“No, I think not. The girl looked tired and hot and my sister is always making friends in the most unexpected places. You see, she took a notion to the girl’s looks or something and she asked her name. Or perhaps she was afraid she might have to return the buttons. Anyhow, she asked her name, and it was so unusual that she told us about it when she got home.”
“Well, that’s most extraordinary!” said Mr. Sanderson. “Of course she may not be the right one as you say, but even at that, it is encouraging to have found a Scarlett, for she or her family may be able to put us in touch with some other branch of the family. Scarlett, after all, is a most unusual name. And then again, she may be a daughter or niece of the Jane Scarlett for whom we are searching. Have you told Mr. Edsel?”
“No, I just got in,” said Kent.
“Well, he ought to know at once. Edsel!” he called, lifting his voice a trifle, as a man about forty-five entered the outer office. Mr. Edsel came in and stood beside the desk, a tall, stern man with keen eyes, and hair silvering at the edges.
“Havenner here tells me he has found a Jane Scarlett,” announced the senior lawyer.
The keen eyes searched Kent Havenner’s face.
“Sure she’s the right one?” he asked.
“Not at all,” said Kent. “I haven’t even seen her yet, only heard there is one.”
“Well, I won’t have time to do any investigating today. Not till I get back from Chicago. Why don’t we let Havenner handle this himself?” he asked, looking at Sanderson. “I think he could find out what we want to know as well as I could.”
“I was just going to suggest that,” said Mr. Sanderson. “You really can’t delay that Chicago matter even a train, and I think it is quite important that we find out at once whether this person is the right one, else she may vanish from our sight while we delay.”
“That’s all right with me,” said Edsel. “I’ll give you all the papers, Havenner, and I wish you good luck. If you find it is a false lead it won’t be the first one we’ve had. I never supposed any color as bright as Scarlett could be so hard to find in broad daylight.” He said it with a twinkle in his eyes. “I’ll get you the data, Havenner, and if you can discover anything on this case nobody will be gladder than I.”
So, a few minutes later, Kent Havenner, armed with the necessary credentials and a paper containing questions that must be answered, started out to find Jane Scarlett.
He went to Mr. Windle first. He knew him personally, and moreover the name of the famous law firm that he represented would have given him an audience anywhere in the city.
Mindful of his promise to his sister he was most careful about what he said:
“Mr. Windle, I’m not going to take your time. I know you’re busy at this hour of the day. I’ve just come to you for permission to see one of your employees for about five minutes. I think she may be able to give us a few dates and names that will help us in our search for somebody. I won’t keep her but a very few minutes. We just want to make a contact with her.”
“Delighted to serve you in any way we can, Mr. Havenner. What is her name?”
“Scarlett. Jane Scarlett. I have been told that she is at the button counter. I could have gone there and searched of course, but I wanted your permission to speak to her during working hours. And we do not know her address so we cannot go to her elsewhere.”
Mr. Windle turned to his secretary.
“See if we have a Jane Scarlett at the button counter, and ask them to send her up here. You know, Mr. Havenner, some of our salespeople are on vacation now at this slack season. I hope she is here.”
“I was told that someone saw her there yesterday. But Mr. Windle, don’t let us trouble you here. I can go down and speak to her at the counter. It’s only a few simple questions I want to put to her.”
“That’s quite all right, Mr. Havenner. You can see her as long as you wish right in the next room there, and it won’t upset our routine here in the least. Just step in there and be seated and I’ll send her in if she’s in the store today.”
A moment later Jane Scarlett, white to the lips with fear, presented herself at the chief’s office.
She had turned faint with apprehension when the telephone call came for her to go at once to Mr. Windle’s office, and she had waited upon the customer she was attending with frenzied haste, left the sale in the hands of Nellie Forsythe who was languid and apathetic after her picnic, and hurried wildly up the stairs, not delaying even to wait for the elevator.
What could Mr. Windle want of her except to find some fault with her work, or to dismiss her perhaps? And what would she do if she lost her job? This time of year jobs were almost impossible to find.
Her hand trembled so that she could scarcely open the door.
But Mr. Windle was very affable. Could a man look like that if he were going to fire a girl, she wondered?
“Are you Miss Jane Scarlett?” he asked, and his keen eyes seemed to search her face.
Jane took a deep breath and nodded. She couldn’t summon her voice to speak.
“Well, Miss Scarlett, just step into this side room,” he said. “A friend of mine wishes to ask you a few questions. He won’t keep you long.”
Jane turned wild eyes toward the strange young man and gripped her slender fingers together to quiet their trembling. Her lips were trembling, too. She wondered if others could see that.
“Mr. Havenner, Miss Scarlett. He is of the law firm of Sanderson and Edsel.”
Mr. Windle bowed and left them, partly closing the door behind him, but if he had just set up a machine gun before her for the young man’s use he could not have frightened her any worse. A lawyer! What had she done that they should set a lawyer on her? Her quick mind reviewed all possibilities, and her heart sank. Perhaps something valuable had been stolen and they suspected her. If they did, what could she do? There wasn’t a single person in this part of the country whom she could call upon to take her part or even give her advice. Even that poor little pauperized school where she had worked for her board, and where they might have given her a reference, was not in session. She wouldn’t know where to reach one of the teachers, or the dreary old principal.
