His thoughts switched from Leslie to Jane. For a long time he stared broodingly out of the window. He shook his head as though to rid himself of his thoughts, picked up his pen, put it down again. Jane. Her behavior had been odd lately, disturbingly odd. He wondered what was really going on behind those meltingly soft blue eyes. How he wished he knew! From the beginning she had been a risk, but a calculated risk. Sooner or later, she was quite capable of making trouble for him. He wished, as he had wished countless times, that he could guess from what direction the trouble would come, that he could be forewarned at least to some degree.
With determination he picked up the pen again and bent over his work.
The third call came, hours later, just as he was thinking of calling room service to order dinner. He heard a husky, enticing voice and recognized it at once.
“Hello, Elusive Stranger! This is Felice Allen, and bored to death. Won’t you be an angel and dine with me? This village, more dead than alive, is driving me stark raving mad.”
“I’ve wondered what its attraction could be for a dynamic girl like you, week after week,” he confessed. There was a disconcerted silence at the end of the line and he grinned to himself. “That is awfully nice of you but I am tied up. The Blakes’ buffet supper, you know.”
“The time, the place, and the girl,” she answered lightly. “Well, I can’t say I blame you. There’s all Agatha Winslow Blake’s money as well as the Clayton money in the family, you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” he told her in a tone of detached amusement.
“I’ll bet you have. Well, give me a ring sometime when you aren’t engrossed in the Company.” She slammed down the telephone.
He ate dinner in his room, in order to avoid seeing Felice, and then bent once more over the slim sheaf of papers, the result of the long day’s work. Most of them he tore up in small bits, burning them patiently in his big ashtray and scattering the ashes. There was always the chance that his uninvited guest might pay another call. The three pages that remained he folded and slipped inside his shoe.
For a while he read a paperback copy of Nicholas Nickleby, which he had picked up in the drugstore. He had not read Dickens since he was a boy and he sat chuckling over Mrs. Nickleby, Vincent Crummles, and the Infant Phenomenon. In a lot of ways, Dickens was still the greatest novelist of them all.
It was late when he put down the book, changed to dark slacks and sweater and let himself quietly out of his room. There were voices from the lobby of the Fox and Rabbit where a bridge game was in progress. He went softly along the hall, opened a side window, and climbed down the fire escape, grateful that it was out of sight of the street.
Once clear of the inn, Donald walked toward the covered bridge, switching on a flashlight to guide him through it. Before emerging, he turned it off and stood waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
He looked toward the Company buildings. Somewhere on the grounds a light flashed. Nors must be making the rounds. Then, in rapid succession, there was a loud crash followed by a shot; then silence, utter and complete.
Donald raced toward the sounds, hoping he would not stumble over anything in the dark but not daring to risk his flashlight. Around the corner of the laboratory, something like a dark shadow lay on the path, a long bundle of some sort. Donald struck it with his foot, tripped, and his arms flailed wildly while he regained his balance.
It was a body over which he had stumbled. His heart missed a beat as he switched on the light, saw the man in guard’s uniform lying on his face, saw grizzled hair. He dropped to his knees, touched gently the lump on the guard’s head, turned him over, felt the warm skin with a deep grunt of relief.
“Nors!”
The guard groaned, put up a groping hand to touch the lump on his head, opened his eyes. The man bending over him observed that the eyes were unfocused, that they did not see him.
“Lab—lights—woman hurt—shot—” His eyes closed again.
Donald looked at him in perplexity, reached for the keys Nors carried on a steel chain fastened to his belt. The belt and the keys were gone but the revolver was still in his hand. He had evidently fired a shot in warning.
He took the guard’s hand and said slowly and clearly, “I’ll take care of things. I’m coming back. Do you understand?”
There was no answer.
Donald picked up Nors’s flashlight, which was more powerful than his own, and ran toward the laboratory. He tried to open the door but it was securely locked. He raced around to the back. His light caught a broken window. That accounted for the crash he had heard. Moving gingerly among the jagged pieces of glass, he climbed over the sill, flashed the light around.
On the floor a woman lay on her side, her cheek darkening from a heavy blow, blood streaming from a gash on her arm. Gently he cut away her sleeve with a penknife, staunched the bleeding with his handkerchief, then tied it firmly above the wound to stop the flow of blood.
A mop and pail were near her. She wore a neat housedress. A cleaning woman, but a superior sort of cleaning woman, Donald thought, as he saw the sensitive features. He groped for her pulse, found it. A feeble pulse, irregular.
Carefully he felt her legs and arms, but there seemed to be nothing broken. Nevertheless, he hesitated to move her in case of a possible back injury. It was easy to reconstruct what had happened. Someone had smashed the laboratory window to get in, had been surprised by the cleaning woman and had stabbed her with a knife and then knocked her out. Nors, hearing the noise, had come running, firing a warning shot. The man had evidently doubled back behind him, knocked him out and stolen his keys.
In the next room there was a creaking sound with which Donald had grown familiar. He sat up alertly. Someone had opened the supply cupboard whose creaking hinges were a joke among the chemists.
