Lifted Masks Part 7

In just an hour Freckles tried it again. He sent the car to within three feet of the attic floor, and then peered through the grating, his face tied in a knot of interrogation. The eminent lobbyist stood there gulping down wrath and pride, knowing well enough what was expected of him.

"Oh--all right," he muttered at last, and with that much of an understanding Freckles sent the car up, opened the door, and Henry Ludlow stepped in.

No word was spoken between them until the light from the floor upon which the Senate Chamber was situated came in view. Then Freckles turned with a polite inquiry as to where the gentleman wished to get off.

"You may take me down to the office of the Governor," said Mr.

Ludlow stonily, meaningly.

"Sure," said Freckles cheerfully. "Guess you'll find the Governor in his office now. He's been in the Senate most of the afternoon, watching 'em pa.s.s that Kelley Bill."

Mr. Ludlow's lips drew in tightly. He squared his shoulders, and his silence was tremendous.

In just fifteen minutes Freckles was sent for from the executive office.

"I demand his discharge!" Mr. Ludlow was saying as the elevator boy entered.

"It happens you're not running this building," the Governor returned with a good deal of acidity. "Though of course," he added with dignity, "the matter will be carefully investigated."

The Governor was one great chuckle inside, and his heart was full of admiration and grat.i.tude; but would Freckles be equal to bluffing it through? Would the boy have the finesse, the nice subtlety, the real master hand, the situation demanded? If not, then--imp of salvation though he was--in the interest of reform, Freckles would have to go.

It was a very innocent looking boy who stood before him and looked inquiringly into his face.

"William," began the Governor--Freckles was pained at first, and then remembered that officially he was William--"this gentleman has made a very serious charge against you."

Freckles looked at Mr. Ludlow in a hurt way, and waited for the Governor to proceed.

"He says," went on the chief executive, "that you deliberately took him to the top of the building and wilfully left him there a prisoner all afternoon. Did you do that?"

"Oh, sir," burst forth Freckles, "I did the very best I could to save his life! I was willing to sacrifice mine for him. I--"

"You little liar!" broke in Ludlow.

The Governor held up his hand. "You had your chance. Let him have his."

"You see, Governor," began Freckles, as if anxious to set right a great wrong which had been done him, "the car is acting bad.

The engineer said only this morning it needed a going over. When it took that awful shoot, I lost control of it. Maybe I'm to be discharged for losing control of it, but not"--Freckles sniffled pathetically---"but not for anything like what he says I done. Why Governor," he went on, ramming his knuckles into his eyes, "I ain't got nothing against him! What'd I take him to the attic for?"

"Of course not for money," sneered Mr. Ludlow.

The Governor turned on him sharply. "When you can bring any proof of that, I'll be ready to hear it. Until you can, you'd better leave it out of the question."

"Strange it should have happened this very afternoon," put in the eminent lobbyist.

The Governor looked at him with open countenance. "You were especially interested in something this afternoon? I thought you told me you had no vital interest here this session."

There was nothing to be said. Mr. Ludlow said nothing.

"Now, William," pursued the Governor, fearful in his heart that this would be Freckles' undoing, "why did you close the door of the shaft before you started down?"

"Well, you see, sir," began Freckles, still tremulously, "I'm so used to closin' doors. Closin' doors has become a kind of second nature with me. I've been told about it so many times. And up there, though I thought I was losin' my life, still I didn't neglect my duty."

The Governor put his hand to his mouth and coughed.

"And why," he went on, more secure now, for a boy who could get out of that could get out of anything, "why was it you didn't make some immediate effort to get Mr. Ludlow down? Why didn't you notify someone, or do something about it?"

"Why, I supposed, of course, he walked down by the stairs," cried Freckles. "I never dreamed he'd want to trust the elevator after the way she had acted."

"The door was locked," snarled the eminent lobbyist.

"Well, now, you see, I didn't know that," explained Freckles expansively. "Late in the afternoon I took a run up just to test the car--and there you were! I never was so surprised in my life. I supposed, of course, sir, that you'd spent the afternoon in the Senate, along with everybody else."

Once more the Governor put his hand to his mouth.

"Your case will come before the executive council at its next meeting, William. And if anything like this should happen again, you will be discharged on the spot." Freckles bowed. "You may go now."

When he was almost at the door the Governor called to him.

"Don't you think, William," he said--the Governor felt that he and Freckles could afford to be generous--"that you should apologise to the gentleman for the really grave inconvenience to which you have been the means of subjecting him?"

Freckles' little grey eyes grew steely. He looked at Henry Ludlow, and there was an ominous silence. Then light broke over his face.

"On behalf of the elevator," he said, "I apologise."

And a third time the Governor's hand was raised to his mouth.

The next week Freckles was wearing a signet ring; long and audibly had he sighed for a ring of such kind and proportions. He was at some pains in explaining to everyone to whom he showed it that it had been sent him by "a friend up home."

V

FROM A TO Z

Thus had another ideal tumbled to the rubbish heap! She seemed to be breathing the dust which the newly fallen had stirred up among its longer dead fellows. Certainly she was breathing the dust from somewhere.

During her senior year at the university, when people would ask: "And what are you going to do when you leave school, Miss Willard?"

she would respond with anything that came to hand, secretly hugging to her mind that idea of getting a position in a publis.h.i.+ng house. Her conception of her publis.h.i.+ng house was finished about the same time as her cla.s.s-day gown. She was to have a roll-top desk--probably of mahogany--and a big chair which whirled round like that in the office of the under-graduate dean. She was to have a little office all by herself, opening on a bigger office--the little one marked "Private."

There were to be beautiful rugs--the general effect not unlike the library at the University Club--books and pictures and cultivated gentlemen who spoke often of Greek tragedies and the Renaissance.

She was a little uncertain as to her duties, but had a general idea about getting down between nine and ten, reading the morning paper, cutting the latest magazine, and then "writing something."

Commencement was now four months past, and one of her professors had indeed secured for her a position in a Chicago "publis.h.i.+ng house."

This was her first morning and she was standing at the window looking down into Dearborn Street while the man who was to have her in charge was fixing a place for her to sit.

That the publis.h.i.+ng house should be on Dearborn Street had been her first blow, for she had long located her publis.h.i.+ng house on that beautiful stretch of Michigan Avenue which overlooked the lake. But the real insult was that this publis.h.i.+ng house, instead of having a building, or at least a floor, all to itself, simply had a place penned off in a bleak, dirty building such as one who had done work in sociological research instinctively a.s.sociated with a box factory. And the thing which fairly trailed her visions in the dust was that the part.i.tion penning them off did not extend to the ceiling, and the adjoining room being occupied by a patent medicine company, she was face to face with glaring endors.e.m.e.nts of Dr.

Bunting's Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. Taken all in all there seemed little chance for Greek tragedies or the Renaissance.

The man who was "running things"--she buried her phraseology with her dreams--wore a skull cap, and his moustache dragged down below his chin. Just at present he was engaged in noisily pulling a most unliterary pine table from a dark corner to a place near the window.