I WALKED IN ARDEN

JACK CRAWFORD

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.
Published, April, 1922

Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co.,
Binghamton, N. Y.
Paper supplied by Perkins-Goodwin Co., New York, N. Y.
Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

[Chapter I. I Begin at the Beginning]
[Chapter II. I Set Out Along a New Trail]
[Chapter III. I Camp in the Desert]
[Chapter IV. I Have My First Encounter with Prospero]
[Chapter V. I Enter Deep Harbor Society]
[Chapter VI. I Go for a Ride on Satan]
[Chapter VII. I Have the First Great Adventure]
[Chapter VIII. I Play a Part in a Melodrama]
[Chapter IX. I Come Face to Face with the Future]
[Chapter X. We Share Our First Christmas]
[Chapter XI. We Seek and Obtain Consent]
[Chapter XII. We Pass an Ordeal and Sail for Home]
[Chapter XIII. We Arrive and Look Forward to Another Arrival]
[Chapter XIV. We Find New Life and New Love]
[Chapter XV. We Begin to Live]
[Chapter XVI. We Hear Sentence Pronounced]
[Chapter XVII. We Stand at the Cross-Roads]
[Epilogue. Christmas, 1918]
[NEW BORZOI NOVELS]

I WALKED IN ARDEN

Chapter One

I BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

I hardly know where to begin, because, as I grow older, I find it more and more difficult to know what really is the beginning of anything. Causes are all mixed up, and things that seem afterwards to have a bearing were not at the time important enough to be noted. And it is probably ten to one that some factors have been completely forgotten. I suppose nobody can tell all of what happened or tell any of it with absolute accuracy. At least, as I look on at life, any attempt to record it on paper seems hopeless. Things happen, you don't know why—and you try to use your judgment while they are happening, but even if you are very clever, you don't know whether your judgment was the best judgment. All you can observe is how things end—when they do end.

And yet I know that character—whatever that is—probably is more important than circumstances. There's an old vulgar song, something about, "It isn't what you do, it's how you take things." These aren't the words, but that is the idea. It's the same thing that my father used to say to me: "Play fair, Ted—and then if you lose, why, you must grin and bear it." I know this isn't a novel philosophy; it is a useful one. Original ideas are not necessarily helpful. An honest platitude has better sticking powers.

I must try to tell a little about the beginning. My name is Edward Jevons and I was born in New York City, but I have never had the pleasure of living in what, for lack of a better term, I shall call my native town. At the age of six, when Her Majesty Queen Victoria was seated upon the comfortable throne of those days, I was taken by my father and mother to live in England. From the age of six to the age of eighteen I was a cockney and grew up in London. In all that time my eyes did not see America.

I have nothing but pleasant memories of this childhood in London. We were not a fashionable family; we knew nothing of the wealthy Anglo-American set in London; but we had a comfortable house out Hampstead way, and, as the saying is, "did ourselves rather well." We also had a little villa in the country, near a golf-course, in Hertfordshire. The country place we rented for the summers.

My father was a business man, but he had tried his hand, in earlier life, at writing—I believe with some success. Business was more profitable than writing—and he abandoned the latter. He kept up, however, many of his literary friendships, and our house was frequented by writers of more or less fame and a few theatre people. I thus became early infected with a desire to write—a wish which my father encouraged. He took a good deal of pains over training me in observation and in arousing in me what he called, "a curiosity about life"—without which, he said, no one could write anything worth while. In the evenings I would bring him my day's work and he would discuss it seriously with me over a pipe.

My early recollections of my mother are more vague. She was a woman of strong will who rather frightened me with her direct ways of getting what she wanted. Instead of waiting to see what would happen, she took a hand in making things happen to suit her. I could never quite approve the energy she put into having her own way. My way never seemed to me important enough to make a special fuss over getting it. One could always think to please one's self—which was a happier solution than to try to do the impossible. I was always shy in my mother's presence. She, on the other hand, had a ferocious devotion to me that was terrifying. I can remember being scolded and wept over for my coldness. It wasn't that; I couldn't explain things. I don't know whether my father understood me—sometimes I thought he did and at other times I was certain he did not. I was an only son.

My sister, Frances, was much younger. I liked her very much—except when she interfered with the things in my room (I am speaking now as I remember her when a child), and then we quarrelled gorgeously. My mother always took my part, and poor Frances would end in tears. Secretly I enjoyed Frances' obvious hero-worship and the fact that I could make her cry. I was skilled in subtle ways of bullying her—teasing is perhaps a better word. Frances is one of the few persons who has ever taken me seriously. As a boy I took advantage of this to harrow her feelings. She was not, however, an important part of my life, because of the difference in our ages.

My education was rather a haphazard affair. An amiable young man was my tutor, and he did his best to make me believe arithmetic a useful branch of knowledge. He did not convince me. I tolerated his efforts and got along fairly well. I read a great deal for myself; there were always plenty of new books in the house, and my father's library of standard works was larger than even an industrious reader could get through. I absorbed a good deal of literary background without being aware I was storing up anything. Like other boys, I read for amusement—only it happened that I was amused by a fairly wide range of authors. I knew few children my own age and was not particularly interested in those I did know. They did not read much.

It was at the beginning of my eighteenth year that my father called me into his study one night and informed me that he planned sending me to America to college. The announcement was a great surprise to me, for I was happy where I was, and I could remember little about America.

There was another surprise in my father's proposal. It appeared that I was to be trained as a manufacturing chemist. My father pointed out that he needed an expert chemist in the future development of his business and had decided to make me that man. I remember I protested, pointing out to him my ambition to become a writer. My protest was overruled. My father said something about bread and butter coming first and added that chemistry need not keep me from writing.

I went to America and spent four years at a small college in one of the Eastern States—Hilltown University, it was called. They were not wholly happy years, for I found myself in the awkward predicament of being, because of my foreign upbringing, a stranger among my classmates. I did not make friends easily, but on the whole, I got through creditably. Summer holidays during these four years I spent in England with the family.

I was graduated and ready to join my father in his London business. For a year I worked away at the practical side of chemistry, and to my inward astonishment, my work appeared to give satisfaction. Indeed, I was entrusted more and more with tasks of responsibility and, according to reports, acquitted myself well. I could never quite believe that I was really a chemist. Sometimes I would sit, in the evening, before my toy theatre and, while in the act of composing a play with its doubtful aid, wonder if I were the person who went to the laboratory every morning and worked at chemistry. My writing made little progress; the curtain of my toy theatre was more often down than up, because, as my work increased in difficulty, chemistry claimed more and more of my time.

I think Sims, my mother's maid and formerly my old nurse, understood how I felt.

"The dust do be gettin' that thick on some of your books, Master Ted. You'll 'ave to let me 'ave a go at them one of these days."

Sims's expressions of sympathy were always veiled in household threats. And then there was Chitty, an ex-soldier and one-time officer's batman, who washed apparatus for me in the laboratory. To Chitty the processes of chemistry were akin to mediaeval incantations, and it was clear that he regarded me as out of my element in having anything to do with them. When we—my father and I, that is—went away week-ends to play golf, Chitty left the laboratory and accompanied us in the capacity of handy man valet. He had a large family and definite views about the fitness of things. A gentleman following a chemical career he considered as at variance with the natural order.

"It isn't as if you was born, sir, to earning a living," he confided to me one afternoon when I had cursed an unsuccessful experiment. (It was an amiable weakness of Chitty's to believe that no one that he called a "gentleman" was under any actual necessity of working.) "Why don't you chuck it, sir, for today and come out and 'ave a round of golf?"