He stood up, moved quietly toward the door, knocked against the mop, which fell on the floor with a crash. Instantly the intruder in the next room flung open the door on the far side. With caution no longer necessary, Donald opened his own door, racing after the other man. By the time he had reached the far door of the laboratory, the heavy outside door opened, crashed shut. A moment later, a car motor roared, lights flashed on, and the car was gone before Donald could get outside. Without a car of his own, he had no way to follow.
He went back to the unconscious woman, bent over her again. Then someone leaped at him, clawing for his throat.
“What are you doing to her?”
With difficulty Donald shook him off, turned to face a young man who glared at him, ready to spring.
“Someone broke in, struck her and got away.” Donald’s voice was quiet. “The guard has been knocked out, too. Who are you?”
“Charles Turgen.” The young man was on his knees now, lifting the woman gently in his arms. “She is my mother. Is she badly hurt?” There was agony in his voice.
“I don’t know, but I don’t believe I’d move her if I were you. The telephone in the next room is connected all night because we sometimes work late. Call the police and get me an ambulance.”
The boy darted away. When he came back, he sank down on his heels, holding his mother’s hand. “I’ll kill the man who did this, who hurt her.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Donald said sharply. “There has been enough violence here tonight.”
“She—you don’t know what she’s like,” the boy said, and Donald realized how young and vulnerable he was, scarcely out of his teens. “I’ve been going to law school at night, working my way through by handling a garage job during the day. Then that—that—” He swallowed. “Harrison got me fired because his new car was delivered to him without oil. Okay, so that was my fault. But I had an abscessed tooth that day and I was about crazy with pain and I couldn’t take the time off to see a dentist. I got paid by the hour. I just plain forgot about the oil. Well, my mother said she’d make up the amount until I could land another job. This was all she could find, without training and all. She—she was doing th
is for me and she never even did any housework until my father lost everything because of a crooked partner. It killed him. But she said not to mind, that no honest work was degrading.”
“She was right,” Shaw said gently. “She’s a fine person. So you want to be a lawyer.”
“Not as a goal in itself. I want the training so I can qualify for the FBI.”
“Then you had better learn to control that streak of violence, hadn’t you?” The kindness in Donald’s voice took away any offense. “The FBI is careful about the men it appoints.” He raised his head. “That’s a siren. If it’s the ambulance, you’re to go along with her. Tell the doctor he has my personal assurance that any needs of your mother will be met by me.”
The boy got up. “How can I ever pay you back?”
Donald smiled. “You can help me, if you will.”
“Anything,” the boy said fervently.
“Then hop to it, and when she is all right, come back here. With the window smashed and the keys stolen, someone will have to be on guard all night.”
The boy ran out and Donald stood looking down at the unconscious woman, thinking furiously. At least, he had acquired a devoted and loyal recruit, and at this point he could use one.
In a few moments the boy was back, followed by two white-clad young men with a stretcher. Gently they eased Mrs. Turgen onto it and lifted it.
“What about the guard?” Donald asked. “Have you seen him?”
One of the men laughed outright. “He must have a skull as solid as an oak tree. He’s staggering but he’s on his feet and ready to fight.”
Donald grinned in relief as Nors came in. “Where’s your car? We’ll take you to the hospital as soon as young Turgen gets back to stand guard.”
“You and who else?” Nors was fighting mad.
“What do you remember?”
“Well, I heard the crash when the window was smashed and I started to run. I fired off a warning shot. Then something landed on me like a ton of bricks and I went out.” He gave a howl of rage as he made a new discovery. “My keys are gone!”
“Pipe down, I know they are. I’ve sent for the police.”
“State police,” Nors corrected. “Nothing here in the village but a constable. That woman—I could see through the window before I was slugged. Who is she?”
“A Mrs. Turgen, a cleaning woman who seems to have surprised the burglar. They’ve taken her to the hospital.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve noticed her around the last few weeks. A quiet, pleasant-spoken woman. Oh, there’s another thing. Earlier in the evening I saw Mason out in his canoe, trying to look like Chief Sitting Bull.”
“Mason again,” Donald said thoughtfully. “He certainly keeps cropping up, doesn’t he?”
“Well, it was no paddle hit me. It felt more like a sledge hammer.”
Again a siren screamed in the night, rising and falling. Donald went to the front door of the laboratory to admit the state trooper. Behind him a car screeched to a halt, and Corliss Blake jumped out.
Donald told his story as quickly as he could, confirmed at every point by Nors Swensen. The trooper looked at Donald, at the dark slacks and sweater, at the tennis shoes, at the bloodstains on his arm where he had touched Mrs. Turgen.
“How did you happen to be so conveniently on the spot, Mr. Shaw?” he asked politely.
For once Donald hesitated, groping for a reply.
“I gave him a ring,” Nors said unexpectedly. “I had a feeling someone was prowling around and I figured it would take two of us to round up whoever it was.”
“But why pick on Mr. Shaw?” The trooper’s tone was unexceptionable but his bright eyes missed nothing.
Nors grinned. “He looked to me like the best bet if we were going to run into any kind of scrap.”
“He sure does. I’d bet on him.”
