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

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  “Well, I do love him,” insisted Elizabeth, “and I intend to marry him. I never had any patience with this silly, love-sick business that requires people to pine away when they are not together and bore everybody else to death when they were.”

  “All of which proves,” said Harriet, “that you haven’t been stung yet, and I sincerely hope that you may never be unless it happens before you marry Harold.”

  CHAPTER XIV.

  IN AGAIN — OUT AGAIN.

  Jimmy Torrance was out of a job a week this time, and once more he was indebted to the Lizard for a position, the latter knowing a politician who was heavily interested in a dairy company, with the result that Jimmy presently found himself driving a milk-wagon. Jimmy’s route was on the north side, which he regretted, as it was in the district where a number of the friends of his former life resided. His delivery schedule, however, and the fact that his point of contact with the homes of his customers was at the back door relieved him of any considerable apprehension of being discovered by an acquaintance.

  His letters home were infrequent, for he found that his powers of invention were being rapidly depleted. It was difficult to write glowing accounts of the business success he was upon the point of achieving on the strength of any of the positions he so far had held, and doubly so during the far greater period that he had been jobless and hungry. But he had not been able to bring himself to the point of admitting to his family his long weeks of consistent and unrelieved failure.

  Recently he had abandoned his futile attempts to obtain positions through the medium of the Help Wanted columns.

  “It is no use,” he thought. “There must be something inherently wrong with me that in a city full of jobs I am unable to land anything without some sort of a pull and then only work that any unskilled laborer could perform.”

  The truth of the matter was that Jimmy Torrance was slowly approaching that mental condition that is aptly described by the phrase, “losing your grip,” one of the symptoms of which was the fact that he was almost contented with his present job.

  He had driven for about a week when, upon coming into the barn after completing his morning delivery, he was instructed to take a special order to a certain address on Lake Shore Drive. Although the address was not that of one of his regular customers he felt that there was something vaguely familiar about it, but when he finally arrived he realized that it was a residence at which he had never before called.

  Driving up the alley Jimmy stopped in the rear of a large and pretentious home, and entering through a gateway in a high stone wall he saw that the walk to the rear entrance bordered a very delightful garden. He realized what a wonderfully pretty little spot it must be in the summer time, with its pool and fountain and tree-shaded benches, its vine-covered walls and artistically arranged shrubs, and it recalled to Jimmy with an accompanying sigh the homes in which he had visited in what seemed now a remote past, and also of his own home in the West.

  On the alley in one corner of the property stood a garage and stable, in which Jimmy could see men working upon the owner’s cars and about the box-stalls of his saddle horses. At the sight of the horses Jimmy heaved another sigh as he continued his way to the rear entrance. As he stood waiting for a reply to his summons he glanced back at the stable to see that horses had just entered and that their riders were dismounting, evidently two of the women of the household, and then a houseman opened the door and Jimmy made his delivery and started to retrace his steps to his wagon.

  Approaching him along the walk from the stable were the riders — two young women, laughing and talking as they approached the house, and suddenly Jimmy, in his neat white suit, carrying his little tray of milk-bottles, recognized them, and instantly there flashed into recollection the address that Harriet Holden had given him that night at Feinheimer’s.

  “What infernal luck,” he groaned inwardly; “I suppose the next time I see that girl I’ll be collecting garbage from her back door.” And then, with his eyes straight to the front, he stepped aside to let the two pass.

  It was Harriet Holden who recognized him first, and stopped with a little exclamation of surprise. Jimmy stopped, too. There was nothing else that a gentleman might do, although he would have given his right hand to have been out of the yard.

  “You never came to the house as I asked you to,” said Miss Holden reproachfully. “We wanted so much to do something to repay you for your protection that night.”

  “There was no use in my coming,” said Jimmy, “for, you see, I couldn’t have accepted anything for what I did — I couldn’t very well have done anything else, could I, under the circumstances?”

  “There were many other men in the place,” replied Harriet, “but you were the only one who came to our help.”

  “But the others were not—” Jimmy been upon the point of saying gentlemen, but then he happened to think that in the eyes of these two girls, and according to their standard, he might not be a gentleman, either. “Well, you see,” he continued lamely, “they probably didn’t know who you were.”

  “Did you?” asked Elizabeth.

  “No,” Jimmy admitted, “of course, I didn’t know who you were, but I knew what you were not, which was the thing that counted most then.”

  “I wish,” said Harriet, “that you would let us do something for you.”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth, “if a hundred dollars would be of any use to you—” Harriet laid a hand quickly on her friend’s arm.

  “I wasn’t thinking of money,” she said to Jimmy. “One can’t pay for things like that with money, but we know so many people here we might help you in some way, if you are not entirely satisfied with your present position.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Jimmy could not help but note that Elizabeth was appraising him critically from head to foot and he felt that he could almost read what was passing through her mind as she took stock of his cheap cotton uniform and his cap, with the badge of his employer above the vizor. Involuntarily Jimmy straightened his shoulders and raised his chin a trifle.

  “No, thank you,” he said to Harriet, “it is kind of you, but really I am perfectly satisfied with my present job. It is by far the best one I have ever held,” and touching his cap, he continued his interrupted way to his wagon.

  “What a strange young man,” exclaimed Harriet. “He is like many of his class,” replied Elizabeth, “probably entirely without ambition and with no desire to work any too hard or to assume additional responsibilities.”

  “I don’t believe it,” retorted Harriet. “Unless I am greatly mistaken, that man is a gentleman. Everything about him indicates it; his inflection even is that of a well-bred man.”

  “How utterly silly,” exclaimed Elizabeth. “You’ve heard him speak scarcely a dozen words. I venture to say that in a fifteen-minute conversation he would commit more horrible crimes against the king’s English than even that new stable-boy of yours. Really, Harriet, you seem very much interested in this person.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” asked Harriet. “He’s becoming my little pet mystery. I wonder under what circumstances we see him next?”

  “Probably as a white-wings,” laughed Elizabeth. “But if so I positively refuse to permit you to stop in the middle of Michigan Boulevard and converse with a street-sweeper while I’m with you.”

  Jimmy’s new job lasted two weeks, and then the milk-wagon drivers went on strike and Jimmy was thrown out of employment.

  “Tough luck,” sympathized the Lizard. “You sure are the Calamity Kid. But don’t worry, we’ll land you something else. And remember that that partnership proposition is still open.”

  There ensued another month of idleness, during which Jimmy again had recourse to the Help Wanted column. The Lizard tried during the first week to find something for him, and then occurred a certain very famous safe-robbery, and the Lizard disappeared.

  CHAPTER XV.

  LITTLE EVA.

  Early in March Jimmy was again forced to p
art 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 woman-hood 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 respect. 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 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, “just try it for a gamble?”

  “I don’t see how I can,” he obj
ected. “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.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  JIMMY THROWS A BLUFF.

  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.”