Show the BEGINNERS A now novel by henry kitchell webster copyright by the db he merrill co service PRECEDING EVENTS in good faith in an effort to aid a neighbor aluth ingraham in a business buil ness way I 1 dard diard patter son on kaihler of the chicago agency ot of a life Ino uran company 11 I 1 wrongly by his hl wit f julia ile ot at infidelity her iler practical acccia tion in a letter from rora a bummer summer re to bort sort unite him for or busI cipas and he take takes i a short vacation on his hi re r turn his daughter ed ih th telli tells him till his personal per ional belong irge are in the pre par O 0 room havi n dien removed 48 from am the room whim 1 l had been hit his and his wife a bedroom patterson accepts tho the situation altu atlon ai as proof of his belief in his guilt edith seventeen rear years old li to worried over the estrangement stran gement of her bar paren pi renti vi having little more than a dim comprehend compre hen elon slon ot of the affair her lier mother only partly succeeds luc ceede in her effort efforts to comfort her the ion son 19 edward diard junior la Is at college A busl business ness matter bring brings in I 1 inventor james mariner MR into rAtter sons life mariner needa ill 6 with which to push his in mention sention an automobile choke ani and patterson Pat tenon is interested CHAPTER HI III continued 4 all the buoyancy and confidence that hal hat marked lila his manner while he talked tolled about the invention was gone now lie ile was again the shabby necessitous failure he be hod had looked when he took his seat beside ed ward wards a desk Cd heart rink well he said trying to speak cheerfully lets come como down to figures its just a question of arithmetic now you know it turned out just about as hed guessed the policy oas as worth a little over fourteen hundred dollars lie ile wrote it oa on a slip of paper and slid it across the desk to mariner it isn t so much as you hoped he remarked but still its a tidy little sum it ought to help marfred read the figures without reaching reach tug to pick up the slip they were written on he move at all lie ile looked as if he move all the altal tal force seemed to hare have gone out of him he spoke in a daze I 1 it won t do me any good I 1 im m done for it if I 1 cant get more than that 1 I didat tell you that story for nothing lie went on after another silence 1 I tod it so that I 1 could get something besides the cut and adril dried A treatment I 1 know that a big insurance company cons nany like this has its rules and regulations but I 1 know that a man in your position it if he wants to do it can find some rule that will justify him in dealing with a special case this Is a special case you can t help seeing that it you don dont t see 14 it come down to ray my factory take a ride in my car out here drive it yourself your my gd G d man you don t think im going to drop this now kovl I 1 after three years ihen hen all it wants Is one more push to put it oc the top of the hill lou won wont t turn me down without taking at least a look will you A queer thing happened to ed ward he began explaining as he d explained a hundred times before the esse essence ice of the insurance business w u as taht it dida t recognize exceptions to rules 1 either neither the merits of mariners device nor the urgency of his needs entered into the case at all ile could have fourteen hundred and odd dollars if he wanted it and that was all it was nel no surprising that a stricken look came into mariners wistful brown eyes edward was used to seeing people look like that thal the aslanI shing ahw thing was that he heard himself adding as the man leaned forward to risa rise from his chair Ho however weTer III turn the thing over in my mind and it if there e anything more that can be done 1 A sudden blaze of hope in the in venters I 1 face stopped him short after a moments pause he added irritably you youre re rot to build on that probably I 1 have said it IL but ill call yea tonight or tomorrow morning edward edwards s job had never seemed so barren or so neary nearly unendurable dumble as it seemed today he felt he be was an automaton ua he wondered fantas tidally whether it would be possible to build an actual automaton out of cogs and levers some sort of super adding in nn chine that could take his job away from him do everything that he did he ile gave the notion a further twist of irony there was no danger dinger it would cost a lot of money he lie edward Patter patterson soo the human machine came cheaper why did he etick stick why did he keep up the pretense what was there in to it tor for him on admy way A livelihood of course probably his only one bit bat what was there in the prospect of his life t make it worth on with for another years it frightened him to think thoughts like that there was no good to be got from it ite recurrently currently during the day he wondered why he had flung that last scrap of hope to Ha mariner riner it was a cruel thing to have done really had he done it fram mere cowardice or from vanity unity it must have been he thought from one or the other he ile was sorry lorry for mariner it often that any call cr er broke through to his emot emotions lons like that and yet queerly qu cerly he be had envied him too mariner had some thing to