DUSKIN (10 page)

The words of the Bible verse she had just read kept coming back to her like a taunt, a warning, and brought a mortified color to her cheeks. “Be not wise in thine own eyes.” Never again would she say Proverbs was impersonal.

More soberly now, she went back to the big, gray stone building and went up the steps.

The door stood open and a man was mixing paint in the back end of the long hall. There was a pleasant smell of new plaster in the air, and there was heavy building paper fastened securely over the floors covering the tiles beneath. She knew they were tiles by the way they felt as she stepped over the paper and because the paper was torn away in one corner disclosing the tessellated floor of clear black-and-white marble.

She walked the length of the hall, taking in everything—the lofty, well-proportioned rooms, the staircase also done in paper, the smooth walls seemingly all ready for their decoration, the electric wires hanging through holes in the ceiling and walls at frequent intervals. Why, the place seemed almost finished! This could not be the building. She must have made a mistake again.

She picked her way past the open elevator shafts, between kegs of nails and cans of paint, and spoke to the man who continued to mix paint as if his life depended on it.

“Is this the Fawcett Construction Company operation?” she asked, clearing her throat of a sudden huskiness. Her voice echoed weirdly and was flung back to her in volumes from the height of unseen corridors.

“Yep,” said the man without pausing in his mixing but lifting a mildly approving eye to her trim little figure.

“Well, can you tell me when they expect Mr. Duskin back?”

“‘Uskin ‘ack!” echoed her voice from seemingly miles away like an angry witch that inhabited the air above her.

“Back?” said the man lifting his head now and giving her an appraising eye. “He got back las’ night. Been workin’ most all night by hisself to ketch up. Never did see sech a man. Come back in his sleep ef he couldn’t get here no other way!” The man continued to mix rhythmically.

Carol surveyed him coldly. She was not sure he wasn’t trying to joke about it. She was no longer in a laughing mood. This was serious business. She must send some sort of a telegram to the hospital to Fawcett tonight, something the doctor would consider encouraging, and here it was almost quitting time.

“Where—could I see him?” she asked hesitantly. “When?”

“Right now!” responded the man with alacrity. “He’s up on the ‘leventh. Wait! I’ll have ye hauled up!”

He gave five more distinct stirs to his paint before he lifted the stick with which he stirred it, scraped it off neatly on the edge of the can, and rose from his stooping posture.

Carol looked around wildly, wondering what the process of being hauled up would entail.

The man went to the edge of the elevator shaft and looked up.

“Hoooo! Bill! Send down that shutter! Passenger wantsta come up!”

A voice came fluttering down from above like a piece of paper that whirled around at every draft.

“Ooo! Ay! Awwright!”

And presently there appeared in midair a man’s legs standing on a slender raft and then the whole man airily descending holding a heavy rope in his hand.

The raft arrived and the man eyed her disapprovingly.

“Step aboard!” said the painter. “She wantsta see the boss, Bill!”

Bill still eyed the lady disapprovingly. “The boss won’t talk now. He’s awful busy. He said he wouldn’t have no reporters on the job, Dan.”

Carol stepped aboard quickly.

“I’m not a reporter,” she said briskly. “I’ve come from Mr. Fawcett in New York with a message. Take me up, please.”

Bill surveyed her with alien eyes. “The boss is awful busy now. You’d best lemme tell him yer here. They’ve set to git the wiring on the ‘leventh done tonight. A salesman was just here, and the boss almost tossed him down the shaft; he was that mad!”

So that was what Duskin was up to. Somehow he had found out she was coming. Likely Frederick Fawcett had let it out yesterday that he had had word from the office or something, and Duskin was putting up a big bluff of working hard. But he couldn’t deceive her. She knew too much.

As the big rope in the man’s hand slid the frail raft up and up inch by inch Carol was planning a dramatic arrival.