Possibly his advice was not always disinterested, but I believe it was. Next to my sister's, Chitty's hero-worship of me was the most profound I have known. In fact, as I think things over, these are the only two to whom I was ever a hero. Many have liked me; they had faith in me. But I am wandering, as usual.

It was late in June of my twenty-third year, and exactly twelve months after my graduation into the world of chemistry, that my father called me into his study, one morning as I was about to leave for the laboratory.

"Sit down, Ted," he said. "I've got some news for you."

I sat down hopefully, wondering if at last he had recognized that I was very unhappy over my chemistry.

"Possibly," I thought, "I shall be relieved and allowed to take up writing."

"What do you say to a run over to New York to look at some new business that has cropped up there? I'm thinking of sailing Saturday and taking you with me."

I was disappointed, but there seemed nothing alarming in the suggestion, so I readily agreed.

My mother and sister saw us off at Euston, with old Sims curtseying in the background and Chitty saluting in military fashion.

On the way over my father walked the decks many hours with me and told me of all his business hopes and fears. He had got together all his available capital and was contemplating investing it in an American plant. The company was to be organized in London, with an American branch, and he was looking forward to putting me, ultimately, at the head of the whole thing. Meanwhile the new company had to be built up and to fight its own way against competition. We were to consider, in New York, what he regarded as a favourable offer of a factory which had been made him.

Although I had been in and out of New York many times while an undergraduate at Hilltown, I could never get over a feeling of strange awe at its noise and confusion. In London I was at home; in New York I felt alien and wondered how anybody could feel as if he belonged there. "Luckily," I thought, as we rode down-town on the elevated, "we shan't be here long." I had a return steamer ticket for Liverpool in an inside pocket. It was a question of closing a business transaction and returning.

At the office where we went, I was introduced to a Mr. Knowlton, our electrical engineer, who, my father told me, was to be our American manager. He was a shrewd looking man in the early thirties—possibly the late thirties, I couldn't be certain—with crow's feet about the eyes and a disconcerting grin. I saw him look at me sharply out of the corners of his eyes.

The lawyers proclaimed the situation satisfactory and I heard Knowlton give my father his technical opinion concerning the merits of the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company, which was the name of the property we had come to see about. The factory was situated at Deep Harbor, a thriving factory town on one of the Great Lakes. On the strength of the two reports my father signed the papers, and the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company became ours.

We were about to leave, when Knowlton turned to my father and said: "By the way, Mr. Jevons, I should like your authority, before you go, to employ a young research chemist for our laboratory out there at the plant. Some one capable of original work."

As Knowlton uttered these words a panic seized me. I knew before my father spoke what he was going to suggest.

"What about letting you have my son here?" I heard my father say. I could feel Knowlton looking me over, and I prayed for an unfavourable verdict.

"Have you had much experience in research work?" Knowlton levelled at me.

"Only a year," I faltered, wishing I could say "None."

Several other searching questions followed, which I answered as best I could. There was a moment's silence, during which I joyfully concluded that Knowlton did not care much for the look of me. It is difficult, now, to explain, but I did not want to go to Deep Harbor. My whole life, with the exception of the four years at college, had been spent in London, and I had no wish to be in any other place.

"Well," I heard Knowlton say, at last. "It is up to you, Mr. Jevons. I guess your son will fit the job."

My father turned to me.

"It's a heavy responsibility for you, Ted—but I had rather trust you than a stranger. We've got a lot at stake—in fact, all we've got in the world is at stake. Will you do it?"

I looked about the room vaguely, as if I expected to find an avenue of escape miraculously open before me. Instead, I saw Knowlton's shrewd face watching me. I felt an utter loathing and fear of the task laid upon me; yet I did not know how to refuse.

I stammered out at last: "I'll do my best, sir"—an empty-sounding formula to commit one to so much. Instinctively I knew that in uttering these words I was altering the whole course of my life.

My father was delighted by my reply. He shook me warmly by the hand and clapped me on the back.

"Ted, I know you. You'll make good out there. You've got to. And when you have, why, then you can come back to England and be your own boss."

Thus the matter was settled, without time for reflection.

That evening my father spent in giving me advice and further business details. The next morning he sailed for England again, and I was left behind to join Knowlton at the Grand Central Station at five o'clock, when the Limited was to leave that should carry us to Deep Harbor.

"The future is a terrifying thing," I thought as I went to bed that night.

Chapter Two

I SET OUT ALONG A NEW TRAIL

Sunset over the Hudson after a July thunderstorm; the observation platform of a Pullman, rushing toward a new and unknown world in the Middle West—such was the first stage of the trail leading to the heart of romance. Of course I did not know this then. In fact, the beauty of the sunset was considerably marred by the thought that the day before I had seen my father off for "home," for England, while I had been condemned to indefinite exile in a lake town famous for its manufacturing; and I felt much like the hero at the end of a certain type of Greek tragedy. No one could say when I should see England again, or once more browse along the bookstalls of Charing Cross Road, or drink a glass of stout at Scott's in Leicester Square. Not high ideals to long for, perhaps—but Charing Cross Road, the Empire on Leicester Square, or the noon-hour walks in Lincoln's Inn Fields, pausing perhaps for a quarter of an hour at the Soame Museum, or venturing as far as Chancery Lane, seemed to epitomize the things for which I was desperately homesick.

It had strained my loyalty to my father to the breaking point to accept the test he had put upon me. No word, however, of my resentment, of my sullen hatred for the task, had I allowed him to guess. He had gone aboard the steamer in one of his moods of extreme optimism—business would flourish as it never had before now I was to be at the helm. I had looked ruefully at the cancelled steamer ticket in my hand and had resolved to try, but in very truth I was sick at heart. As the boat left the dock, I turned away with some boyish tears in my eyes—and they were bitter tears. I hated and loathed, at that moment, the fate that had condemned me to the new venture. The roar and clang of the streets about the docks seemed symbols of all that was unlovely, of all that stood between me and what I wanted to do—symbols of the things I was to be mixed up with, no one knew for how long. Until I made the new business a success! It was easy to say—easy even for my father to pat me on the back and speak diffidently, as he looked the other way, of his confidence in me. He had so much more in me than I had in myself! I knew my own dangerous lack of ambition—my fondness for remaining a spectator, for doffing the world aside and bidding it pass; and here I was, entrusted with his future and that of my mother and sister.

What a plague had I to do with a factory and a manufacturing town on the Great Lakes? I knew nothing of either. All I asked was the moon—London, books, theatres, and the gorgeous solitude of rummaging in an enchanted cockney world. But that world could not be had, even in its simplest form, without money, and money I had to win in order to earn my right to the moon. There was nothing I had ever felt so incapable of winning. I knew I was full of a kind of inertia that terrified me. It would not matter to fail alone in such a task, but my failure would ruin my father—and others. And the inertia, the indifference, the hatred of it all frightened me. I knew it was no mood for success; yet I did not know how to fight against it.

"Now, Ted," said a crisp voice beside me, "we reach Deep Harbor at five-thirty A. M. That will give us time for breakfast, and get out to the factory by seven—when the whistle blows."

"Good heavens!" I thought with a start, coming back to the Pullman and reality with a horrible jerk. "Seven—" but words failed me.

"You'll have a chance to glance around the machine shop and pick out a location for the testing laboratory before the office force get down. Then we can have a look at the orders on the books and start making plans."

No time to get one's breath, no chance to edge into the cold water inch by inch—the thing was to be done at once. I was to jump from that Pullman platform into the deepest, coldest part of the stream.

