A BUSINESS CALL
Frank watched Dorsett dismount from the gig and tie his horse. He
realized that he would be up into the insurance man’s office in a few
minutes.
“I must do something, and quickly,” thought Frank. “The second that man
sees me he will suspect my mission here. He is a person of substance,
and will carry weight. I shall be left if he gets into action first.”
Frank reflected rapidly. The old clerk, as he had already found out, was
unapproachable. Frank was seized with a wild impulse to leap over the
wire railing and rush past the clerk to the door of Mr. Pryor’s private
office.
“Maybe it’s locked, though,” said Frank. “No, I won’t do that. I don’t
see that I can do much of anything, except to wait and take my chance
of getting the check into Mr. Pryor’s hands before Mr. Dorsett guesses
what’s up.”
Frank glanced at the clock. It showed ten minutes to eleven. He went
out into the hall and drew back into the shelter of a big fuel box
there.
Dorsett came up the stairs, buggy whip in hand. He bustled into the
office in his usual self-important way. Frank noticed that the old
clerk sat down on him promptly. He was not one bit impressed with the
bombastic visitor from Greenville.
Dorsett scowled as the clerk pointed to the clock, and impatiently
fumbling the whip, sat down with the others in the office to await the
royal pleasure of its closeted proprietor.
Frank did a lot of thinking. He planned all kinds of wild dashes when
the door of that private office should open. Then, happening to stroll
down the hall, a new idea was suggested to him.
“Would it win?” Frank breathlessly asked himself.
He had come out on a little landing. This was that platform of stairs
running down into the rear of the lot that the bank and the insurance
office occupied.
Six feet away from it to the left were two windows. They were both open.
The low hum of voices reached Frank’s ears. Judging from the situation of
the apartment beyond, Frank was sure that he had located the insurance
man’s private room.
“I wonder if I dare?” he challenged himself. “I wonder if it would
work?”
His eyes snapped and his fingers tingled. Then Frank studied the outlook
more carefully. He calculated first his chances of getting to the first
window. He also planned just what he would say in the way of explanation
and apology once he reached it.
Two feet away from the platform a lightning rod ran straight up the
building. Frank seized this. He fearlessly swung himself free of the
platform, bracing his toes on a protending joint of the rod.
At the side of the nearest window, top and bottom, were two hinge
standards. They had been imbedded in the solid masonry when the place
was built to hold iron shutters, if such were ever needed. The bank
floor below was guarded with these, but none had been put in place on
the upper story.
Frank swung one hand free, and bending to a rather risky angle hooked a
forefinger around the upper one of these standards. At the same time he
gave his body a swing clear of his footing.
He aimed to land his feet on the sill of the nearest window. In this
Frank succeeded. There was no time, however, to chance losing the
foothold thus gained. He promptly slid his free hand down under the
frame of the raised window. He got a firm clutch. Relaxing his hold of
the hinge standard, he stooped.
The next moment, on a decidedly reckless and awkward balance, Frank
tumbled rather than dropped inside of the room that was his objective
point of assault.
“Hello! what’s this?” instantly hailed him.
Frank nimbly gained an upright position. He faced two men who, seated
at a table covered with papers, began to push back their chairs in a
somewhat startled way. They stared hard at the intruder.
Frank promptly doffed his cap. He made his most courteous bow.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said in a rather flustrated way, “but which
is Mr. Pryor, please?”
“I am Pryor,” answered one of the twain, and Frank saw from the gathering
frown on the speaker’s face that a storm was brewing unless he headed it
off summarily.
“I must beg your pardon, Mr. Pryor,” said Frank, “but it is a matter of
some business importance. I have been waiting for over an hour to see
you. It won’t take but a moment, sir,” and Frank swiftly produced the
check and the receipt entrusted to him by Mr. Buckner. Before Pryor
realized it, they were thrust into his hands and he was looking at them.
“Oh, this can wait,” he said pettishly. “I don’t like this kind of an
intrusion, young man.”
“I am very sorry, Mr. Pryor,” interrupted Frank in a gentle, polite
tone, “but I am only a paid messenger, and I promised Mr. Buckner to be
back with that receipt at a certain time.”
“So you seized the bull by the horns,” broke in Pryor’s companion with a
great chuckle. “And outwitted old Grumper, the clerk, ha! ha! Pryor,
nail the boy on a year’s contract. He’s got the making in him of a
first-class insurance solicitor, in his originality, daring and--”
“Cheek,” muttered Pryor. “Well, well--here’s your receipt.”