As floor after floor slid slowly by, she was interested in spite of herself to see the progress that had been made. Why, to her inexperienced eyes it did not look after all as if there was so much to be done. And yet the letters had been constantly prating of setbacks as if they were a weekly menace. Well, there was surely some crooked game being played here. She must keep her eyes open wide and her mouth shut, and she must be careful not to let anyone know how much she knew until she was good and ready to make her revelation.

The raft came to an unsteady stop at last, and Carol had a flashing view of the depths below, eleven stories down and then basements and cellars beneath. She caught her breath as she stepped quickly off and looked around her.

“Boss is in there,” said Bill with an inscrutable look in his eye and a sound in his voice as if he were discreetly anticipating something.

Carol stepped to the doorway of a large, bright room and saw three men in overalls hard at work—one working at the far end of the room by a window screwing something into a hole in the wall, one on a ladder pulling a heavy wire tube up through another hole in the wall, and the third down on the floor over a ripped-up board with a pair of pliers in his hand, watching the other end of the wire cable moving along in the open space.

The moment seemed tense. No one noticed her arrival, although her steps along the corridor had been brisk and businesslike. She paused in the doorway and studied each man, waiting an instant for someone to look up.

But no one looked up. Each man was intent upon his particular job. From the floor below there came the rhythmic sound of a saw seething through wood and driven by a master hand. Hammer blows mingled with cheery whistling. Perhaps they had not heard her.

“Can you tell me where to find Mr. Duskin?” Carol’s voice was clear and sailed around the empty room resonantly. There could be no doubt they had heard her speak, but not a man of the three stirred or even lifted an eyelash. Were they all deaf?

She stepped a foot nearer to the man on the floor and repeated her question.

“Easy, easy there, Charlie, she’s coming slack. Just an inch more—there! Now hold her!” The pliers went into the dark notch in the floor and did something, but still no man of the three paid the slightest heed to her.

She glanced around and there in the doorway stood the man Bill, a wicked twinkle in his eyes, licking his lips with anticipation, but he did not move or make the slightest suggestion of coming to her rescue. She thought he rather enjoyed her discomfort.

She stood, wondering just how to make her next attack. Then the man on the floor spoke again, his eyes still on the thing in the floor that his pliers held. “Now, Charlie, hold her. She’s all right!”

An instant’s more silence during which Carol at last seemed to sense that there was something important going on that she must not interrupt, and then the man on the floor dropped his pliers by the hole and rose to his feet, turning around to meet her astonished gaze. Of all things! The man in overalls was that distinguished-looking young man whom she had met at the dinner last night! What on earth could he be doing here? Perplexities were thickening. She experienced a sudden wild wish that she had never heard of Fawcett and Company and that she were at that instant sitting on the sand in Maine watching the quiet waves creep up on the shore.

The young man’s eyes were grave and piercing. His look was like the one he had given her last night when he turned away after she had told Schlessinger she would fire Duskin. Was he then a friend of Duskin’s? Did that explain his look? He was perhaps some college friend working for the experience that he might write a book about it afterward.

“I beg your pardon,” she managed to say, suddenly realizing that she had been introduced to him the night before and must not treat him like a stranger or a common workingman. “I am looking for Mr. Duskin. Can you tell me where to find him?”

A flash of surprise went across the keen gray eyes, and he looked at her steadily then spoke almost curtly.

“I am Duskin.” He did not take his eyes from her face. It seemed that he was sifting her down to her thoughts. She had a feeling that there would not be anything hidden from him if he undertook to find it out.

“
You
are Mr. Duskin?” she said in great astonishment, and then tried to gather her scattered senses. Of course she must not let him see that she was utterly flabbergasted by this. It would be disastrous to do that.

“I’m afraid I did not understand the name last night,” she managed sweetly with a frigid little smile. In spite of herself she could not help feeling more friendly to him. So this was how he had managed to get the job. He had a personality that charmed people. Poor Mr. Fawcett had been taken by his looks, and so had that college president and all those others who had recommended him. And he was trying those fine eyes on her now. He knew by her speech last night that she had come down to look after the interests of the company, and he was going to forestall anything she might have to say. He wouldn’t be so sure of himself of course when he read Mr. Fawcett’s crabbed letter. But she must be on her guard. He certainly could appear to be something quite unusual, even in these workmen’s overalls. Of course that was a pose. A dramatic touch to show her how hard he was working!

