LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      Carol Berkley was still at work in the inner office when the men arrived.

      Her fingers flew along the keys of her typewriter with the maximum of speed. She did not even hesitate nor glance at her watch as she heard the office boy seating the two visitors in the outer office and telling them that Mr. Fawcett was expected any minute now, that he never stayed out later than half past two for lunch.

      She had been working at top speed since nine o’clock that morning. Her head swam and little black dots danced before her eyes. For Carol had been up late the night before finishing a dress to take away with her on her vacation, and she had risen at five o’clock that morning to put the last things in her trunk and lock it before she went to the office. She was planning to leave on the Bar Harbor Express that night.

      It was to be the first real vacation she had had in five years, the dream of her life coming true. Two whole weeks to lie in the sand and watch the rocks and the sea, a fine hotel in which to stay, and two friends to go with her. She was keyed up to the point of intensity with the thought of it all.

      But these letters must be finished before she left, vacation or no vacation. And there were so many of them! It was like Mr. Fawcett to give her a lot of extra work on her last afternoon, as if he would force a whole two weeks’ work into a single morning’s dictation.

      Mr. Fawcett, too, was going away, and was of course anxious to get these important letters off before he left.

      He was a hard master. Carol felt almost a tangible dislike for him as she drove her weary fingers on. He had been unbearable for the last three weeks. The old grouch! Of course he was worried about his business, for things were in a critical condition, but he didn’t have to be such a bear. It wasn’t her fault that he had gotten himself tied up in a contract that he wasn’t going to be able to pull off.

      These thoughts hung around her like an atmosphere, depressing her.

      There were still several pages of notes to be transcribed into the neat, accurate letters for which she had earned a reputation. Her fingers ached and her head whirled, but she made no mistakes as page after page was reeled off and laid in its immaculate mahogany box ready for Mr. Fawcett’s signature. She was giving her entire attention to her work, for she was deeply conscientious and she realized that these letters contained the crux of all the financial difficulties which the Fawcett Construction Company was now facing. Within a few weeks the issue, which was being discussed in some of these letters, would have to be fought out to a finish, and it would mean a finish to the Fawcett Construction Company if things did not turn their way.

      Not that she would care personally.

      It would mean that she would lose her job of course, and her unusually good salary; but there were others as good. It might be a wise thing to go to a new place. She was dreadfully tired of the little inner office and Caleb Fawcett’s daily grouches. She longed inexpressibly for cheerful surroundings.

      She was just beginning a letter to Philip Duskin, the young construction engineer of a large office building they were putting up in a western state.

      The building was contracted for a certain date, and there would be a tremendous amount of money forfeited if it was not done on time. Carol knew that this money would make all the difference between a pleasant margin and absolute insolvency for the Fawcett Construction Company, and she felt that the vitriolic sentences which Caleb Fawcett had framed that morning out of the bitterness of his anxiety were none too keen for the young man who seemed, as far as she could judge by the correspondence, to be allowing himself in the most inane and idiotic ways to be held up at every turn. And by such trifles! Rivets and paint and the like! Why hadn’t he ordered his rivets in time? Why had he put the paint where it could be stolen? Stolen! The idea of a lot of cans of paint being stolen when they had been carefully locked into a room the night before! And even if they were, why didn’t he get more paint, when so much was at stake, instead of writing a whining letter two weeks after it happened complaining of his bad luck? And still persisting in that futile reiteration that in spite of it all they would have the building done in time.

      And then that notion that he kept insinuating, that there must be an enemy somewhere working against them! Stuff and nonsense! He must be a reader of dime novels or a fan of the movies! Things like that didn’t happen in these sane, modern times. Why would the Fawcett Construction Company have an enemy? They were an old, respectable firm. The man must be a fool to try to put over such a silly idea on his employer. She had no patience with him anyway. As if a full-grown man couldn’t look after a little paint and get rivets elsewhere even if the first lot ordered had gone astray in delivery.

      There was another thing, too. Why did his men continually leave him? That surely showed he was not a good boss. There must be something radically wrong about him. If Mr. Fawcett would ask her, she would suggest that they fire him and get a new construction engineer, one they could trust. No wonder Fawcett looked so worried. It was plain to be seen that this Duskin was utterly inadequate. Surely there must be other men whom they had tried out who could take his place at an hour’s notice and save the day, even late as it was.

      But perhaps that was what Fawcett was going to do when he got out there. He was not a man who talked much, behind those shaggy eyebrows and those close-compressed, hard lips. Perhaps he had reason

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