"As soon as we've passed Storm King we'll go into the smoker and make a rough sketch of the laboratory lay-out, so we'll be ready for them in the morning."

I thought again of the ocean liner plunging in the opposite direction, and what my father was thinking at that moment. How had he dared trust me?

"Pshaw," said my companion, reading my thoughts with startling accuracy. "The Middle West isn't a bad place. You'll soon get used to it. Of course, it isn't Broadway," he added, with a sidelong look at me, "but you'll shake down all right. What do you think of the Hudson River? Nothing like this in England, I'll bet."

"Have you ever been there?" I parried.

"No. Little Old New York's good enough for me. I like live ones—not dead ones. There's Storm King over there—can you beat it? Look at the light over it—gosh, it's enough to make a fellow feel queer."

I looked; and the latter part of his remark was undoubtedly true. The thunder clouds still hung about in broken, irregular masses, through which radiated a startling copper glow, tapering off at the upper edges into green. The mountain itself was a dark shape sharply cut against the light side, while, beneath, the river was oily brass. All that was unknown, even sinister, was bound up in fearful beauty. I could not endure it, for it really frightened me. I got up hastily. "Let's go into the smoker—the laboratory sketch," I faltered.

"Sure!—good work! Let's get down to business and cut out the scenery." His words had a most ominous connotation—like the symbolism which critics allege they find in Ibsen's plays, I thought. The result was to drive away for a moment my gloom, and I smiled at my own mental comment.

As we went forward toward the smoker, I looked more closely at my new business associate, beginning with his back, which was all that was visible now. He was severely dressed with a sort of fussy neatness peculiar to the work of American business men's tailors. His shoes shone resplendent, his trousers were creased with painful accuracy, his back was erect and smooth as a duck's. Even his hair had been severely disciplined by his barber, and on it my friend had placed, with due care, a little checked golfing cap that might have been the product of a maker of Swiss watches, so exactly did the little grey and black squares match at the seams. "Engineering efficiency applied to personal attire," I thought to myself. "His clothes remind me of those planned by the mathematicians in Laputa, except that these American mathematicians use formulae of scientific accuracy."

As we took our seats in two large wicker chairs in the smoker I couldn't resist shaking on to the left sleeve of his coat, as if by accident, a cold ash from my empty pipe. Instantly he produced a handkerchief as fine and dainty as a lady's and violently flicked at his sleeve. I murmured an apology and smiled to myself. Then he carefully drew up his trousers so as not to spoil the crease, replaced his handkerchief, adjusted his invisible eye-glasses, and produced a pencil and paper.

"Now to business!" he said.

"One moment," I interrupted and touched the bell. The coloured porter appeared. I saw my friend frown ever so slightly. My sense of humour was returning fast, as I noted how easy it was going to be to tease this deadly earnest, efficient person. "Will you have a whiskey and soda or a bottle of Bass?" I asked in an innocent, friendly voice.

"Neither, thank you. When I have business to discuss I never touch liquor," he replied, with a most meaning emphasis upon the latter half of his statement, albeit politely enough. I inwardly resented hearing Bass's ale, or whiskey and soda for that matter, described as "liquor."

"Bring a bottle of Bass and a lemonade," I said to the porter, without consulting my companion further. "You must drink something," I added by way of apology. Actually I was under the impression that sweet lemonade would nauseate a grown man, if taken so soon after dinner. I wanted revenge for that word "liquor."

"Thanks—a lemonade is just a thing," he responded enthusiastically. "It's a very refreshing drink on a warm evening. You are very kind—have one of my cigars?" and he produced a black, oily looking object named after some Spanish infanta and having about the same figure as one of those estimable princesses. Now I felt toward a black cigar on a hot, stuffy train, when business was to be talked, about as he did toward "liquor"—and the similarity made me smile again. After all, our prejudices were the same, but involved different details. The lemonade arrived, he bit his aromatic monster, puffed it luxuriously, waved his glass ceremoniously at me, and took a deep draft of the sweet liquid, copiously mixed with Havana smoke. My glass of Bass, on the way to my lips, paused, and I shuddered. I began to wish, like Hamlet, that I had tried some other plan of revenge for that foul epithet "liquor."

"Now we are all set," he announced cheerily, which was more than I was sure my dinner was, but I said nothing. "Have you thought about the dimensions?" he continued.

"Of what?" I asked, my mind still on the problem of a compound of cigar and lemonade.

"The testing-laboratory, of course!" There was just a trace of irritation in his tone. I made a guilty effort to pull myself together.

"No, I haven't. But I've a list in my trunk of the machinery we need and the floor space it occupies. It's easy enough to figure it out from that."

"In your trunk!" he said in an awful voice. "Then what's the use of talking about it tonight?"

"That's what I wondered," I remarked amiably, "but I thought perhaps you had some ideas on the subject."

I could see from his expression that I had made a bad start. His face was sharp, keen, shrewd, but not at all intellectual. His eyes were bright and beady, and I knew, as I looked at him, that, for all his alert keenness and shrewdness, he knew nothing about anything except the business he had been taught. The latter he knew with an almost ferocious accuracy. On a specific engineering problem in his own field it would be hard to match him, but on constructive ideas which involved applying what he knew to broader questions—I had my doubts. There was no imagination, no background on which to build. I began to see my father's method in picking such an associate for me. On details this man couldn't go wrong—he would keep my part of the work practical, whereas I knew I was relied upon to see in what new paths this manufacturing company could be made to expand and develop. But first I had to learn the business. Therefore, as the present arrangement stood, I was my companion's subordinate.

"I'm sorry," I said; "I didn't think we could talk business until we had seen the factory, so I put all my data in my trunk."

"Well," he laughed, "I guess we'll gradually have to get you used to hustling. Here's a whole evening we might have used, and you've thrown it away. But I can give you some good advice about your new job, anyway."

"Please do," I remarked, anxious to atone for my error.

"Ted," he went on, "I'm a New Yorker, and I've made pretty good as an engineer. I've had to make my own way, and I don't know much about fancy living, but I know a hell of a lot about making and not making money."

"What do you mean by 'fancy living'?" I asked with genuine interest.

"Well, for one thing, going around in musical comedy clothes and drinking liquor when you ought to be on the job. Do you get me?"

It suddenly dawned on me, not all at once, but little by little, that he meant me! "Musical comedy clothes" rankled most, for I did not at first catch the full force of his suspicions.

"I got these clothes in Bond Street," I protested mildly.

"I don't know where you got them, but they look it," he said.

"Now, my boy, you're going to a town where people don't understand all this fancy foreign stuff. You've got to dress the part and get down to being a plain American where you started from. You've got to cut out the booze. I don't know about women, but your clothes give the wrong idea there too."

At last the total of his suspicions penetrated, and unfortunately I suddenly shouted with laughter. I rocked back and forth in my chair in uncontrollable delight. When I at last looked up, he was smoking his cigar at a most uncompromising angle, with a hurt look upon his face.

"My dear Knowlton," I gasped at last, "I have no idea what impression I have given you, but really your last insinuation was too much for me. Like most young men of my age I'm probably engaged or soon will be—and as for the rest, you needn't worry."

"What do you mean by 'probably engaged or soon will be'?" He asked, still suspiciously, but obviously somewhat relieved at this announcement.

"I'm twenty-three—one usually finds the thing imminent at that age."

"Hell!" he replied. "This is business, not a joke. Booze and women don't mix with business."

"I've never mixed them much—even for pleasure," I retorted. "I hate headaches, and uneducated people bore me so that, be they as beautiful as Cleopatra, I can make nothing of them. I assure you I shall be perfectly safe in Deep Harbor, or anywhere else that the most ancient profession flourishes."