Frank seized the paper that Pryor signed with a swift scrawl of the pen,
with an eagerness that was a kind of delighted rapture.
“Oh, thank you, sir,” he said, “and a thousand apologies for my rude
intrusion.”
“Hold on,” ordered Pryor, as Frank returned towards the window.
“Yes, unless you carry extra accident insurance,” put in Pryor’s
companion. “You might not find it so easy getting out of that window as
you did getting in, young fellow.”
Mr. Pryor had gone to the clouded glass door, which Frank knew opened
into the main office. He slipped its catch and opened it. Frank
understood that he was to pass out that way. He started forward, making
a deferential bow to his host.
“Hi, I say, Pryor--one minute!” sounded a voice in the outer office, and
Frank wondered what was about to happen as he recognized the tones as
belonging to Dorsett.
“In a few minutes,” responded Pryor, with an impatient wave of his hand.
“All right. It’s about the salvage business, you know,” went on Dorsett
from behind the wire grating. “Want to pay you the money and close up
the deal.”
“Oh, that?” spoke Pryor, with a sudden glance at Frank and a grim
twinkle in his eyes. “You young schemer!” he said to Frank in an
undertone, with a slight chuckle. “I understand your peculiar tactics,
now. You’ll do, decidedly, young man!”
Frank tried to look all due humility, but he could not entirely suppress
a satisfied smile. As he passed out Pryor said to Dorsett: “You are too
late on that matter. I have just closed the salvage business with
Buckner of Greenville.”
“You’ve what?” howled Dorsett, with a violent start. “Why, I’m here
first. No one passed me on the road. I--er, hum”--Dorsett turned white
as his eye fell on Frank. He glared and shook his driving whip.
The animated and interested friend of Pryor stuck his head past the open
doorway.
“I say, youngster,” he asked guardedly, his face all a-grin, “how did
you circumvent the old chap?”
“Well, I nearly swam part of the way,” explained Frank. “Thank you, Mr.
Pryor,” he added, as the latter opened the wire gate for him to pass
out.
The old clerk had sprung to his feet, gaping in consternation at him.
Pryor’s friend was convulsed with internal mirth. Pryor himself did not
look altogether displeased at the situation.
Frank thought that Dorsett would actually leap upon him and strike him
with the whip. The latter, however, with a hoarse growl in his throat,
allowed Frank to proceed on his way unhindered.
“We shall hear from this of course--my mother and I,” said the youth to
himself as he gained the street. “Mr. Dorsett will store this up against
me, hard. All right--I’ve done my simple duty and I’ll stand by the
results.”
A minute later, looking back the way he had come, Frank saw Dorsett
come threshing out into the street. He kicked a dog out of his path,
rudely jostled a pedestrian, jumped into the gig and went tearing down
the homeward road plying the whip and venting his cruel rage on the poor
animal in the shafts.
Frank started back towards Greenville the way he had come. He was
greatly pleased at his success, and cheeringly anticipated the good the
five dollars would do his mother and himself.
As Frank passed the spot where he had noticed the barefooted,
mud-bespattered urchin lying asleep by the side of the ditch, he could
find no trace of the lad.
A little farther on Frank came in sight of the high board fence he had
so curiously observed on his way to Riverton.
The wind was his way, and as he approached the queer barrier he was
somewhat astonished at a great babel of canine barking and howls that
greeted his ears.
“Sounds like a kennel,” he reflected, “but’s a big one. Why, if there
isn’t the little fellow with the package of meat.”
Frank wonderingly regarded a tattered, forlorn figure at a distance
seeming to be glued right up face forward against the fence.
The boy had piled two or three big boulders on top of one another. These
he had surmounted, and was peering through a high up crack or knot hole
in the fence.
On one arm he carried the newspaper package Frank had noticed. Bit by
bit he poised its contents, hurling them over the fence.
A loud clamor of yelps and barkings would greet this shower of food.
Frank drew nearer, mightily interested.
The little fellow would throw over a bone and peer inside the enclosure.
“Get it, Fido!” Frank heard him shout. “They won’t let him--those big
ones,” he wailed. “Oh, you dear, big fellow, help him, help him. No,
they won’t let him. Fido, Fido, Oh, my! oh my!”
The little fellow slipped down to a seat on the boulders now and began
to cry as if his heart would break. Frank approached and pulled at his
arm.
“Hi, youngster,” he challenged, “what in the world are you up to,
anyhow?”