I
The telegraph messenger looked again at the address on the envelope in
his hand, and then scanned the house before which he was standing. It
was an old-fashioned building of brick, two stories high, with an attic
above; and it stood in an old-fashioned part of lower New York, not
far from the East River. Over the wide archway there was a small
weather-worn sign, "Ramapo Steel and Iron Works;" and over the smaller
door alongside was a still smaller sign, "Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co."
When the messenger-boy had made out the name, he opened this smaller
door and entered the long, narrow store. Its sides and walls were
covered with bins and racks containing sample steel rails and iron
beams, and coils of wire of various sizes. Down at the end of the store
were desks where several clerks and book-keepers were at work.
As the messenger drew near, a red-headed office-boy blocked the
passage, saying, somewhat aggressively, "Well?"
"Got a telegram for Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.," the messenger
explained, pugnaciously thrusting himself forward.
"In there!" the office-boy returned, jerking his thumb over his
shoulder towards the extreme end of the building, an extension, roofed
with glass and separated by a glass screen from the space where the
clerks were at work.
The messenger pushed open the glazed door of this private office, a
bell jingled over his head, and the three occupants of the room looked
up.
"Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.?" said the messenger, interrogatively,
holding out the yellow envelope.
"Yes," responded Mr. Whittier, a tall, handsome old gentleman, taking
the telegram. "You sign, Paul."
The youngest of the three, looking like his father, took the
messenger's book, and, glancing at an old-fashioned clock which stood
in the corner, he wrote the name of the firm and the hour of delivery.
He was watching the messenger go out. His attention was suddenly called
to subjects of more importance by a sharp exclamation from his father.
"Well, well, well," said the elder Whittier with his eyes fixed on the
telegram he had just read. "This is very strange--very strange indeed!"
"What's strange?" asked the third occupant of the office, Mr.
Wheatcroft, a short, stout, irascible-looking man with a shock of
grizzly hair.
For all answer Mr. Whittier handed to Mr. Wheatcroft the thin slip of
paper.
No sooner had the junior partner read the paper than he seemed angrier
than was usual with him.
"Strange!" he cried. "I should think it was strange! confoundedly
strange--and deuced unpleasant, too."
"May I see what it is that's so very strange?" asked Paul, picking up
the despatch.
"Of course you may see it," growled Mr. Wheatcroft; "and let us see
what you can make of it."
The young man read the message aloud: "Deal off. Can get quarter cent
better terms. Carkendale."
Then he read it again to himself. At last he said, "I confess I don't
see anything so very mysterious in that. We've lost a contract, I
suppose; but that must have happened lots of times before, hasn't it?"
"It's happened twice before, this fall," returned Mr. Wheatcroft,
fiercely, "after our bid had been practically accepted and just before
the signing of the final contract!"
"Let me explain, Wheatcroft," interrupted the elder Whittier, gently.
"You must not expect my son to understand the ins and outs of this
business as we do. Besides, he has only been in the office ten days."
"I don't expect him to understand," growled Wheatcroft. "How could he?
I don't understand it myself!"
"Close that door, Paul," said Mr. Whittier. "I don't want any of the
clerks to know what we are talking about. Here are the facts in the
case, and I think you will admit that they are certainly curious: Twice
this fall, and now a third time, we have been the lowest bidders for
important orders, and yet, just before our bid was formally accepted,
somebody has cut under us by a fraction of a cent and got the job.
First we thought we were going to get the building of the Barataria
Central's bridge over the Little Makintosh River, but in the end it was
the Tuxedo Steel Company that got the contract. Then there was the
order for the fifty thousand miles of wire for the Trans-continental
Telegraph; we made an extraordinarily low estimate on that. We wanted
the contract, and we threw off, not only our profit, but even
allowances for office expenses; and yet five minutes before the last
bid had to be in, the Tuxedo Company put in an offer only a hundred and
twenty-five dollars less than ours. Now comes the telegram to-day. The
Methuselah Life Insurance Company is going to put up a big building; we
were asked to estimate on the steel framework. We wanted that
work--times are hard and there is little doing, as you know, and we
must get work for our men if we can. We meant to have this contract if
we could. We offered to do it at what was really actual cost of
manufacture--without profit, first of all, and then without any charge
at all for office expenses, for interest on capital, for depreciation
of plant. The vice-president of the Methuselah, the one who attends to
all their real estate, is Mr. Carkendale. He told me yesterday that our
bid was very low, and that we were certain to get the contract. And now
he sends me this." Mr. Whittier picked up the telegram again.
"But if we were going to do it at actual cost of manufacture," said the
young man, "and somebody else underbids us, isn't somebody else losing
money on the job?"
"That's no sort of satisfaction to our men," retorted Mr. Wheatcroft,
cooking himself before the fire. "Somebody else--confound him!--will be
able to keep his men together and to give them the wages we want for
our men. Do you think somebody else is the Tuxedo Company again?"
"What of it?" asked Mr. Whittier. "Surely you don't suppose----"
"Yes, I do," interrupted Mr. Wheatcroft, swiftly. "I do, indeed. I
haven't been in this business thirty years for nothing. I know how
hungry we get at all times for a big, fat contract; and I know we would
any of us give a hundred dollars to the man who could tell us what our
chief rival has bid. It would be the cheapest purchase of the year,
too."
"Come, come, Wheatcroft," said the elder Whittier; "you know we've
never done anything of that sort yet, and I think you and I are too old
to be tempted now."