"I get you," he said, "and I guess it's straight all right, from all I've heard. Takes you a lot of words to say it, just as it takes you too much time to do things. But you'll get over that. Point is, Deep Harbor won't see you at all. Not in those clothes."

"They are simple country tweeds," I protested once more, for the thought that I might have to wear his kind horrified me. "My tailor is supposed to know his business."

"They don't fit, and they're loud enough to scare all the trotting horses on State Street. Don't you ever get 'em pressed? If you go sitting around in cafés drinking English ale, you'll make a bad impression. We've got to build up a new business and we've got to get people's confidence in us to do it. You can't float around town in the Middle West like you was attending a house party and get away with it. People won't think you are serious—when they don't think you are worse."

"I see," I replied. "Business, as I understand it, is so serious a thing out here that its pursuit means banishing from one's life, as a start, all sense of humour and all the little comforts and conveniences. One can have electric light, a porcelain bath, steam heat, and a bank account, but one mustn't have comfortable clothes, easy-going habits, or a genial feeling for the absurdities of solemn living."

"There you go exaggerating everything I say. No wonder you know a lot about chemical experiments—your ideas tumble all over themselves. That's all right when you've got test tubes to pour 'em into, but you got to be careful how you spill 'em around Deep Harbor. What church do you attend?"

The suddeness with which this query came at me left me floundering once more.

"Church?" I queried, as if I had never heard of the institution.

"Hell, yes—church," Knowlton replied. "Nothing like being seen regularly at church when you hit a new town. You make friends that way, and it's good for business—makes people think you steady and dependable."

"Really, I had never before considered the church in the light of a business associate," I answered, "but I can see there is considerable point to what you say. I wonder Polonius didn't think of it."

"One of those classical guys you learn about in college, isn't he?"

"Yes—you would admire immensely his advice to his son. I'll buy you a calendar with it on when we get there. It's a lot like what you've been telling me."

"Well, I guess he was a wise guy, all right, and learned the way I did—from being up against it. That's worth all the book learning there is."

"But you learned your profession from books."

"Sure I did—scientific books. You can't put them in the same class with the stuff they fill you full of at college."

"There's a science of living—and some of that is in books too."

"Well, how about church? You've got the damnedest habit of steering the conversation off the subject I've ever seen. There's only one science of living—get the stuff, then you can live as you damn please."

"Surely you don't expect me to go to church just to help business."

"You mean to say you don't go to church at all?"

"About that. Once in a while to a cathedral—when I want to think or dream, and there happens to be a cathedral handy, or else to some little quiet parish church that I'm certain beforehand has an eleventh century smell."

"I'm a Presbyterian," he announced stoutly, as if I would dispute him, and bit off the end of another impossible cigar. "Everybody ought to be something." He had ignored my cathedral reply.

"True," I said, "but why Presbyterian when one might choose so many other things to be? Aren't they the people who believe something dreadful about babies?"

"My father was a Presbyterian—he was an old Scotch engineer and went to sea for forty years. I've always kept up what he thought, for no one ever got ahead of the old man—not much."

So this man was an idealist down underneath all that hard, surface veneer of remorseless business! It was quite obvious that the old Scotch engineer had not laid up treasures for his posterity, and yet he had left a clear impression that "no one ever got ahead of him"—an ideal of success, recognized as success, not built on the attainment of wealth. I felt a lot better about Knowlton—we were going to get on, I was certain. But I didn't dare tell him all this, for I knew he wouldn't understand. I was even sorry I had been flippant about Presbyterians. After all, it was a silly pose to patronize a man who had made his way from the bottom to the position of a first class engineer, whereas I had done nothing but read a few books and drift about the world.

"Knowlton," I asked, in all seriousness this time, "will you have another drink?"

"Thanks, I wouldn't mind one more of those lemonades."

Once more the porter came, and I ventured a second bottle of Bass.

"I'll be discreet in Deep Harbor," I apologized, "although I won't promise to give up Bass entirely. It's a link with home—almost a ceremony, you know."

"Oh, that's all right, Ted. I guess I've got you sized up all right. Go ahead and be your own boss. As long as you deliver the goods, that's all I ask. Do it in your own way."

The drinks arrived. "Bring a box of chocolate peppermints," he commanded the porter. "Good heavens—he's going to add that to his lemonade and cigars!" I thought. "What is that man's interior made of?"

"So you have already sized me up?" I asked as he munched a chocolate between alternate sips and puffs.

"Sure! I got you pretty straight down in the office in New York the day we signed the papers. I did think you might jump the track once in a while, though. And when you blew on to the train in that third act make-up, I thought perhaps you'd been out for a final fling at Broadway. But you're all right. Have some chocolate?"

"No, thanks. I am curious, though, to have my fortune told. Will I make good, do you think?"

"Ted, I'm going to be straight with you. I don't know. You may get folks sore at you, the way you always seem to be laughing inside you at the people who don't talk or think the way you do. You don't know it all yet, and you've got no patience with folks who don't belong to your gang. You haven't knocked around enough in real life to learn that there's several ways of getting there besides your way. You've lived abroad and picked up a lot of things I don't know anything about and never will, and you're a little stuck on your cargo. But I'm not so sure it's worth as much as you think in the open market—not in the manufacturing business in Deep Harbor. Still, a couple of years on the treadmill may work wonders."

"A couple of years!" I gasped.

"Well, you don't expect to take a new concern and make a fortune in twelve months the way they tell you in those story books, do you? Not if you was John D. Rockefeller, which you aren't."

"Two years in Deep Harbor," I murmured almost to myself.

"Oh, Deep Harbor's a pretty decent sort of a town. It's up-to-date. They've got a Chamber of Commerce full of live wires and the place is just beginning to hit its stride. Give the plants there now ten years, and the town will be full of millionaires. Of course, I can see your point—I'm a New Yorker myself, and the Bush League doesn't appeal any too strong to me. But the stuff lies buried out there in that burg, and you and I, Ted, are going there to dig some of it up. There's nothing like growing up with a town."

And with this final epigram, Knowlton got up, stretched, and guessed he would go to bed.

I bade him good-night and lit another pipe. I confess frankly that I found Knowlton's accurate powers of analysis disturbing. I who had flattered myself that I knew all about him with the first words he spoke, now made the humiliating discovery that he already knew more about me than I was ever likely to know about him. Furthermore, his estimate of me, if not too unfavourable, was still not very flattering. When at last I left the smoker for the sleeper, it was in as gloomy a frame of mind as when I first boarded the train.

Chapter Three

I CAMP IN THE DESERT

About an hour after a turbulent portion of my night's rest, later identified as something being done to the train in the yards at Buffalo, the porter aroused me, and I made such preparations as a Pullman makes possible to face the new day and a new world. We were rapidly drawing near Deep Harbor, and Knowlton's briskness at the imminent approach of business increased even beyond its normal. It was akin to the pawing of the mediaeval charger when he knew it near the time for the oriflamme to be advanced. The diner was not yet ready, so Knowlton sat beside me and pointed out the potential and actual resources of the country as we whizzed along. For me, my first sight of Lake Erie lying blue and serene in a hot early morning July sun was sufficient. I cared little for statistics in the face of that. In spite of the heat the vegetation was still vividly green and fresh, washed from the showers of the day before. At frequent intervals turbulent and muddy little brooks rushed lakewards through red shale gorges full of moss, ferns, and gorgeous old trees. From the railway tracks to the mile-or-so-distant lakeshore interminable vineyards stretched, interspersed with an occasional field of Indian corn. On our left, low-lying hills rolled backward to the horizon. The sunlight was vivid, almost painful, and the whole country seemed to glow and teem with life.