These thoughts raced through her brain as she took out the letter from her handbag and presented it. “Mr. Duskin, I have here a letter for you from Mr. Fawcett. Perhaps you would like to read it before I say anything further.”

Without a change of countenance or a lifting of those eyes from her face, Duskin took the letter and stuffed it into the pocket of his overalls.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll try to get time to read it sometime tonight. You’ll excuse me now. I’ve got to get back to work. The men who started to wire this place made some bad blunders that wouldn’t pass inspection. The inspector is coming again early tomorrow morning and every wire on half the floors has got to be changed to comply with the law. I went up to Chicago yesterday to get a new set of men, and we shall have to work all night to get it done. We’ve had all kinds of a time getting the inspector to come and he’s promised he won’t fail us, and we’ve got to be ready. Sorry to seem discourteous, but this can’t be helped. Bill, you’d better take the lady down. She will only be uncomfortable up here.”

Carol’s cheeks flamed indignantly.

“But you don’t understand,” she protested. “I’ve come—”

“I understand perfectly, Miss Berkley. You’ve come to fire me, but unfortunately I haven’t time to be fired now. I’ll talk with you later. Bill, take Miss Berkley down, and if anybody else tries to come up, shoot them.”

Carol stood in utter rout and saw her plans falling away from her like a house of cards. Who was she to manage a man like this? Would she have to telephone for the police to get him off the job?

Then she heard a scraping, puffing noise in the hall, and lifting her eyes she saw, just beyond the elevator shaft where the open stairway showed, two men like two porpoises, a long one and a round one, snorting, panting up the stairs.

She turned one panic-stricken glance at Duskin and stepped into the frail raft beside Bill, the grinning Bill.

I
n something like a panic of defeat Carol got herself back to the hotel and up to her room and locked the door.

As she snapped on the light she caught a glimpse of her Bible lying on the bureau, and a single sentence began to ring in her ears, over and over—
“Be not wise in thine own eyes. Be not wise in thine own eyes.”
—until her cheeks began to burn.

She sat down to think what she should do next, but instead she broke down and cried. Just why she was crying she did not know. Was it because that man had been rude to her again? Was it because she had failed to fire him in the final and brief manner she had planned? Was it because Fawcett and Company were in such a hole and she couldn’t see any way to get them out? Or was it because those two horrid men kept coming into the scene and filling her with disgust?

She did not know. She only knew she was tired to a frazzle and sick of the whole thing, and she would like to go home and cry in her mother’s arms the way she used to do when she was a little girl.

And she wasn’t being the grand and glorious success in the business world at all as they had made her think last night. She was just a silly little secretary who was trying to do a man’s job and failing. Failing at every turn, and getting snubbed and turned down. Look how they had put her out of that other operation! Of course a man would have known better than to go into the wrong building. A man would have informed himself beforehand. A man would have known by instinct without even asking anyone where the right place was.

And then look how that Duskin creature had treated her! As if she was the scum of the earth! How unspeakably rude he was! And he thought he could get away with it just because he had fine eyes! Well, he would find he couldn’t with her! She might have been upset by his first onslaught but she wouldn’t be again. She would be ready for him. She would think out a campaign fully. Which she should have done, of course, before she arrived here. But how could she when she didn’t know what she was up against? But now she would be prepared. She would have no mercy on him. He was quite impossible! She had meant to give him one more chance if he seemed at all amenable, but it was plain that there was absolutely no hope for him. He was the kind of man who would do nothing but his own way, and well she knew what Mr. Fawcett thought of that! She had been sent here to put a stop to that. But she would get ready. There was a way to deal with everyone, and she would deal most summarily with him.

“Be not wise in thine own eyes,” chanted that verse again. She wished she had never seen it.