The men turned as Charlie Turgen came in. “I guess he saved my mother’s life tonight by his prompt action. The doctor said the bleeding was stopped just in time. I owe Mr. Shaw a big debt.” He looked at Donald a trifle anxiously. “They said she really ought to have a private room and blood transfusions. Is that all right?”
Donald nodded reassuringly.
Corliss Blake came back from the supply cupboard, which he had been investigating. “I think we all owe Mr. Shaw a debt. There wasn’t time to steal anything. Your prompt action—” He broke off. “Let me give you a lift back to the Fox and Rabbit.”
Donald shook his head. “Thanks very much, but you’d better take that stubborn Swede and haul him off to a doctor.”
“Now look here,” Nors began in protest.
“Can you arrange for someone to take over his duties for the night?” the trooper asked. “We can arrange for a man to patrol the plant regularly but we’re short-handed.”
Donald looked at young Turgen, who beamed. “You bet,” he answered the unspoken question.
“Okay,” Donald said. “Charlie and I will stay on guard for the night. One of us can board up that broken window and the other can do some patrolling. As long as the keys are missing we’ll have to cover the whole place.”
The trooper gave Donald a long look and turned to Corliss Blake for his decision.
“That’s very good of you,” Blake said heavily. “I appreciate this, Shaw. Come along, Swensen. I’ll get you to a doctor.”
“I’ve got to collect my revolver,” Nors said. “Anyhow, I’ve always wanted to ride in a police car.”
This time it was Donald who took a long suspicious look at the guard. The latter went out to the police car, careful not to meet his eyes, trying unsuccessfully to cover with his coat the bulge made by his revolver.
13
Up until the telephone call from the state police, the Blakes’ buffet supper had followed its usual routine. The only exception had been the change in Oliver Harrison’s attitude toward Leslie. From the moment when he first made his appearance, she had been aware of the difference in his manner. There had been a confidence in the carriage of his head, a determination that was excessive even for him.
As soon as the dancing started, he led her out on the terrace with a masterful air that alerted her. He held a chair for her and perched on the low stone wall, facing her.
“I’m worried about your father,” he began abruptly. “This is strict confidence, of course, just between us. Something is going very wrong with the Company. In fact, it is just possible that unless drastic measures are taken, and taken immediately, there won’t be any Company.”
Leslie raised wide, startled eyes to his face. “As bad as that?” Her father’s words were still fresh in her mind. This was confirmation of his worst fears.
“As bad as that,” he told her grimly. “I don’t know how much you understand about the new textile formula.”
“Only what Dad said. That it is revolutionary and very important and—” She came to a halt. She had no intention of repeating her father’s suspicions about Donald Shaw.
“You know that the Gypton Company has got onto it, and that they are getting information from someone in the Company?”
She nodded. “Dad told me they had made an offer for the formula that was—an insult.”
“They did!” Oliver was jolted.
“Sorry,” Leslie said. “I—thought you knew. That was strict confidence, too. I shouldn’t have told you. But I just assumed—”
“That your father would keep me informed of developments.” Oliver’s tone was grim, tinged with resentment. “It was a natural assumption.”
“Oliver,” the girl said crisply, “I made a mistake and betrayed Dad’s trust in me. But it was unintentional. I don’t intend to discuss my father or his actions or his motives with you.”
There was a frosty light in his eyes and then they warmed. “My darling, I’m afraid we’re going to have to discuss the situation. You don’t realize in the least what all this means.”
“But—” she began in protest.
“It means,” he said with
deliberation, “that, unless something is done and done immediately, the Clayton Textile Company is headed for the rocks. That would involve the major part of the inhabitants of this village who draw their living from it. If that should happen, your father’s position is going to be da—very difficult. The whole industry will blame him for the catastrophe because, as head of the Company, the final responsibility is his.”
“But it’s not his fault!”
“How much will that help him if he has to endure public disgrace?”
“Oliver!”
He reached down to take her shaking hands. “I know, my darling, how brutal this sounds. But we’ve got to face the facts, you and I.”
“I don’t understand,” she choked, while her mind beat out the refrain: Public disgrace, public disgrace, public disgrace.
He drew her to her feet. “Your father is a nice guy, Leslie.” Again there was an air of condescension in his tone that angered her. She tried to draw her hands away but his grasp on them tightened. “A very nice guy,” he repeated. “But, let’s face it, he is easy-going. Everyone likes him. He does his best. But—his best simply isn’t good enough. He worked too many years as an individual; he hasn’t the training, the thinking, of an organization man. He can’t think big. He’s not—well, not a natural-born leader. The time has come when a decision has to be made, when there must be a strong hand on the reins.”
“And you have the strong hand,” Leslie commented.
“I have the strong hand,” Oliver assured her blandly. “Your father is just about ready to throw in the sponge, but if he loses the formula, he’ll never live down the suspicions of people not only in the Company, not only in Claytonville, but throughout the whole industry.”
“But what can be done?” Leslie asked, confused and frightened. “It would kill Dad to lose the respect of the Company, no matter how innocent he may be.”
“There’s only one way that I can see.” Oliver slipped an arm around her. “I could find the man who is selling us out. I could save the Company. I could see that your father’s reputation is safe.”
A Candle in Her Heart Page 12