The villages were less encouraging. As a rule they were straggly and unkempt, with tumble-down wooden houses and barns, and showed no pride in neatness, apart from a well-kept school-house or other solitary public building. There were few if any flowers about the cottages, and what few there were were neglected. The gardens were composed of grass, which the more careful owners were already out sprinkling with garden hose. In fact the garden hose seemed almost the only sign of community pride. Even kitchen gardens were few and badly cultivated.

"What do they do with these millions of grapes?" I asked Knowlton.

"Make grape-juice of them," he answered. "See—there's a grape juice factory over there."

It seemed to me a strange way of repaying Heaven's bounty, as I felt quite certain these same grapes would make excellent claret, but I knew better than to say this to Knowlton.

"I suppose," I said at last, as the vineyards began to get a little on my nerves, "that, like everything else over here, these are the largest vineyards in the world?"

"No," he surprised me by replying, "the California vineyards are much more extensive." Knowlton had a weakness for words like "extensive." When he abandoned slang he used in its place, not always accurately, a language of almost eighteenth century formality.

"There's Deep Harbor," he suddenly exclaimed in much excitement; "you can see the towers of the Polish cathedral."

"Polish cathedral?" I asked in utter amazement, thinking perhaps this was one of Knowlton's jokes.

"Sure. All the unskilled labour in Deep Harbor is Polish—that's their church. Just beyond are the chimneys of the Lake Board Paper Company. These are the yards—get your suit-case."

"Polish!" I thought. "Here is an unexpected complication." There was no time to ask more about the "sledded Polacks," for at that moment the train stopped with a jerk and we got off.

"Right on time—5.30 to the second," said Knowlton, consulting his watch. "We'll just go down State Street to Schaefer's Hotel, leave our grips, and get breakfast. Then to work."

The train was already moving—evidently one had to be quick in order to disembark at Deep Harbor. I glanced about. The platform of the station was of rotten and irregularly laid planks. The station itself was a grey, forbidding-looking structure with a tower on which was the date 1864. A truck load of trunks charged us profanely, and we were just able to dodge aside. A youth offered to sell me some sandwiches wrapped in tissue paper. I was seized with an irresistible desire to test Knowlton at his own briskness.

"Why not breakfast here on sandwiches and then go straight out to the factory? We can save an hour."

Knowlton snorted. "Not much. Railroad sandwiches! I must have a cup of coffee; besides, we can't get in until quarter of seven."

"Oh," I said, "then these people do get some sleep." Knowlton ignored this. "Is Schaefer's far? My suit-case is heavy—let's take a cab."

Knowlton laughed. "I doubt if you can get a hack at this hour of the morning—and why waste two dollars? We can take the trolley."

With that we dodged across a maze of terrifying tracks, between charging switch engines and lines of freight cars in the throes of some internal convulsion, to emerge safely at last on the opposite side, where a pale yellow trolley car was awaiting us. As I climbed aboard, the conductor spat with amazing, albeit disturbing, accuracy one inch to the right of my ear, but gave no other sign in answer to our mild query if he went by Schaefer's. Concluding that silence gave consent, we sat down. Schaefer's proved surprisingly near—so near that the trolley, which seemed to me to travel at a fearful speed, carried us one street too far before the non-committal conductor could be induced to pull the signal bell. As we left I felt certain that, for some unknown reason, we had earned his disapprobation.

Schaefer's was an old, dirty-looking building, with a large plateglass window giving on to the pavement. Behind the window was a row of large golden oak rocking chairs, and beside each chair a highly polished brass vessel of convenient height. We entered its portal to encounter a strange, musty odour composed in part of sawdust, warm rubber, and generations of bad cooking. Behind a desk, on which was spread open a large book, a young man with glazed hair and an unpleasant cravat was chewing a wooden toothpick. Without even glancing at us he removed a pen from a raw potato and silently handed it to Knowlton. I wanted to ask why pens were kept sticking in raw potatoes, but decided to wait for a more opportune time. Knowlton signed his name in a fine Spencerian flourish with beautifully shaded lettering, added "New York," and passed the pen to me. Underneath I wrote mine in a somewhat trembling hand, most self-conscious under the eyes of the young man with the toothpick, and placed "London" after my signature. The clerk suddenly revolved the book as if it were on a pivot and studied our handiwork attentively. When, in the course of a moment or two, he reached my signature he took a pen from behind his ear—the other equivalent of a raw potato, I thought—and gratuitously scratched "Canada" after the "London." I took the book, revolved it as I had seen him do it, silently crossed out the "Canada" and wrote in "England." Once more the book was revolved and this alteration examined. Satisfied that the word was no other than the one I had apparently written, he calmly looked me over from head to foot and again waited, silently as before.

"Two breakfasts," said Knowlton.

"Front!" the clerk ejaculated the length of his toothpick. "Show Mr. Knowlton and his friend to the dining room. Check the grips."

"Front" was another pale youth, of tender years, but with an evil leer in his face. He seized our hand luggage.

"This way, gents!"

We followed.

"Does the clerk know you?" I asked Knowlton. The latter shook his head. "But he called you by name," I protested.

"He read my name in the register."

I had not thought of that.

The odour of the dining room was different, but no better than that of the office. There was evidently a closer contact with the bad cooking and less of the warm rubber. There advanced to meet us across the black and white tile floor a tall and majestic young lady with pyramidal yellow hair and a black satin gown which fitted her most snugly. She billowed up to us, turned upon her high patent leather heels, and undulated over to a long table, her hips swinging like an Oriental water carrier's. Meekly we trailed after her and sat where she indicated. Just above our heads, a large wooden-propeller kept a swarm of flies pleasantly agitated. On the table in front of my seat were a coffee stain, a jar of wooden toothpicks, and a large wire fly-trap full of prisoners buzzing over their misfortune. The Hebe-like personage withdrew, to reappear with two very thick glasses filled to overflowing with pale yellow ice water. These she casually spilled at each of our places and added a dirty and grease-stained card containing an itemized list of all the things the mind of man had as yet been able to conceive as edible at breakfast. Seven varieties of tea alone were enumerated, including many that had a novel sound. The lady disappeared and left us to our emotions in tranquillity.

While I was still marvelling at the things the menu offered for breakfast, I was suddenly aware of another damsel's presence. As I looked up, I discovered her leaning pleasantly on her elbow, looking over my shoulder, above which I noted her jaws in rapid motion about a piece of chewing gum. When I finally reached her eyes, the mastication ceased, and she smiled a most open and friendly smile. I did all I could to return it as heartily. She put into its proper place an erring lock of brilliant auburn hair, and in a voice that hurt, it was so sharp and searching, she exclaimed:

"Well, gents—what'll it be? Baked apples, prunes, or oranges?" This was completely to ignore the menu, which ranged all the way from peaches to melon in its printed promises.

"What about cantaloupe?" I asked timidly.

"It's all out," she replied promptly; "nothin' in but baked apples, prunes, and oranges."

"Then why this elaborate list?" I enquired.

"Gee whizz! What do you expect for fifty cents? This ain't the Auditorium Hotel. Prunes is nice today." All this she spoke in one breath.

"Bring me some prunes and milk," said Knowlton. I shuddered. I was determined not to be bullied into ordering something I didn't want.