hope for no doubt he be wai was still hoping was he plodding about the tho streets str cete turning into this office and that telling his story over and over again or was be he walling beside his ova ona telephone in the tho hope that edward would call him up and tell him he could have the money monell it was edwards course to put him out of his misery and et when it came to the point of en tin hooking his re receiver celver nud and calling mariners number his will seemed paralyzed perhaps if he be waited a while longer lied hed learn that mar iner had got the money some one oile friend or stranger might bare have turned up with the needed help not a rich man necessarily mariner mariners g help if be he got 14 it would be some savings it was the poor who took long chances six thousand dollars in the savings bank or la in liberty bonds didat amount to much edward knew the amount he himself had bad succeeded in putting by amounted outside his house and his life insurance to just a little more than that it if anybody yielded to mariners spell it would be somebody with a pair of shoes very like his own somebody who nho in the reg course of things much to hope for ills muscles tightened suddenly and his heart gave an unexpected flutter there was a wild ideal hon non of course but literally true he ile could give mariner his six thousand dollars tomor tomorrow mom las in it was orly a question of getting into the bank and unlocking his strong box oh oil no he lie ac ae dually do anything like that not yet cut but it was an amusing thing to have hato thought of imagine how julia would look when he lie told her I 1 the diy ay had worn morn itself out at last there was hardly anyone left in the office there was mas nothing left for bin him to do but go home home to another dinner of frozen silences on an evening of pretending to read another restle rest lea beastly nl night ht in the spare room bed vius that julias step in the hall was she coming to his door oh G dl d I 1 ue ile woul dat go home yet yel there was a certain peacefulness la in the silence now the activities of the ot of fice were dying down au an occasional door opening and shutting a voice saying good goodnight night to somebody bed stay a little longer he ile must tel ephone to mariner before he went home two salesmen were talking frag ment menta arlly rily as they lounged toward the outer door one was urging something and the other was hold ing back presently the urgent one raised his voice a little with a note of exa exasperation operation oh dont don t be a crab I 1 he said toure youre getting more like old aunt patty ratty every day adward a face pringlee pring led at the words he ile caught his breath la iii something like a laugh before bis his mind had had time to tell him whoa whom the 3 oung man meant by I 1 old aunt patty it wasn gasn t an accepted nick name of his lis at least hed bed never hard bard it before but there was no mistaking it idward tried to tell himself he was amused hed spring that nick name himself tomorrow on one of those young fellows and see what he lie looked like but he manage that attitude ills his lips were wera trembling there was a lump la in hie we throat hed had enough and a little over in another minute with the receiver to his ear he was asking to dine with him at half past six at the club lie ile felt shaky as he walked walled to the club tremulous excited and depressed ded presse d it at the same time he t mean to do anything not in a hurry burry iio he made himself a solemn promise while he waited for mariner that he wouldn t b and nd himself to anything tonight hed make a visit to the factory too in order to g get t a notion such as Ms Ns mind could form of the actual physical basis of the InTent inventors ors prospects this promise served him in good stead during their long talk over the dinner table and after mariner was a hard man to resist the mere mer e possibility that hed found a 2 rescuer had restored the manier which he had lad tor for a few minutes fit at bained during the interview in the the stricken desperate look about him was lone ile didat pretend that the ad venture wai was i sure thing I 1 of course it involves taking a chinee chi nee he said sa id it it you aulda w t he b e getting in for six thousand dollars but it if you can see anything wrong in my calculations I 1 wish tell me what it Is I 1 know rm not la im partial im rm telling you how bow it looks to me so if you can find any blow holes in if 14 1 I wish you would adward see any holes hot not if one granted the assumption that the device would work de ile t seriously depute di that as cither either mariner must know whether it worked or not and everything about the story indicated bis his entire food good faith hed put la in every cent he could scrape together and the mans manner every un guarded phrase and gesture showed allowed that he was in deadly earnest edward wondered at bis his self re tt raint and also i a little at Us liberality era er lity allty lie ile proposed to giro EJ el ward in consideration of hs six thousand dollars i a 40 per cent in terest la the company 1 I woul dat surrender the control of it he said quietly for ten times that nor twenty this thing a mine and I 1 m going to keep it mine but ive got to have help edward clung to his promise 