the only person who can influence him and that something ought to be done and done at once.”

  “Why, Harold,” exclaimed the girl, “there is nothing the matter with father! He was never better in his life nor more cheerful.”

  “That’s the side of him that he lets you see,” replied the man. “His gaiety is all forced. If you could see him after you leave you would realize that he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Your father is not an old man in years, but he has placed a constant surtax on his nervous system for the last twenty-five years without a let-up, and it doesn’t make any difference how good a machine may be it is going to wear out some day, and the better the machine the more complete will be the wreck when the final break occurs.”

  As he spoke he watched the girl’s face, the changing expression of it, which marked her growing mental perturbation.

  “You really believe it is as bad as that, Harold?” she asked.

  “It may be worse than I think,” he said. “It is surely fully as bad.”

  The girl rose slowly from the chair. “I will try and persuade him to see Dr. Earle.”

  The man took a step toward her. “I don’t believe a doctor is what he needs,” he said quickly. “His condition is one that even a nerve specialist might not diagnose correctly. It is only some one in a position like mine, who has an opportunity to observe him almost hourly, day by day, who would realize his condition. I doubt if he has any organic trouble whatever. What he needs is a long rest, entirely free from any thought whatever of business. At least, Elizabeth, it will do him no harm, and it may prolong his life for years. I wouldn’t go messing around with any of these medical chaps.”

  “Well,” she said at last, with a sigh, “I will talk to him and see if I can’t persuade him to take a trip. He has always wanted to visit Japan and China.”

  “Just the thing!” exclaimed Bince; “just the thing for him. The long sea voyage will do him a world of good. And now,” he said, stepping to her side and putting an arm around her.

  She pushed him gently away.

  “No,” she said; “I do not feel like kissing now,” and turning she entered her father’s office, followed by Bince.

  CHAPTER VII.

  JOBLESS AGAIN.

  From her father’s works Elizabeth and Harriet drove to the shopping district, where they strolled through a couple of shops and then stopped
at one of the larger stores.

  Jimmy Torrance was arranging his stock, fully nine-tenths of which he could have sworn he had just shown an elderly spinster who had taken at least half an hour of his time and then left without making a purchase. His back was toward his counter when his attention was attracted by a feminine voice asking if he was busy. As he turned about he recognized her instantly — the girl for whom he had changed a wheel a month before and who unconsciously had infused new ambition into his blood and saved him, temporarily at least, from becoming a quitter.

  He noticed as he waited on her that she seemed to be appraising him very carefully, and at times there was a slightly puzzled expression on her face, but evidently she did not recognize him, and finally when she had concluded her purchases he was disappointed that she paid for them in cash. He had rather hoped that she would have them charged and sent, that he might learn her name and address. And then she left, with Jimmy none the wiser concerning her other than that her first name was Elizabeth and that she was even better-looking than he recalled her to have been.

  “And the girl with her!” exclaimed Jimmy mentally. “She was no slouch either. They are the two best-looking girls I have seen in this town, notwithstanding the fact that whether one likes Chicago or not he’s got to admit that there are more pretty girls here than in any other city in the country.

  “I’m glad she didn’t recognize me. Of course, I don’t know her, and the chances are that I never shall, but I should hate to have any one recognize me here, or hereafter, as that young man at the stocking counter. Gad! but it’s beastly that a regular life-sized man should be selling stockings to women for a living, or rather for a fraction of a living.”

  While Jimmy had always been hugely disgusted with his position, the sight of the girl seemed to have suddenly crystallized all those weeks of self-contempt into a sudden almost mad desire to escape what he considered his degrading and effeminating surroundings. One must bear with Jimmy and judge him leniently, for after all, notwithstanding his college diploma and physique, he was still but a boy and so while it is difficult for a mature and sober judgment to countenance his next step, if one can look back a few years to his own youth he can at least find extenuating circumstances surrounding Jimmy’s seeming foolishness.

  For with a bang that caused startled clerks in all directions to look up from their work he shattered the decorous monotone of the great store by slamming his sales book viciously upon the counter, and without a word of explanation to his fellow clerks marched out of the section toward the buyer’s desk.

  “Well, Mr. Torrance,” asked that gentleman, “what can I do for you?”

  “I am going to quit,” announced Jimmy.

  “Quit!”’ exclaimed the buyer. “Why, what’s wrong? Isn’t everything perfectly satisfactory? You have never complained to me.”

  “I can’t explain,” replied Jimmy. “I am going to quit. I am not satisfied. I am going to er — ah — accept another position.”

  The buyer raised his eyebrows. “Ah!” he said. “With—” and he named their closest competitor.

  “No,” said Jimmy. “I am going to get a regular he-job.”

  The other smiled. “If an increase in salary,” he suggested, “would influence you, I had intended to tell you that I would take care of you beginning next week. I thought of making it fifteen dollars,” and with that unanswerable argument for Jimmy’s continued service the buyer sat back and folded his hands.

  “Nothing stirring,” said Jimmy. “I wouldn’t sell another sock if you paid me ten thousand dollars a year. I am through.”

  “Oh, very well,” said the buyer aggrievedly, “but if you leave me this way you will be unable to refer to the house.”