"I'll take an orange, bacon and eggs, and coffee," I said firmly. Her jaws slowed down almost to a pause, as she looked me steadily in the eye, decided she would not fight it out just then, and departed, apparently much hurt. Knowlton rubbed his hands briskly, a sure sign he was preparing to utter some cheerful remark. I looked at him in a way which was an obvious defiance to any happy bon-mot he might conceive, so he thought better of it and returned to a contemplation of the menu. For some time the room was empty and silent, save for the buzzing of the captured flies and the hum of the overhead propeller. Then the auburn-haired maid returned, with a bowl of prunes and a generous pitcher of milk, upon whose bluish-ivory surface there struggled a solitary fly.

"Where is my orange?" I ventured.

"'Scuse me—did you say 'orange'?" she asked as sweetly as that acid voice would permit. "Thought you said 'ham an' eggs an' coffee'."

With a whish of her skirts she was gone once more, and I realized that the first step in her revenge for my ignoring prunes was accomplished. Knowlton deftly removed the fly from his milk with a teaspoon, flicked the creature carelessly on to the floor, and poured the whole contents remaining over the prunes. Next he seized a handful of crisp biscuits, crushed them in the palms of his hands, and added them to the mixture. The resultant compound seemed to me very nearly equivalent to half a bushel, dry measure. With a large sized spoon he attacked the mess vigorously. It was not wholly a silent operation. I pressed my lips firmly together and said nothing as the level in his bowl rapidly diminished.

Again the lady with sunset-glow hair came back. With a thump that startled me, she dropped in front of me a platter on which was a thick slice of ham ornamented by two highly glazed fried eggs. Beside it was deposited a plate containing a pale roll, a piece of yellow corn-bread, and a muffin made out of some strange refuse—all these warm and soggy. The cup of coffee followed, in a cup innocent of any handle. The coffee had already been diluted with milk and a spoon stuck in it.

"Sugar?" and she began to ladle heaping spoonfuls of granulated sugar rapidly from a glass dish. There was no trace of any orange.

"Stop!" I commanded so suddenly she spilt a spoonful of sugar over the table cloth. "Where is my orange?"

"Gee, did you want the orange first?" Her surprise sounded quite genuine. "I thought you ordered it last."

"Never mind the orange now"—after all, I did know when I was thoroughly beaten—"but I want black coffee, and I did say 'bacon,' not 'ham.' Also some toast. You may leave the ham, now it's here."

"Gee, you're an awfully fussy eater," was her comment. "You didn't order black coffee, did you?"

"No," I had to admit.

"Well, I'm only a waitress, not a mind reader," and with this unanswerable retort she scooped up my cup of coffee with a skilfully perilous gesture, and resumed her quest. Knowlton looked across at me and grinned.

"Having trouble with your breakfast? You can't expect breakfast at Schaefer's to be like dear old London," he went on, while something approaching a serious outburst was struggling in me. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do—that's the best plan."

"That's all very well," I said with extreme self-control, "but I am not going to eat prunes if the whole Holy Roman Empire ate them. I don't see why she can't bring me the breakfast I want when everything on God's earth is on that bill of fare."

"You'll shake down all right," he said in what was meant to be a soothing way. "Kicking about the grub won't do you any good. They don't know any better in a place like this. What's the use of getting in wrong with the waitress?"

It was hopeless to explain, so I snorted instead. Knowlton took a slice of bread and polished the inside of his now empty bowl until it glistened.

"Looks as though Fido had finished that off," he remarked, as he rolled and lit a cigarette; "I'll knock some ashes into it so they'll have to wash it."

The waitress appeared with a cup of coffee, a plate piled high with thick slices of toast on which chunks of butter were still melting, another plate with two oranges, and a third containing two rashers of coarse bacon. With the grieved air of a person determined to do her duty in the face of all rebuffs she silently grouped this food about me.

"What will you have, Mr. Knowlton?" There was just a faint emphasis upon the "you."

"Thanks, you can bring me a steak, some German fried potatoes, a couple of soft-boiled eggs, and some griddle cakes."

"Do you want black coffee too?" she asked with meaning.

"No, make mine half milk, and bring along another plate of rolls."

"Sure!" remarked the waitress cheerfully and vanished.

"And how did she know your name?" I asked, realizing it was quite useless to question Knowlton about his theory of a hot weather diet.

"Oh, she asked the clerk, I guess. It's good business to always call customers by name. Makes 'em feel at home."

I looked around the room again and inwardly decided that something more than that simple and naïve process would be needed in my case.

"They mean well," Knowlton went on, with his disconcerting habit of reading my thoughts, "but they don't always know how. Now, you're used to thinking of a girl like that as a servant. She isn't. She thinks she's as good as you are, and I guess there's something in that too. You treat her all right and she'll treat you the same. But don't pull any of that European stuff here. They don't know what it means."

Knowlton's breakfast arrived, and he fell upon it with gusto.

"You gents come from Pittsburgh?" the waitress enquired, evidently much mollified by Knowlton's treatment of his breakfast.

"Nope—New York," Knowlton answered.

"Gee, I'd like to go East," she said fervently. "It must be just grand. What line you gents travelling in?"

"We aren't travelling men," Knowlton replied. "I'm an engineer, and my friend here is just a plain business man."

"Oh," she said, somewhat disappointed, I thought. It was clear that she did not rank us as highly as she did travelling men. "Just passin' through the city, I suppose," she continued.

"It's hard to say," said Knowlton. "Maybe we'll be here sometime."

"Going to board here?"—her interest in us somewhat renewed, at this announcement.

"We haven't settled on our eating joint yet. Thought we'd look round first."

"This is as O. K. as any," she said. "The grub's nothing wonderful, but it's as good as you'll get. Lou Meyer's Rathskeller hasn't anything on us, and he charges a dollar a week more. 'Course, if your friend's particular, he might try the Otooska House down on the park. They put on a lot of airs and charge New York prices there, but it's the same old grub."

"Well," said Knowlton, "we'll see. We'll try 'em all out before we decide."

At this moment another customer entered, to be conducted by the head-waitress with like ceremony, as in our case, to his seat, and our blaze of glory departed to ascertain his wants. As Knowlton rose, seized a toothpick, and started for the door, followed by me, I heard our waitress beginning her searching personal questions all over again.

We paid for our breakfasts—fifty cents apiece—at the desk, where the clerk took the same lack of interest in the transaction as before. Knowlton asked him the way to the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company, our destination.

"West Twelfth Street car to the end of the line," was the brief reply, and with that we set forth.

Although it was still very early in the morning, or seemed so to me, unaccustomed to begin a day's work at six thirty, it was rapidly growing hot with a peculiar dry, intense heat that made the sunlight painful. West Twelfth Street proved to be in the direction of the railway station, and, although it was only two blocks from Schaefer's, I was thoroughly moist with perspiration when we joined a throng of blue-overalled mechanics, waiting with shining tin dinner pails on the corner for the arrival of the car. There was no car in sight when we got there, and as we waited I listened to the peculiarly blasphemous conversation of the men about me. Their talk was intelligent, far more so than that of a corresponding class of English working-men, but it was interlarded with an original and soul-curdling profanity. Rates of pay, politics, baseball, their foremen, and women seemed to be the staples of conversation. Young men predominated. Their faces were sharp and eager, and they seemed tense and alive, although affecting and even boasting of their dislike for their "jobs" and their dissatisfaction with the management of their factories. But it was obvious at a glance that they were well fed and clothed, and were excellent workmen. They played incessant practical jokes on each other, rolled innumerable cigarettes, and cheered the electric car when it at last arrived. Long before it stopped they charged the car en masse, with rough good nature, greeting conductor and motorman by name, and filled every inch of it before Knowlton and I could fight our way to a bare foothold upon the rear platform.