“Oh, God!” her heart cried wildly, and then she realized that she hadn’t been keeping in very close touch with her mother’s God, and how could she expect Him to help her? So she stood there trembling.
But the young man was speaking courteously.
“Won’t you sit down, Miss Scarlett?” he said, and his eyes studied the girl before him in a veiled surprise. There was something fine in her face just as Audrey had said.
Jane gave him a startled look and sat down on the edge of a chair close at hand, her hands clasped nervously and her eyes alertly watching the stranger.
Kent Havenner smiled.
“You don’t need to be disturbed,” he said kindly. “I’m only here to get your help in the matter of a few statistics. At least, I’m hoping you’ll be able to help.”
Jane’s mind darted about again through the unknown. Was someone else in trouble and they were wanting to check up through her? But her anxiety was by no means relieved.
The young man was calmly taking out a notebook and pencil.
“Your name, please, full name, and residence?”
Jane answered in a quiet voice that had in it such evidence of breeding that the young man lifted his eyes with a brief glance to her face, and there came to his own voice a touch of almost deference. He was recognizing that it was this quality in the girl that had attracted his usually particular sister.
As he wrote down her quiet answer he paused at the street address she had given and looked up again before he set it down.
“Is this your home address,” he asked, “or only where you are staying?”
Jane Scarlett answered quite impersonally in a disinterested, colorless voice: “It is a boardinghouse,” she said.
“Then you are not living with your own people, your family?”
&
nbsp; She gave him a swift searching glance, as if to wonder why he asked that question, as if almost to resent his trying to pry into her personal affairs. There was almost haughtiness in her reply.
“I have no family. They are all dead.”
A kind of shame came into Kent Havenner’s face.
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I’m sorry!” he said and then wondered why he had felt that way. She was just a working girl, yet she seemed to have the power to make him feel himself an intruder in her affairs.
She gave him a level look, and then her gaze turned toward the open window.
“This routine business of statistics leads into annoying questions sometimes, I’m afraid,” he apologized. “But now would you be so good as to give me the names of your father and mother?”
Jane’s voice was steady as she answered: “My father was John Ravenal Scarlett, and my mother was Miriam Warrener.”
“Would you happen to remember dates, or approximate dates, of their births, marriage, and deaths, and where they were living?”
Her brow was instantly thoughtful, and slowly, with careful pronouncement she gave the answers.
“Thank you,” said the questioner, “that helps. And your grandfather Scarlett. Do you remember his name?”
“Josiah Scarlett,” said Jane easily. “He lived to be ninety-two. I can just remember him when I was a child. He must have been born about—” she hesitated and then gave a year. “I’m sorry I can’t be accurate about it.”
“Oh, that is near enough,” said Kent Havenner, his pen jotting down the items in his notebook. “Now, was your father an only child, or were there other brothers and sisters?”
“There was a sister Jessica who died when she was a child, and a younger brother Harold who left home and went abroad somewhere after my father was married. He lived abroad for several years, but after my father died my mother read one day in a paper that he had returned to this country.”
“You don’t know where he lived when he came back?”
“No,” said Jane. “We never heard.”
“Then you were not in touch with him? You couldn’t give a clue as to where we might hope to communicate with him?”
“No,” said Jane. “I do not even know if he is living. I only know he did not go back to the old home. It might have been sold. I do not know. And anyhow, my mother said he would not be likely to live in a plain country place. He liked festivity.”
“Your mother never tried to get in touch with him?”
“Oh, no,” said the girl, her chin lifting with just that shade of haughtiness again. “My mother was proud. And she had never known him very well. She went back to the West where she had grown up. I’m afraid that’s about all I can tell you of the Scarletts. I’ve sort of drifted off by myself since Mother died.”
He gave her another keen, approving glance and smiled, and in spite of her she liked his smile.
“You’ve given me quite a lot of help,” he said pleasantly. “If I need anything more I’ll come back. There isn’t any other cousin or relative that might give me information about that Harold Scarlett, is there?”
Jane thoughtfully shook her head.
“I don’t think so. There’s a great-aunt, Sybil Anthony, the child of Grandfather’s second wife, but he had a quarrel with her. Still, she always seems to be able to find out things. She’s married again. She is Mrs. Anthony. I can give you her address.”
“Suppose you do,” said the young man. “Write it here in my notebook.”
Jane wrote in a clear hand, and the young man watched her while she did it, studying the sweet profile, the lean line of cheek and lip and chin, the dark circles under the big tired eyes. If ever a girl looked as if she needed someone to care for her, this one did. Why, she would be beautiful if she weren’t so pale and tired looking. He hoped Audrey would not forget her threat to bring the girl out to the shore and show her a good time. He had a feeling that he was under obligation to her for having put her through this questionnaire, and yet of course that was absurd.
She handed the book back with the address. “That’s where she was when last I knew,” she said, and lifted her eyes for an instant to his, wondering why he dimly reminded her of someone who had left a pleasant memory.