"Nothing of the sort," snorted the fiery little man; "I'm open to
temptation this very moment. If I could know what the Tuxedo people are
going to bid on the new steel rails of the Springfield and Athens, I'd
give a thousand dollars."
"If I understand you, Mr. Wheatcroft," Paul Whittier asked, "you are
suggesting that there has been something done that is not fair?"
"That's just what I mean," Mr. Wheatcroft declared, vehemently.
"Do you mean to say that the Tuxedo people have somehow been made
acquainted with our bids?" asked the young man.
"That's what I'm thinking now," was the sharp answer. "I can't think of
anything else. For two months we haven't been successful in getting a
single one of the big contracts. We've had our share of the little
things, of course, but they don't amount to much. The big things that
we really wanted have slipped through our fingers. We've lost them by
the skin of our teeth every time. That isn't accident, is it? Of course
not! Then there's only one explanation--there's a leak in this office
somewhere."
"You don't suspect any of the clerks, do you, Mr. Wheatcroft?" asked
the elder Whittier, sadly.
"I don't suspect anybody in particular," returned the junior partner,
brushing his hair up the wrong way; "and I suspect everybody in
general. I haven't an idea who it is, but it's somebody! It must be
somebody--and if it is somebody, I'll do my best to get that somebody
into the clutches of the law."
"Who makes up the bids on these important contracts?" asked Paul.
"Wheatcroft and I," answered his father. "The specifications are
forwarded to the works, and the engineers make their estimates of the
actual cost of labor and material. These estimates are sent to us here,
and we add whatever we think best for interest, and for expenses, for
wear and tear, and for profit."
"Who writes the letters making the offer--the one with actual figures I
mean?" the son continued.
"I do," the elder Whittier explained; "I have always done it."
"You don't dictate them to a typewriter?" Paul pursued.
"Certainly not," the father responded; "I write them with my own hand,
and, what's more, I take the press-copy myself, and there is a special
letter-book for such things. This letter-book is always kept in the
safe in this office; in fact, I can say that this particular
letter-book never leaves my hands except to go into that safe. And, as
you know, nobody has access to that safe except Wheatcroft and me."
"And the Major," corrected the junior partner.
"No," Mr. Whittier explained, "Van Zandt has no need to go there now."
"But he used to," Mr. Wheatcroft persisted.
"He did once," the senior partner returned; "but when we bought those
new safes outside there in the main office, there was no longer any
need for the chief book-keeper to go to this smaller safe; and so, last
month--it was while you were away, Wheatcroft--Van Zandt came in here
one afternoon, and said that, as he never had occasion to go to this
safe, he would rather not have the responsibility of knowing the
combination. I told him we had perfect confidence in him."
"I should think so!" broke in the explosive Wheatcroft. "The Major has
been with us for thirty years now. I'd suspect myself of petty larceny
as soon as him."
"As I said," continued the elder Whittier; "I told him that we trusted
him perfectly, of course. But he urged me, and to please him I changed
the combination of this safe that afternoon. You will remember,
Wheatcroft, that I gave you the new word the day you came back."
"Yes, I remember," said Mr. Wheatcroft. "But I don't see why the Major
did not want to know how to open that safe. Perhaps he is beginning to
feel his years now. He must be sixty, the Major; and I've been thinking
for some time that he looks worn."
"I noticed the change in him," Paul remarked, "the first day I came
into the office. He seemed ten years older than he was last winter."
"Perhaps his wound troubles him again," suggested Mr. Whittier.
"Whatever the reason, it is at his own request that he is now ignorant
of the combination. No one knows that but Wheatcroft and I. The letters
themselves I wrote myself, and copied myself, and put them myself in
the envelopes I directed myself. I don't recall mailing them myself,
but I may have done that too. So you see that there can't be any
foundation for your belief, Wheatcroft, that somebody had access to our
bids."
"I can't believe anything else!" cried Wheatcroft, impulsively. "I
don't know how it was done--I'm not a detective--but it was done
somehow. And if it was done, it was done by somebody! And what I'd like
to do is to catch that somebody in the act--that's all! I'd make it hot
for him!"
"You would like to have him out at the Ramapo Works," said Paul,
smiling at the little man's violence, "and put him under the
steam-hammer?"
"Yes, I would," responded Mr. Wheatcroft. "I would indeed! Putting a
man under a steam-hammer may seem a cruel punishment, but I think it
would cure the fellow of any taste for prying into our business in the
future."
"I think it would get him out of the habit of living," the elder
Whittier said, as the tall clock in the corner struck one. "But don't
let's be so brutal. Let's go to lunch and talk the matter over quietly.
I don't agree with your suspicion, Wheatcroft, but there may be
something in it."
Five minutes later Mr. Whittier, Mr. Wheatcroft, and the only son of
the senior partner left the glass-framed private office, and, walking
leisurely through the long store, passed into the street.
They did not notice that the old book-keeper, Major Van Zandt, whose
high desk was so placed that he could overlook the private office, had
been watching them ever since the messenger had delivered the despatch.
He could not read the telegram, he could not hear the comments, but he
could see every movement and every gesture and every expression. He
gazed from one speaker to the other almost as though he were able to
follow the course of the discussion; and when the three members of the
firm walked past his desk, he found himself staring at them as if in a
vain effort to read on their faces the secret of the course of action
they had resolved upon.