The car whizzed out a most dreary street—drearier even than the streets across the river in Bermondsey or over beyond the Elephant and Castle. It was six inches deep in a choking grey dust which the fast moving car stirred up into a remorseless searching cloud. Overhead in the hot blue sky hung masses of coal smoke, now beginning to pour from factory chimneys. Parallel to the car line ran a railway track, quite unguarded from the street proper, along which switch engines with freight cars smoked and clanged. On either side we passed an endless row of factory buildings, some of brick, but more of wood—even those which were several stories high. In spite of the streaming, intense sunlight and the final blue of the sky, the scene was one of desolation.

The car stopped with a jerk—we had reached the end, it seemed—and with great promptness we pushed one another off the rear platform. This crowd of workmen simply treated Knowlton and me as non-existent, and, if we happened to be in front of them, attempted the physical paradox of walking right through us. As I reached the pavement, I saw before me a long narrow two-storied brick building, surrounded by various lesser sheds and outhouses, the whole surmounted by a huge sign which read "Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company." This was the magic purse of Fortunatus which I had come so far to seek. It looked prosaic enough, but not so dismal as my ride out Twelfth Street had caused me to fear. It was the last of Twelfth Street, apparently, and the last of the factories at that end of town, for beyond I caught a glimpse of green cornfields, grey wooden fences, and, still further on, a blue sliver of the lake. "At least, there's air from the west," I thought, as I followed Knowlton, my heart thumping curiously now I was almost face to face with my ordeal.

We entered a door marked "Office—No Admittance Except on Business," and climbed a steep flight of stairs to pass into a railed-off outer room full of desks and typewriters. There was only one young man, slightly bald, with his coat off, adjusting black alpaca half-sleeves over his cuffs as we entered. From one lip hung the inevitable toothpick which seemed to be the totem pole of these regional tribes. He looked up at us and advanced to meet us, holding out one hand.

"Mr. Knowlton? I'm sure glad to meet you. Walk in. My name's Kane, Phil Kane, and I'm general sales manager for the D. H. M. Co."

He shook Knowlton's hand warmly.

"My friend and associate, Mr. Ted Jevons, of London, England," said Knowlton.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jevons," said Kane, looking at me with the same curiosity I studied him with. "They tell me London is some town," he added with a forced laugh and an attempt at hearty conversation. "I expect we seem a little out of it here by the lake, after them big cities, but Deep Harbor's pretty up-to-date at that. We have more miles of paved streets in proportion to our population than any city between Buffalo and Toledo. Have you seen the view from the Soldiers' Home, Mr. Jevons?"

I informed him that we had only just arrived and had come directly to the factory, after a breakfast of sorts at Schaefer's.

"You'd ought to have taken Mr. Jevons to the Otooska House," said Kane, laughing. "They have music with meals there, just like a New York hotel. 'Course, it's only an electric organ, but it makes you feel cheerful. Come right in, won't you? Mr. Norwood won't be out to turn the factory over to you gentlemen until about eight, but if there's anything I can do to show you around first, just say the word."

As I passed through the little swinging gate that divided the inner from the outer office, Kane seized my hat with a murmured apology and hung it on a hook.

"This is the general manager's office, in there," he said, pointing through the door in a wooden partition into a cubby hole containing one roll-top desk, two chairs, and a large filing cabinet. "I suppose you'll use this, Mr. Knowlton. Question is, where'll we put Mr. Jevons' desk?"

"Oh," I replied, "mine will be in the testing laboratory."

"Laboratory?" he repeated. "I saw something about that in the correspondence over the sale of the plant, and I couldn't figure out what you were going to build a laboratory for."

"To test and improve our product—also to systematize its factory costs," I said.

"Well, maybe so," he remarked doubtfully, "but a laboratory seems to me like an awful addition to overhead expenses. However, I don't presume to know how to run your business, Mr. Jevons. I suppose you won't make any radical changes in the selling department, will you?" There was a note of genuine anxiety in his voice.

"Not for the present," Knowlton interjected crisply. "We shall continue the policy and staff of the old company until we get our bearings. Then there will be plenty of opportunity for good men to move up. Meanwhile, we'll size up the efficiency of everybody and see what we've got."

Kane scratched the back of one ear with a pencil and turned this statement over in his mind. I noticed that his eyes were pale and weak, and that his manner was plainly that of a man who had little faith in fortune's star. An efficiency test was clearly one he was not confident of facing, but neither was I, and my sympathy went out to him. I had never seen a man at close range before who actually feared for his bread and butter, and that was what Kane's face showed, as he tried to conciliate the two of us as representatives of the new owners. It was not a pleasant sight. I could tell by Knowlton's sharp glance at him that our engineer was remorselessly applying that uncanny faculty of his of reading men's thoughts, and I guessed Kane had sealed his own doom.

But Knowlton said never a word. Instead he pulled some papers from his pocket, checked his memoranda for the day, and read a few documents which Kane turned over to him. I took out my pipe and started to light it.

"No smoking in the factory!" exclaimed Knowlton sharply.

"Do you mean to say," I protested, "that I've got to be here from seven to six each day without even smoking?"

"Just that," replied Knowlton with a grin. "We lose our insurance if we allow smoking."

At that moment a steam whistle began an infernal din, apparently over my head—a din which was echoed from every point of the compass. Instantly an even worse clatter and roar of machinery began under our feet, and the flimsy wooden floor and partitions vibrated visibly.

"Seven o'clock!" said Knowlton, rising. "The day's work has begun. Come, Ted, we'll take a walk through the machine-shop and look things over. Never mind, Kane—we'll find our own way around. Don't lose time from your job on our account."

With this hint Kane went suddenly back to his desk, while Knowlton and I descended the stairs and entered the machine shop. As we passed through the narrow aisles between closely packed lathes and planers, Knowlton made a series of rapid notes on the back of an envelope. Nothing escaped his eye, from a machine working too slowly to a foreman with too many men to look after. At the time I had no way of judging whether his inspection revealed a satisfactory condition or the reverse. The factory had been bought, of course, after a preliminary inventory of contents and orders on hand, but Knowlton's task was to judge of its efficiency as an operating plant. For over an hour we went from one department to another, until Knowlton's notes had covered all the scraps of paper either of us had in our pockets.

"I guess we'll go upstairs now and talk to Norwood," said Knowlton. "By the way, what did you think of the plant, Ted?" I felt as my old friend Dr. Watson must have felt when Sherlock Holmes asked him one of those sudden posers whose explanation was really so simple.

"It seems very busy," I said with conscious feebleness.

"Yes," he remarked drily, "that busyness is also costing them a lot of money. I think we'll shake this old place up, Ted, before we're through."

As I followed him I covertly looked at my watch. A little after eight! Good heavens, how many hours to six o'clock! It seemed as if I had been up since day before yesterday.

The upper office was now full of clerks and clicking typewriters, presided over by some remarkably pretty girls. At least three of them looked me straight in the eye as I went past, and I made a mental note that they were a great improvement upon the waitresses at Schaefer's. But my thoughts were interrupted by Norwood's coming forward to greet us.

Norwood was one of the young millionaires of Deep Harbor—the son of a father who had helped to create the town and whose capital was the backbone of every enterprise of importance in the city. Young Norwood had recently inherited the overlordship of Deep Harbor, and one of his first acts had been to sell the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company to the interests represented by my father.