1 I im no not going to agree to go in tonight be he said I 1 think it over and ill III come out to your place in the morning and have lava a look at the also I 1 nay want to talk to a friend of mane minea a manufacturer and git his opinion for I 1 dont suppose another twenty four hours or ei even en forty eight would be fatal WWI from a remote corner comer of bis his mind came the whispered hope that mar iner would say it would bo fatal that it was now or never then he could say no and the thing thin would be over the mere notion of telling bert wallard about it turned him a bit cold but mariner say now or neer ne er lie ile was disjointed per bars but the disappointment dunt didat show ills line lino MS as that the more edward thought about it and the further he looked into 14 it the better it would seem to his mind it u was as already settled edward gasn wasn t to so very late getting home that night even ewa edith hadn t yet gone to bed though julia had been trying apparently to send her lie ile said hello to bath of them and realized after hed bed spoken that they found something novel in his greeting lu indeed deel to his ova o va ear his voice had sounded a little different As a matter of fact hed come walking in without having stopped to brace himself for tie tle 0 ordeal to prepare an attitude he ile was vas pleasurably aware that julia was won gondring dring Tin about him even after shed pretended to go back to her book it would be a queer turn of events if after nil all julia should find herself the wife of a rich man she might be willing to forget her grievance on those terms it if mariner proved to be right in ills his conservative calculations success was a sober probability but suppose the other thing what if after edward had put in his six th thousand wigand dollars the calculations turned nut out to be wrong IN hat it the device work ahat that six thousand was the fruit of uncounted small sacrifices legitimate pleasures foregone imagine ima ine it swept away for nothing but on an idiotic gamble on the word of a fanatic well there was uns a certain angry satisfaction in that too it would serve julia right slip d driven him to it 0 anyhow he slept soundly that night bled by dreams he ile walked into the office the next morning with noth an agreeable sense of detachment which took the sting from the thought ot of their nickname for lim him at eleven he told miss whiting at the counter that he be was going out ue ile be back he thought thoughts till after lunch it pleased him to note that he puzzled her just as last night he bad ind puzzled julia julla it had been bis his meek habit to ex plain his goings going out this time he nn no hae A sense of adventure went with him he ile felt like a pioneer the address mariner had given had been meaningless to him lie ile bod had had no idea in la what part of town the streets were on whose corner the little factory stood it vas a strange city he found himself riding through 11 hat a deeply rutted life hed lived to be lure sure I 1 but he was out of ha tho ruts rats now tow beating a r path his HIM fellow passenger a in the street car seemed seemed different to mm mai from the sort of people hed bed moved among more interesting more hu man sonie somehow how he wondered e red where the they were going what sort of errands they were bound upon the street where mariner had told him hini to get off was one predominantly of little houses rather dingy most of them fallen somewhat hat even from their former modest estate the factory was at the west end of the street where it was cut off by a railroad embankment it was a modest little one story red brick br ic k building ol 01 old d and if he remembered rightly most of the time vacant evidently it had bad been built out here ahead of its time timo lie ile found himself seeing it as it would look when it should be freshly painted the windows washed new lights of glas in the occo occasional illonal broken panes down at tha the side there was a load ing wagon high and through the big door that gave upon it be he could see the well of the freight alei elevator ator daw itaw material went la in the door and a finished prod act came out the whole of the materialization of mariner mariners dream took place within those four walls it was tangible and personal belf contained right hero here ue ile vonder that mariner loved it it lie ile was w falling la in he tole with it himself it was a new idea to him almost a BOW now emotion ue wondered if bert willard felt that way about his plant probably not it was too big ito would probably scoff at this place edward vias ft as soro sorn hed thought of bert mariner was in high spirits if id got this letter yesterday morning he said landing it over to edword edward to read instead of today I 1 id d probably have been fool enough to go on trying to hold out by myself a little longer no boult its it 9 just as well I 1 it was vms from a supply dealer in la savannah ga got hed placed a trial order for two dozen of the mariner automatic choice choke a couple of months ago made twenty four enthusiastic thusia friends including himself now he was ordering order inq two gross youre bringing luck with you mr patterson mariner eald sald its a good omen oh I 1 dont pretend im not superstitious the tides turning I 1 |