BENWAY’S DISCOVERY
Benway Chase was to prepare a copy of the faulty specification sheet of
the Kimberly Binding Company’s order, to be attached to the report on
that unfortunate affair filed in the records of the board’s proceedings.
Ethel had not discussed the unfortunate matter with Benway, or with
anybody else. That Frank Barton could have allowed such an error--two
such errors, indeed--to escape his notice was scarcely in accord with
her belief in the general manager’s perspicacity. Her lips merely
tightened when anybody mentioned the tragic happening within her
hearing.
For it was indeed tragic. Rumors that the factory output was falling
behind and that the Hapwood-Diller Company was facing a situation
similar to that which had threatened it when Frank Barton had first
taken hold as manager, reached Ethel’s ears from all sides.
Although she could not understand how this mistake in the Kimberly
order could have happened, she accepted the claim of the ordering
company as honestly made, and that without question. The Kimberly
Company was not a second Bogata concern. They wanted the goods ordered
and were amply able to pay for them. The mistakes in the specifications
made much trouble for the purchasing corporation as well as for the
Hapwood-Diller Company.
This schedule from the Kimberly Binding Company had been copied in
duplicate in the Hapwood-Diller Company’s office, one copy with Frank
Barton’s name upon it being returned to the ordering firm, the other
filed where only properly accredited members of the Hapwood-Diller
Company’s office force supposedly were able to get at it.
The question as to how the two items on the schedule came to be
different from those on the sheet sent back to the Kimberly Company
bulked just as big in Ethel’s mind as the similar question regarding
the Bogata Company’s order. She felt that the same treacherous hand was
to be suspected.
It was not Frank Barton’s fault. Of this she was confident. But she
could not put an accusing finger on any person. That there was a
traitor in the Hapwood-Diller office went without saying. This time
Mr. Barton was too far away for her to discuss the point with him, and
Hammerly gave her no opportunity of speaking her mind.
Benway came with the copy he was making of the faulty schedule and
placed it before her. He was transcribing the paper in his own very
exact, upright handwriting. But he had made a mistake.
“Do you think that will be noticed, Ethel?” he asked with a measure of
suppressed excitement that she did not at first notice. “See where I
made a bull--and used the acid to take the ink out?”
“Why, yes, Benway; I see it--now that you call my attention to it. But
really you have made the correction very neatly. I think it will be all
right. The paper only shines a little on the surface where you erased
the ink marks with the acid.”
“That’s just it, Ethel,” he hissed, close to her ear. “The erasing
fluid leaves the surface of this sort of paper glossy. Now look at
this!”
He plumped the document he was copying--the schedule in which the two
errors had been found--under her eye.
“Why, what is it?”
“See anything wrong about those two mysterious lines?” he demanded, and
now she marked his excitement.
“Oh, Benway! That’s been all gone over. You can see there have been
no changes made in this original paper. There is no more shine to the
surface where those two errors stand than elsewhere. _That_ was taken
up in board meeting. I heard them discuss it. And I studied it myself.
No. There have surely been no erasures.”
“Sure?”
“You are very obstinate, Benway!” exclaimed Ethel impatiently.
“But look,” he whispered. “Here!” He snapped on the electric light over
her desk. “Look at those places on the slant--with the glare of the
light on them. Don’t you see that the paper has been roughened under
those two faulty lines--and nowhere else on the sheet? And see again!
Under the electric light the surface of the paper seems bluer at those
places than anywhere else. That is a good quality of paper, too.”
“Is--isn’t it a chance discoloration?” murmured the girl.
“Don’t you think that’s far-fetched?” demanded Benway. “Two blue
blots--and just where those wrong items are written?”
“Could they have been caused by drops of water?”
“Huh! Drops of something!” growled Benway. “I own to that belief. But
never water. Here! Use this reading glass. Don’t you see the raw fibre
of the paper? The surface has been scratched just where those wrong
items stand. Not by the sort of erasing fluid we use in this office;
but by some means. What do you think?”
Ethel passed the sensitive tips of her fingers lightly over the
indicated spots on the sheet. It seemed to her that she could feel the
slight roughness of the paper that Benway indicated so assuredly.
“You go back and finish your job, Benway,” she told him finally. “Then
bring me this original. Understand? Say nothing to anybody else about
it.”