Norwood himself was rather a disappointment. He was a tall, weak-faced, pale young man, whose clothes, neat and costly, were wrong in every particular. His seal ring was too large, his watch chain too heavy, his collar too high, and his cravat too loud. Even his shoes were ornamented with fancy leatherwork in scroll patterns. His manner was cordial to the point of oiliness, yet cold and insincere. In short, I took an instant dislike to him.

Obsequiously he placed chairs for us, closed the door, and produced fat black cigars, thus ignoring the office rule about smoking; and while he was ostensibly listening to Knowlton I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was studying me. As Knowlton ran over the items of his memoranda I kept catching Norwood looking me over out of the corners of his watery blue eyes. It was increasingly clearer that Knowlton's questions and enthusiastic exposition of plans were boring Norwood, for, after fidgeting more and more, he suddenly got up.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "the business is yours now. I'm sorry I've an engagement down-town. If there's anything I can do, or any advice I can give you, just 'phone me and I'll look in, anytime. Glad to have met you," and with a vigorous, cold handshake he left. Knowlton and I faced each other. We were now in command of the ship. Knowlton carefully extinguished his cigar.

"Ted," he said, "I don't trust this Norwood. He's sold this thing, and it looks all right, but I'm afraid there is a Senegambian concealed somewhere in the woodpile. You noticed how he dodged talking over the business?"

I nodded. Even I had noted that.

"Besides," I added, "he did not offer to put us up at his clubs or in any way behave like a gentleman."

Knowlton grinned his favourite grin.

"Ted, I hadn't thought of that as an index of Norwood's business ability, but damned if I don't think your reason as good as mine."

With that he pressed a button on his desk and a spotlessly clean young woman responded.

"Bring me the file of our customers," he said, and she withdrew.

"What shall I do?" I asked.

"You—oh, yes—you go out to the drafting room and design the testing laboratory. Come to me if you get stuck on any details. As for me," he added, "I'm going to start looking for that Senegambian this very minute."

My arrival in the drafting room caused a mild sensation among its occupants, but a drawing table, desk, instruments, and materials were speedily placed at my disposal, and as there was a rule against talking in this room, I was left in silence, but under close observation, to work out my problem. Furtively I produced from my pocket a useful manual containing practical tables and formulae for nearly everything under the sun, and with the help of this and my actual knowledge of what a chemical laboratory ought to contain, I had made considerable progress with my rough pencilled plan when the twelve-o'clock whistle blew. I had become so absorbed in my work that I had forgotten all about the noon hour.

I found Knowlton in the office where I had left him. He was surrounded by piles of papers and correspondence which he was reading, checking, and making notes about on separate slips of paper.

"Not found him yet, but I think I'm on his trail, Ted. Let's go to lunch."

There was no lunchroom in the neighborhood, so there was nothing for it but to go back to Schaefer's in the broiling heat of the packed trolley car, and again face the flies and perils of that dining room. As Knowlton insisted upon our being back at the factory before the one-o'clock whistle, there was no time to change one's clothes or to see about a place to sleep that night. Never had I felt so dirty as I did after a morning in the heat and soft coal smoke of Deep Harbor. Luncheon at Schaefer's proved to be "dinner," a noisy, crowded, hurried affair in which the waitress made no pretence of serving one's order, but brought what she considered a standard type of meal. There was no time to protest or change things. Knowlton, as usual, ate prodigiously, with the most annoying conceivable relish, of everything put before him, and gulped down in addition two large tumblers of watery milk.

We were back at ten minutes to one, and promptly, as the whistle blew, I stood once more before my drawing table and resumed the task. About three o'clock it seemed as if I could not stand another moment. My knees shook with fatigue and the unaccustomed strain of standing hour after hour, but there were no seats in the drafting room, and every one had to do his work standing up. At four I thought I should have to go to Knowlton's office and beg for mercy, but I didn't, because I knew he would think me unable to stick even a simple job through. At five the office staff left, including the drafting room, but there was still an hour for me. And this was to go on five and a half days a week, month after month, I thought! How did factory workers endure it without going mad?

When the six o'clock whistle blew, I could almost have cried with relief. I nearly staggered as I came into Knowlton's office, and sank into a chair mopping my face.

Knowlton grinned.

"Young gentleman from London, England, finds ten hours in an American factory on a nice warm July day something of a physical effort—shall I have that put in tomorrow's Social Notes?" he asked.

"You can't insult me, Knowlton," I said. "I am damned tired, and I have sense enough to admit it. So are you, I suspect, only you've been sitting down."

"Well," he conceded, "this elusive Senegambian I am after does make me tired—especially as friend Norwood is too sly a customer to be caught with the goods on him. If the Senegambian is there—and I've already found his footprints—we can trust Norwood to have made himself safe first. Let's go eat."

"Not at Schaefer's—God, not there!" I wailed. "I've had all I can stand of that hole."

"All right. We'll try the Rathskeller, but don't forget we haven't, as yet, any place to sleep."

I was too tired to eat when we reached the little musty hot German restaurant down under the sidewalk off State Street, but the waiter did produce a large foaming mug of German beer in which I blunted some of the acuteness of my physical aches and pains.

Chapter Four

I HAVE MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH PROSPERO

One evening, after we had been a few weeks in Deep Harbor, Knowlton arrived at my rooms as soon as he had had supper.

"Teddy, I've got a new job for you and one that'll keep you—well, it'll keep you pretty busy." There was one comforting thing about Knowlton, he never beat about the bush.

"What is it?" I asked anxiously.

"I've just hired a chemical assistant for you."

"Is that all?"

"No, it's much more complicated than that. This fellow is an old inventor—a kind of genius. At any rate, I've got faith in him. He dreams dreams and sees visions, like the fellow in the Bible—Job, wasn't it? I guess you know what I mean. But he has two serious drawbacks. He isn't practical—not the least idea of the value of money. It's up to you to see he does economically what he's told. The other drawback is that he drinks and is thoroughly unreliable. You've got to keep him straight and keep him away from the booze. His favourite occupation, aside from chemistry, is alternating Bass's ale with brandy and Benedictine. Then he gets ugly and his experiments suffer. When he's sober, he's a wonder."

I still was totally at sea as to what was expected of me.

"He looks like a pirate from the Barbary coast—San Francisco," Knowlton went on, "and when he's full he acts like one. I've rented the bedroom that opens into this study for him. You can share the sitting room and work here evenings on your chemical problems. Also you will be able to keep an eye on him. The first time he comes home pickled, you let me know."

This cool way of supplying me with a roommate staggered me.

"Do you wish me to cable your father to authorize this arrangement?" said Knowlton, with his unerring skill in tracing the course of my thoughts.

"Not if you honestly tell me it is for the good of the business, and not because you want to tie me down."

"Well," he puffed, looking at his cigarette, "I'm frank enough to say it's a mixture of both. We need this man in our business and some one has got to look after him. It's two birds with one barrel."

"It's very inconvenient for me," I objected. "I like to read and experiment with my literary work in the evenings."

"The world is often an inconvenient place," moralized Knowlton. "It might be inconvenient for several of us if old Prospero gets to hitting the booze."

"Prospero?" I enquired, surprised by Knowlton's sudden excursion into literature.

"That's the best name I know for him. I learned a piece about him in school once, something about cloud-capped palaces leaving a wreck behind them, or words to that effect. I have a hunch that if you steer old Prospero right, he'll bring one of those cloud-capped palaces down to earth. The only thing that worries me is the danger of the wreck behind. Shakespeare certainly knew human nature all right. He was a wise boy."

Knowlton achieved his carefully planned purpose of disarming me. I laughed and even began to feel most curious concerning Prospero.