  But nothing, not even a team of oxen, could have held Jimmy in that section another minute, and so he got his pay and left with nothing more in view than a slow death by starvation.

  “There,” exclaimed Elizabeth Compton, as she sank back on the cushions of her car.

  “There what?” asked Harriet.

  “I have placed him.”

  “Whom?”

  “That nice-looking young person who waited on us in the hosiery section.”

  “Oh!” said Harriet. “He was nice-looking, wasn’t he? But he looked out of place there, and I think he felt out of place. Did you notice how he flushed when he asked you what size?” and the girls laughed heartily at the recollection. “But where have you ever met him before?” Harriet asked.

  “I have never met him,” corrected Elizabeth, accenting the “met.” “He changed a wheel on the roadster several weeks ago one evening after I had taken Harold down to the club. And he was very nice about it. I should say that he is a gentleman, although his clothes were pretty badly worn.”

  “Yes,” said Harriet, “his suit was shabby, but his linen was clean and his coat well brushed.”

  “My!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “He must have made an impression on some one.”

  “Well,” said Harriet, “it isn’t often you see such a nice-looking chap in the hosiery section.”

  “No,” said Elizabeth, “and probably if he were as nice as he looks he wouldn’t be there.”

  Whereupon the subject was changed, and she promptly forgot Mr. Jimmy Torrance. But Jimmy was not destined soon to forget her, for as the jobless days passed and he realized more and more what an ass he had made of himself, and why, he had occasion to think about her a great deal, although never in any sense reproaching her. He realized that the fault was his own and that he had done a foolish thing in giving up his position because of a girl he did not know and probably never would.

  There came a Saturday when Jimmy, jobless and fundless, dreaded his return to the Indiana Avenue rooming-house, where he knew the landlady would be eagerly awaiting him, for he was a week in arrears in his room rent already, and had been warned he could expect no further credit.

  “There is a nice young man wanting your room,” the landlady had told him, “and I shall have to be having it Saturday night unless you can pay up.”

  Jimmy stood on the corner of Clark and Van Buren looking at his watch. “I hate to do it,” he thought, “but the Lizard said he could get twenty for it, and twenty would give me another two weeks.” And so his watch went, and two weeks later his cigarette-case and ring followed. Jimmy had never gone in much for jewelry — a fact which he now greatly lamented.

  Some of the clothes he still had were good, though badly in want of pressing, and when, after still further days of fruitless searching for work the proceeds from the articles he had pawned were exhausted, it occurred to him he might raise something on all but what he actually needed to cover his nakedness.

  In his search for work he was still wearing his best-looking suit; the others he would dispose of; and with this plan in his mind on his return to his room that night he went to the tiny closet to make a bundle of the things which he would dispose of on the morrow, only to discover that in his absence some one had been there before him, and that there was nothing left for him to sell.

  It would be two days before his room rent was again due, but in the mean time Jimmy had no money wherewith to feed the inner man. It was an almost utterly discouraged Jimmy who crawled into his bed to spend a sleepless night of worry and vain regret, the principal object of his regret being that he was not the son of a blacksmith who had taught him how to shoe horses and who at the same time had been too poor to send him to college.

  Long since there had been driven into his mind the conviction that for any practical purpose in life a higher education was as useless as the proverbial fifth wheel to the coach.

  “And even,” mused Jimmy, “if I had graduated at the head of my class, I would be no better off than I am now.”

  CHAPTER VIII.

  BREAD FROM THE WATERS.

  The next day, worn out from loss of sleep, the young man started out upon a last frenzied search for employment. He had no money for breakfast, and so he went breakfastless, and
as he had no carfare it was necessary for him to walk the seemingly interminable miles from one prospective job to another. By the middle of the afternoon Jimmy was hungrier than he had ever been before in his life. He was so hungry that it actually hurt, and he was weak from physical fatigue and from disappointment and worry.

  “I’ve got to eat,” he soliloquized fiercely, “if I have to go out to-night and pound somebody on the head to get the price, and I’m going to do it,” he concluded as the odors of cooking food came to him from a cheap restaurant which he was passing. He stopped a moment and looked into the window at the catsup bottles and sad-looking pies which the proprietor apparently seemed to think formed an artistic and attractive window display.

  “If I had a brick,” thought Jimmy, “I would have one of those pies, even if I went to the jug for it,” but his hunger had not made him as desperate as he thought he was, and so he passed slowly on, and, glancing into the windows of the store next door, saw a display of second-hand clothes and the sign “Clothes Bought and Sold.”

  Jimmy looked at those in the window and then down at his own, which, though wrinkled, were infinitely better than anything on display.

  “I wonder,” he mused, “if I couldn’t put something over in the way of high finance here,” and, acting upon the inspiration, he entered the dingy little shop. When he emerged twenty minutes later he wore a shabby and rather disreputable suit of hand-me-downs, but he had two silver dollars in his pocket.

  When Jimmy returned to his room that night it was with a full stomach, but with the knowledge that he had practically reached the end of his rope. He had been unable to bring himself to the point of writing his father an admission of his failure, and in fact he had gone so far, and in his estimation had sunk so low, that he had definitely determined he would rather starve to death now than admit his utter inefficiency to those whose respect he most valued.