“Sure!” he returned, his eyes snapping.
“Then if you are asked about it,” she added quietly, “you may say that
you gave me the paper and know nothing at all about it.”
He looked at her with more seriousness.
“Say, are you figuring on getting into trouble with----”
Ethel held up her hand. “You are not supposed to figure on this at all.
Just do as I say, Benway.”
“Oh! All right, Ma’am,” he said with a mocking little smile and a
twinkle in his eye.
Even he did not wholly understand the seriousness of the discovery;
but Ethel appreciated it fully. When he brought the original sheet of
specifications back to her she hid it in her dress and at noon instead
of going to lunch she caught a southbound car and rode to the Stone
Bridge.
On either side of the creek there were docks and warehouses; but Macon
Hammerly’s general store and row of storehouses for feed and grain
and such other things as he dealt in were beyond the bridge and some
distance along what was called the Creek Road. The Creek Road debouched
into the fanning country that adjoined Mailsburg somewhat abruptly, at
the south end of the town.
Really, Mr. Hammerly was a country merchant, always had been such, and
always would be. He had come into possession of his father’s store when
he was a young man, and it was said that his grandfather had first
engaged in business--the trading of general merchandise for pelts and
farm produce--on this very spot. However, the Macon Hammerly store and
warehouses were well known over a large area.
Being on the edge of the city the farming people were likely to trade
with him largely. And yet he was not considered a “good fellow.” He was
too sharp and severe in his business methods.
To his docks the sluggishly moving canal-boats came bringing grain and
feed and coal and other merchandise that he dealt in more largely. And
he was a wholesale dealer in many articles that other merchants in
Mailsburg sold at retail. For one thing, his was the largest seed house
in the county.
Ethel hurried over the arch of the Stone Bridge and down the narrow,
bricked walk across from the head of the several docks and the doors
of the warehouses upon them. This was an old, old part of the town;
indeed, it had been known as Stone Bridge once; but Mailsburg had grown
out to it and had all but enveloped it with new buildings and better
streets. Only down the Creek Road the land still was checkered with
open fields and patches of wood.
Before the weather-beaten building in which was Macon Hammerly’s
general store, was a wide, roofed porch. Several bewhittled armchairs,
just “wabbly” enough to be comfortable, stood about upon the platform.
Sometimes these were filled with Hammerly’s ancient cronies--cynics of
a former generation who had been in this world so long that they seemed
to believe they knew better how to run it than Omnipotence!
Mr. Hammerly was alone at one end of the porch. This was egg-buying
day, and as he dealt largely in eggs--shipping quantities to the larger
cities--the old man usually looked after the buying while his clerks
packed the boxes inside.
Hammerly believed if a thing was worth doing at all it was worth doing
well. Likewise he believed in that other old saw relative to a man’s
doing anything himself if he wanted to be sure it was done right. He
could not do everything of importance about his store and warehouses;
but he could--and did--buy eggs.
He watched the farmers and their wives cannily as they brought their
baskets up to the platform. He handled many of the eggs himself. It was
his inflexible rule to refuse all pullet eggs, and he had always in his
pocket a wooden curtain-pole ring of a certain size. If an egg would
slip through that, it was discarded.
Ethel chanced to arrive at a moment when there was a let-up in the
activities of egg buying. The grain dealer pushed up his spectacles
with that familiar gesture of his and grinned at the girl.
“You ain’t come away down here on no party call, Ethel?” he said
questioningly. “You know I ain’t in the swagger set, and I don’t serve
pink tea here.”
“No, sir,” she said, smiling in spite of her serious mood. “I know you
are a perfect barbarian.”
The man chuckled, but said only:
“Heard from Frank Barton yet?”
“Oh, no, sir!”
“I got you beat, then,” he said, with twinkling eye. “Not direct; but
from Washington. Got a friend there and he’s kept me posted. The troop
ship _Tecumseh_ got over safely--as they all did, in fact. Them German
undersea boats seem to have been too far under the sea to catch ’em.
Frank’s safe in France.”
“Until he gets into the trenches,” said the girl bitterly.
“Don’t you be like these other folks, Ethel. Grouchers, every one!
Knocking the war, and looking on the black side of every cloud instead
of on the silver. The good Lord knows I’m no optimist by nature;
but these are the times when every one of us should stretch our
cheerfulness to the breaking point.
