The Coolidge examiner., 1932-04-15

his entire good faith. He'd put in
every cent he could scrape together
And the mans manner, every un-
guarded phrase and gesture, showed
that he was in deadly earnest.
Edward wondered at his self-re-
straint; and also, little, at his lib
erality. He proposed to give Ed
ward in consideration of his six
thousand dollars, 40 per cent in
terest in the company.
Il wouldn't surrender the control
of it," he said quietly, 'for ten times
that, nor twenty. This things mine,
and I'm going to keep it mine. But
I've got to have help"
Edward clung to his promise.
I'm not going to agree to go In
tonight" he said. an think it over
and I'll come out to your place in
the morning and have look at the
plant. Also l may want to talk to
a friend of mine-a manufacturer
and get his opinion. For / don't
suppose another twenty-four hours,
or even fOrty-eight would be fatal"
From a remote corner of his mind
came the whispered hope that Mar
iner would say 1t would be fatal,
that it was now or never. Then he
could say no and the thing would
be over. The mere notion of telling
Bert Willard about it turned him
a bit cold.
But Mariner didn't say now or
never. He was disappointed per-
haps, but the disappointment didn't
show. His line was that the more
Edward thought about it and the
further he looked into 1t, the better
it would seem. To his mind, 1t was
already settled.
Edward wasn't so very late get
ting home that night. Even Edith
hadn't yet gone to bed, though
Julia had been trying apparently TO
send her. He said hello to both of
them and realized after he'd spoken
that they found something novel in
his greeting. Indeed, to his own
ear his voice had sounded a little
different. AS a matter of fact he'd
come walking in without having
stopped to brace himself for the or
deal, to prepare an attitude.
He was pleasurably aware that
Julia was wondering about him
even after she'd pretended to go
back to her book. 1t would be a
queer turn of events If, after. all,
Julia should find herself the wife of
! rich man. She might be willing
to forget her grievance on those
terms.
II Mariner proved to be right In
his conservative calculations, sue
cess was sober probability. But
suppose the other thing? What if,
after Edward had put in his six
thousand dollars, the calculations
turned out to be wrong? What If
the device didn't work? That six
thousand was the fruit of uncounted
small sacrifices, legitimate pleasures
foregone. Imagine it swept away
for nothing but an idiotic gamble on
the word of fanatic. Well. there
was a certain angry satisfaction In
that, too. 1t would serve Julia right.
Shed driven him to it. Anyhow, he
slept soundly that night, untrou-
bled by dreams.
He walked into the office the next
morning with an agreeable sense of
detachment which took the sting
from the thought of their nickname
for him.
AT eleven o'clock he tod Miss
Whiting at the counter that he wa=
going out. He wouldn't be back, he
! thought, till after lunch. 1t pleased
him to note that he puzzled her just
as last night he had puzzled Julia.
1t had been his meek habit to ex-
plain his goings out. This time he
offered no explanation whatever.
A sense of adventure went with
him. He felt like a pioneer. The
address Mariner had given had been
meaningless to him. He had had
no idea in what part of town the
streets were on whose corner the
little factory stood. 1t was a strange
city he found himself riding
through. What a deeply rutted life
he'd lived, to be surel But he was
out of the ruts now. beating a new
path. His fellow-passengers in the
street car seemed different to him
from the sort of people he'd moved
among; more interesting, more hui
man, somehow. He wondered where
they were going, what sort of er-
rands they were bound upon.
The street where Mariner had
told him to get off was one predom-
inantly of little houses, rather
dingy, most of them fallen some,
what 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. 1t
was a modest little one-story, red
brick building; old, and if he re-
membered rightly, most of the time