“Well, I thank you,” he said rising. “You’ve made my work easy.”
She allowed herself a faint little impersonal smile.
“I’m glad if it helped,” she said perfunctorily, and wondered why she had a feeling that this was a pleasant little interval. This man was a gentleman, and it rested one to come into touch with real gentlemen.
“And now,” said Kent, “may I call on you again for help if other questions develop?”
She lifted startled eyes.
“Why, of course,” she said simply, and turned away back to her button counter again, a vague alarm stirring in the back of her mind.
Chapter 4
The floor manager of her section had arrived at the button counter with an irate woman calling loudly for salesperson number fifty-one, just as Jane came back. The glint in the floor manager’s eye warned Jane that he was due to misunderstand her if he possibly could. “Miss Scarlett, did you sell this lady this set of clasps yesterday?” he asked, fixing a severe glance upon her and showing by his manner that the lady in question was a most important person and not to be angered or annoyed in any way.
Jane gave a quick look at the woman and recognized her as a trying customer who had insisted upon seeing every clasp in the place before making her choice. She glanced at the clasps and saw one was broken clear in two. Now, what was this woman trying to do? Those clasps had all been perfect when they left her hand yesterday morning.
“Yes, Mr. Clark, I sold the lady the clasps,” admitted Jane quietly.
“Well, how do you account for this broken one in the lot? Mrs. LeClaire tells me that when she took the clasps out of the box this one fell apart.”
Jane lifted honest eyes to her floor manager’s face.
“Those clasps were all perfect when they left my inspection, Mr. Clark,” said Jane honestly.
“Oh, yes, of course I knew she would say that!” exclaimed the lady. “The truth of the matter was she was impatient to go on talking with one of the other saleswomen, impatient because I took so long to decide. You see, this wasn’t at all the style of clasp I was looking for. I wanted something far better, more smart looking, you know, but this girl insisted she didn’t have anything better, and kept persuading me that these were the very latest. To tell you the truth, I had a feeling all the time that she was simply too lazy to look for something else and wanted to get rid of me. And she certainly must have known this clasp was broken.”
Jane was white with anger, but her lips were untrembling.
“Have you forgotten, madam, that I laid the clasps out for you in a row on your piece of fabric so that you could see how they would look? Don’t you remember that they were all perfect then?”
Jane’s eyes were very dark and they looked straight into the eyes of the other angry woman.
“You’re mistaken,” said the customer. “You only laid two of the clasps out. The rest were in the box.”
Jane met the other angry eyes an instant, and then she lifted her gaze to the floor manager’s.
“I had them all out, Mr. Clark. You can ask Miss Forsythe if I didn’t. She came and looked at them and admired them on the material.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Nellie Forsythe softly, nodding to Mr. Clark. “I counted them.”
“Oh, yes, those two would stick up for each other!” sneered the customer. “I never saw it to fail.”
“Besides, the wrapper would have gone over each one carefully, Mr. Clark,” reminded Jane.
Mr. Clark gathered up the sales slip and clasps and went behind the counter to consult with the wrapper, and Jane slipped into her place behind the counter and went to work, waiting on another customer, uncomfortably conscious of the snort of disapproval and the sneering
expression that the woman of the clasps cast upon her. What was the matter with this new day? Everything was the matter! And it was going to be another scorcher, too! Oh, everything was wrong!
The floor manager came out from behind the wrapper’s counter apologetically, and led the irate clasp lady aside for an earnest talk, his face suave but firm. Jane could catch a word now and then.
“They are lying of course, both those girls!” said the clasp woman furiously. “They ought to be dismissed, both of them!”
Jane lifted cold, tired eyes and gave one glance at the woman. What hell on earth one misguided mistaken woman could make for a poor salesgirl. She didn’t care for herself. She could pay for the clasp, though she knew the woman herself must have broken it, but she couldn’t stand the thought that the little wrapper would have to bear the expense. The wrapper had a sick mother and a baby brother with a curvature of the spine, and her tiny salary was sometimes all that came into the household from week to week. Hilda shouldn’t have to bear it anyway. She shut her lips in a firm determined line. She would go to Mr. Clark after this pest of a woman was gone and tell him all about how hateful the woman had been, insisting that there must be something different hidden away that they didn’t want to bother to show her. She would offer to take the blame rather than have Hilda have to bear it. Poor Hilda. She could see the fear in her eyes, and a furtive tear, as she passed the little alcove where Hilda wrapped packages all day long.
The other girls at the counter cast pitying glances at Jane’s grim countenance.
“You should worry!” said Nellie Forsythe as she brushed by her to get the drawer of white pearl buttons. “Don’t let that old Clark get your goat! He’s only trying to toady to that high flier. Isn’t she the limit! I’ve seen her kind before. She just wants to make trouble. She’s no lady! I’ll bet she broke it herself and didn’t want to pay for it. Some of those millionaires are just too stingy to live. I’d like to see ’em poor themselves for a little while.”
Jane cast a fleeting pale smile toward her unexpected champion and went on her busy way through the morning.
Homing Page 3