“Frank’s going to be all right. He’s going to do his duty, and he’s
going through with it all and come back to us. That’s my belief, Ethel.”
“Oh, Mr. Hammerly! I hope you are right.”
“If things go as smooth here with us as they do over there with him,”
he added, with twinkling eyes, “I reckon all will be well.”
“Oh, Mr. Hammerly!” she exclaimed again, “things are not going smoothly
here. At least, not with the Hapwood-Diller Company.”
“So that’s what brings you down here? I ain’t so flattered as I was,
Ethel,” he said good-naturedly. “Let’s hear your trouble.”
“Oh, you mustn’t think I’m not glad to see you,” she said, hurriedly.
“O’ course you’re glad,” he said, with something of a grin on his
wrinkled face. He stroked his chin reflectively. “Great times these,
an’ no mistake. If I was only younger----”
“You’d get into the war, I suppose.”
“Certain sure, I would. An’ you would, too, if you was a young man.”
“Perhaps--I really don’t know--it’s all so horrible.”
“So ’tis, an’ that German Kaiser has got a pile to answer for, believe
me. But now to business. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m not sure that it’s really wrong. But it looks queer to me.”
“I see. Got some papers, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see ’em.”
She displayed the specification sheet and explained hurriedly Benway’s
discovery. The appearance of erasure in two places on the document
seemed plainer to Ethel each time she looked at it.
“I dunno,” drawled Hammerly, at first doubtful. But the longer he
looked at the two bluish marks the more deeply he was impressed with
the significance of them. “Can it be that we’ve got him at last?” he
finally questioned vigorously.
“_Him?_” repeated Ethel, curiously.
“There’s a dirty traitor in this business, Ethel,” declared the grain
dealer.
“Who do you think it is? Jim Mayberry?” she asked outright.
“He never did this,” declared Hammerly with emphasis. “He wouldn’t have
brains enough. That’s scarcely seeable, that rubbing out. And see how
close the handwriting has been copied.
“I see. That is Josephine Durand’s work--the original writing of the
sheet, I mean. We never use the typewriter on these specification
papers, because of the uneven ruling. She wrote both this and the copy
that went back to the Kimberly people with Mr. Barton’s name on it.”
“I know,” growled Hammerly, still staring closely at the paper.
“And Josephine is perfectly trustworthy, I am sure. Besides, it does
not seem possible that Mr. Barton did not closely compare the two
papers. Those figures were changed, I am sure, after Mr. Barton left.”
“Not a doubt on it! Not a doubt on it!” agreed Hammerly. “I’ve seen
something like this afore,” he added, more to himself than to the
girl. “You let me keep this paper, Ethel. We’ll see. How’s your ma?”
“Worried a good deal, Mr. Hammerly. That lawyer who came around to buy
her shares in the Hapwood-Diller Company really scared mother.”
“What lawyer?” snapped Macon Hammerly, instantly interested.
Ethel told of the incident and gave Mr. Hammerly the name and address
of the attorney, Mr. Schuster. “I believe he did secure a few shares
from some of the small stockholders,” Ethel said. “You know Abel
Rawlins had seven shares and Mrs. Henry Cutt a dozen. They sold, mother
says, and she is worried for fear the company is going to smash and we
may lose everything.”
“How many’s she got, Ethel?” asked the old man, a heavy frown on his
brow. And when Ethel told him, he added: “So? Israel Diller ought to’ve
done better by her than that. She was just as close’t kin to the old
man as Grandon Fuller’s wife.”
“Oh, we won’t talk about that,” said Ethel, with a gesture of
dismissal. “What is done, is done.”
“Humph! Mebbe! If it stays done!” grunted Macon Hammerly. “But it’s
been ten years and more now, ain’t it? Well! Howsomever, you let me
keep this paper a spell and see if I can make anything out of it.
I want to compare it with something I saw once--an’ had suspicions
about.”
He bought no more eggs personally that day--and probably some of pullet
size slipped by. Instead, when Ethel left him, he walked up into the
business section of High Street and there, near the court-house, went
into the office of Alfred Gainor, who, as Mr. Mestinger’s chief clerk,
had fallen heir to most of his clients and their business when the
older attorney died.
Mr. Mestinger had been the legal adviser of Israel Diller and had drawn
the latter’s will.