OPENING THE WAY
Ethel heard of Barton in several ways during the next few weeks, but
never by personal letter. She understood the reason for that, however,
for Morrison Copley had quite freely explained the lieutenant’s wounds
and his helpless condition in the _Clarion_.
“Thank the good Lord ’tain’t his legs nor his eyes,” Mrs. Trevor said.
“When a man can’t see to read and he can’t get about on his own pins he
ain’t no use to himself, nor to nobody else.”
Ethel did not fail to write to the wounded man, and that frequently.
When these letters should reach Barton he would learn the particulars
of the important changes in the Hapwood-Diller offices, and something,
too, of Ethel’s troubles and perplexities.
But she had no idea that it was something entirely different from
office news that the hungry-hearted absentee wished for.
The explanation of the mystery touching Frank Barton’s wounds and his
confinement in the hospital relieved Ethel’s anxiety to a certain
degree. But there was one thing that seriously pricked her thought at
all times. Helen Fuller was with the wounded man!
Miss Marble had made Helen’s letter broadly public. Other people in
Mailsburg noted the fact that Helen’s first patient was the general
manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company. It is the easiest thing in the
world for gossip to put such a two and two together and make four.
It was remarked that before Barton had gone to the officers’ training
camp at Quehasset he had been seen much with Helen Fuller. His interest
in her had been noted.
Now the gossips declared their association on the other side could
lead to but one conclusion. Somebody offered a bet in Ethel’s hearing,
two to one, that there would be a wedding at the American Embassy in
Paris just as soon as Lieutenant Barton was allowed to leave the base
hospital at Lovin.
However, relieved by her knowledge of Barton’s safety, Ethel Clayton
tried to give all her attention to the task she had accepted when she
was practically hoisted into Barton’s place.
Hammerly and a few of the other directors cheered her; Grandon Fuller
sneered and continued to acclaim openly that a girl at the head of the
business spelled ruin for the Hapwood-Diller Company.
“Don’t mind that grouch, Ethel,” Macon Hammerly said. “We’ve put a ring
in his nose, and like any other hog he squeals over the operation. But
such squealing never yet did any hurt.”
“It gets on one’s nerves most awfully, just the same, Mr. Hammerly,”
the girl said with a sigh.
She had not, however, come to the old man with any empty complaint. The
labor situation at the factory was in a critical condition. The spoiled
work being turned back by the inspectors and foremen had increased
twenty per cent. Still the malcontents complained of low wages.
“To protect the corporation and to answer the low wage complaint,”
Ethel told Hammerly, “I have certain drastic changes to suggest. I
admit they are diametrically opposed to the system inaugurated by Mr.
Barton; but Mr. Barton did not have the same difficulties to deal with
that we have now.”
“Ain’t it so?” agreed the old man. “In those times, Grandon Fuller was
trying to rope Frank, just as he afterward noosed Mayberry. Go on,
Ethel. You’ve got good sense, I know.”
“Thank you. At least, I have the interests of the corporation at heart.
If I fail as manager I lose more than your good opinion, Mr. Hammerly.”
“By Henry! you ain’t goin’ to fail, girl,” cried the man.
“But I am desperate. Desperate enough to change the entire system of
the factory if the board of directors will back me. Look at this, Mr.
Hammerly.”
She displayed her carefully drawn up plans. The important change
was the shifting from a flat payment of labor at so much per hour,
graduated according to the skill of the workmen, to a piecework scale
of wages which she had scheduled with the assistance of Benway Chase.
“I believe it will answer the complaint of low pay. Our best men will
be encouraged to remain with us instead of going to the munition
factories. The dissatisfied workmen will be those less skilled and we
can the more easily replace them if they leave,” Ethel explained.
Macon Hammerly’s approval was instant, and with his backing Ethel’s
scheme was sure to be agreed to by the board. But to put it into force
without opposition was more than could be expected.
The better class of workmen in the factory when consulted quietly
before the posting of the notices, were eager to give the plan a trial.
Many of them owned their own homes in Mailsburg and had hesitated
to leave their employment at the Hapwood-Diller factory despite
the temptation of higher wages elsewhere. The chance to increase
voluntarily their incomes by speeding up found favor.
There were incendiary fellows, however, ready instantly to decry the
change. They could see no good in it. It was a trick on the part of the
corporation to underpay the bulk of the laboring force employed in the
factory.
This cauldron of trouble continued to bubble and steam up to the
very Saturday before the installation of the new system of payment.
At closing time that afternoon it was already dark; but many of the
workmen left the factory gate only to remain in the side street where
they milled like cattle on the verge of a stampede. They talked in
noisy groups. There was something on foot and whether or not they knew
just what it was to be, both the satisfied workmen and the dissatisfied
remained.
An automobile with two sputtering gasoline torches in it appeared at
last and drove slowly through the noisy crowd to the corner, where it
stopped in view of both the door of the factory offices and of the
workmen’s entrance gate. A burly figure in a greatcoat and goggles was
behind the steering wheel of the car. In the tonneau was a little,
black-haired, foreign looking man who stood on the seat to speak to the
crowd that at once surged near.
“That is Mr. Schuster!” Ethel Clayton ejaculated, looking from the
office window that best overlooked the corner. She had remained after
the bulk of the office force had gone; but Mabel Skinner was with her.
“I don’t know who that one may be,” said the younger girl, “but it’s
Jim Mayberry’s car and that’s Jim himself all camouflaged up with
goggles and a long coat. Let’s go down there, Miss Clayton, and listen
to what that crazy man’s saying. He waves his arms around like they
was unhinged--just the same as his brain is.”
The girls were about to leave the offices in John’s care when the
street-corner forum convened. Ethel was worried.
“Is the side gate locked, John?” she asked the porter.
“I don’t s’pose it is yet, ma’am,” he replied.
“Go out and bar it and warn the night watchmen to be on their guard.
Nobody must be allowed to enter the gate to-night--not even a foreman
if one should return. And be sure the main door is locked after us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” grinned John. “And will you call out the military?”
Ethel feared, however, that it might be no laughing matter. Mabel
Skinner was eager to go to the corner and hear what the man had to say;
Ethel accompanied her, fearing the sharp tongue of the younger girl
would get her into trouble in the rough crowd.
Schuster was Mr. Grandon Fuller’s personal representative, Ethel was
sure. And Jim Mayberry’s presence made certain the identity of the
influence which was seeking to stir up trouble for the Hapwood-Diller
Company and its girl manager.
Jim Mayberry caught sight of Ethel almost as soon as the two girls
reached the corner. He turned and called Schuster’s attention to Ethel.
The fox-featured little lawyer instantly seized the opportunity for
making a point in his speech.
“Here you are, men! You fellows under petticoat government! Here’s your
lady boss come out to laugh at you. You big, brawny, husky fellows
ought to be proud of yourselves--bossed by a girl! Tied to her apron
strings!”
He added something more vulgar that drew a laugh from a certain portion
of the throng. Jim Mayberry turned and pushed up his dust goggles,
leering into Ethel’s white and disgusted face. Mabel Skinner quite lost
her self-control.
“You’re in nice work now, ain’t you, Jim Mayberry?” she scoffed at the
former superintendent of the factory. Then she screamed at the crowding
men: “You big galoots! You goin’ to let that little fice up there
insult a lady like Miss Clayton? And don’t you see who’s egging him
on--and egging _you_ on to riot and trouble? He’s asking you to pull
his chestnuts out of the fire. It’s Jim Mayberry--Mayberry, the man
that’s sore because the board kicked him out as superintendent and put
Miss Clayton into his place. Aw, say! You all know Jim Mayberry!”
This raised a laugh which drowned out the lawyer’s vitriolic words.
Mayberry reached for Little Skinner, his face inflamed and ugly.
“You brat!” he growled. “I’ll teach you----”
He did not finish the remark. As his clutching hand descended upon
the girl’s shoulder a figure jumped upon the running board of the
automobile on the other side.
“Beating up a girl would be about your size, Jim Mayberry!” exclaimed
Benway Chase, and with all the force of his good left arm he struck the
former superintendent of the factory in the face.
Mayberry uttered an oath and swung around. Benway met him with a second
blow--this time landing on the nose. In a moment the victim’s face was
covered with blood.
“Go it, Bennie! Hit him again!” shrieked Mabel, jumping up and down in
her excitement.
Ethel was horrified; but Little Skinner became the primitive woman
cheering on her particular hero.
Mayberry got up from behind the steering wheel and cast himself blindly
upon the striking Benway. The latter gave ground, leaping back off the
car. Mayberry plunged after him. In a moment they had clinched and were
down in the street, striking at each other, Benway silent but Mayberry
swearing and threatening.
It was at this moment that Macon Hammerly appeared with a policeman.
The latter refused to observe the incipient riot around the two men on
the ground, but stepped up and tapped Schuster on the arm.
“Hey, you!” he said to the little lawyer, “where’s your permit?”
“‘Permit?’”
“Permit to speak on the street ’cordin’ to the city ord’nance made an’
pervided. Ain’t got none?” went on the officer. “Come along with me,
then,” and he jerked Schuster off the automobile seat as though he were
a child and started at once down town with him.
“I reckon,” Hammerly said to Ethel with a grin, “that Grandon forgot
that small point. There almost always is some vital point, Ethel, that
a villain overlooks.
“Now, you come on with me, girl. There’s something I want you to be in
on. I was coming up after you when I saw this gang here and sicked the
policeman on to that little Schuster. Come on.”
The whirl of events had quite taken Ethel’s mind off of Benway Chase
and his fight with Mayberry. But Mabel Skinner had darted around the
car, vitally determined to lend her hero aid if he needed it.
Benway needed no help. Had it been so, there seemed to be quite a
number in the crowd disposed to be his friends.
“Let the young boss alone,” one said. “It ain’t beef that counts. The
young boss has got the spirit to lick his weight in wildcats.”
“Oh, Bennie! Oh, Bennie!” burst forth Mabel Skinner. “Don’t you let
that big loafer hurt you!”
“I won’t,” promised Benway, rising quite self-possessed and scarcely
marred by the scrimmage. “He doesn’t want to fight.”
This seemed quite true. At least, Jim Mayberry had very quickly got
enough. He stood up painfully, climbed into his car awkwardly, and
drove away, amid the jeers of the onlookers, without even an additional
threat.
The bubble of his reputation as a fighter was pricked. Some of
the older workmen lingering near mentioned the fact that the
ex-superintendent of the factory had been but a bag of wind after all.
“The young boss,” as they had come to call Benway Chase, had “licked
him with one hand.”
The latter slipped out of the crowd as quickly as possible. Mabel
Skinner was clinging to his good arm and it was not until they were
a full dark block away from the scene of the disturbance that he
discovered the girl was crying.
“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Benway, utterly aghast at the
idea of self-possessed Little Skinner giving way to tears. “Are you
hurt?”
“No--no, sir, Mr. Chase. I ain’t hurt.”
“Then why are you crying?” he demanded, snuggling the girl closer to
his side.
“I--I was afraid you might be,” she confessed.
“But, I’m not! That big chump never hurt me a mite!”
“Then I--I guess I’m crying for joy,” sobbed Mabel. “If he’d hurt you,
Mr. Chase, I guess I’d have _died_!”
“Huh! Why the ‘Mr. Chase?’ Wasn’t I ‘Bennie’ a while back when you were
rooting for me? Why, Mabel, I couldn’t have lost out with you yelling
your head off that way on the side lines!”
“Oh, Bennie!” she gasped.
It was a very dark corner. When they strolled out into the next circle
of lamp light, Benway’s arm was around the girl’s shoulders and she was
looking up into his face with such an ecstatic expression on her own
that had Boots Skinner seen it he certainly would have been held fast
in his tracks.