When Graham entered the office Shirley came to meet him quietly, without a word of greeting other than to put her little cold hand into his that he held out to her. She began to speak in a low voice full of suppressed excitement. She had a vague fear lest the two men might be still lingering about the outer office, waiting for Mr. Barnard, and a momentary dread lest Mr. Barnard might enter the room at any minute. She must get the telling over before he came.
"Mr. Graham, two men were sitting in this room waiting for Mr. Barnard a few minutes ago, and I was in my little room just back there. I could not help hearing what they said, and when I caught the name of Graham in connection with what sounded like an evil plot I took down their words in shorthand. It may not have anything to do with your firm, but I thought I ought to let you know. I called you on the phone as soon as they left the office and would not hear me, and I have made this copy of their conversation. Read it quickly, please, because if it does have anything to do with you, you will want to phone your father at once, before those men can get there."
Her tone was very cool, and her hand was steady as she handed him the typewritten paper, but her heart was beating mildly, because there had been a look in his eyes as he greeted her that made her feel that he was glad to see her, and it touched an answering gladness in her heart and filled her both with delight and with apprehension. What a fool she was!
She turned sharply away and busied herself with arranging some papers on Mr. Barnard's desk while he read. She must still this excitement and get control of herself before he was through. She must be the cool, impersonal stenographer, and not let him suspect for a moment that she was so excited about seeing him again.
The young man stood still, reading rapidly, his face growing graver as he read. The girl snatched a furtive glance at him, and felt convinced that the matter was a serious one and had to do with him.
Suddenly he looked up.
"Do you know who those men were, Miss Shirley?" he asked, and she saw his eyes were full of anxiety.
"No," said Shirley. "But I saw them as they passed through the outer office, and stopped to speak to Mr. Clegg. I was taking dictation from Mr. Clegg at the time. I came back to my desk through the cloak-room, so they did not know I was within hearing."
"What kind of looking men were they? Do you remember?"
She described them.
Certainty grew in his face as she talked, and grave concern.
"May I use your phone a minute?" he asked after an instant's thought.
She led him to her own desk and handed him the receiver, then stepped back into the office and waited.
"Hello! Is that you, Edward?" she heard him say. "Has father come yet? Give me his phone, please. Hello, father; this is Sidney. Father, has Kremnitz come in yet? He has? You say he's waiting in the office to see you? Well, don't see him, father, till I get there. Something has turned up that I'm afraid is going to alter matters entirely. Yes, pretty serious, I'm afraid. Don't see him. Keep him waiting. I'll be there in five minutes, and come in from the back way directly to your office. Don't talk with him on any account till I can get there. Good-by."
He hung up the receiver and turned to Shirley.
"Miss Shirley, you were just in time to save us. I haven't time now to tell you how grateful I am for this. I must hurry right over. Do you suppose if we should need you it would be possible for you to come over and identify those men? Thank you. I'll speak to Mr. Clegg about it as I go out, and if we find it necessary we'll phone you. In case you have to come I'll have an office-boy in the hall to take your hat, and you can come right into the office as if you were one of our employees—just walk over to the bookcase as if you were looking for a book—any book. Select one and look through it, meanwhile glancing around the room, and see if you find those men. Then walk through into my office. I'll be waiting there. Good-by, and thank you so much!"
He gave her hand one quick clasp and was gone, and Shirley found she was trembling from head to foot. She walked quickly into her own room and sat down, burying her face in her hands and trying to get control of herself, but the tears would come to her eyes in spite of all she could do. It was not the excitement of getting the men and stopping their evil plans before they could do any damage, although that had something to do with her nervous state, of course; and it was not just that she had been able to do a little thing in return for all he had done for her; nor even his gratitude; it was—she could not deny it to herself—it was a certain quality in his voice, a something in the look he gave her, that made her whole soul glow, and seemed to fill the hungry longing that had been in her heart.
It frightened her and made her ashamed, and as she sat with bowed head she prayed that she might be given strength to act like a sensible girl, and crush out such foolish thoughts before they dared lift their heads and be recognized even by her own heart. Then strengthened, she resolved to think no more about the matter, but just get her work done and be ready to enter into that other business if it became necessary. Mr. Barnard would be coming soon, and she must have his work finished. She had lost almost an hour by this matter.
She went at her typewriter pell-mell, and soon had Mr. Clegg's letters done. She was nearly through with the addressing that Mr. Barnard left for her to do when the telephone called her to Graham's office.
She slipped on her hat and hurried out.
"Will it be all right for me to take my noontime now, Mr. Clegg?" she said, stopping by his desk. "Mr. Graham said he spoke to you."
"Yes, he wants you to help him identify some one. That's all right. I'll explain to Mr. Barnard when he comes. There's nothing important you have to finish, is there? All done but those envelopes? Well, you needn't return until one o'clock, anyway. The envelopes can wait till the four-o'clock mail, and if Mr. Barnard needs anything in a hurry Miss Dwight can attend to it this time. Just take your time, Miss Hollister."
Shirley went out bewildered by the unusual generosity of Mr. Clegg, who was usually taciturn and abrupt. She realized, however, that his warmth must be due to Graham's visit, and not to any special desire to give her a holiday. She smiled to think what a difference wealth and position made in the eyes of the world.
The same office-boy she had met on her first visit to Graham's office was waiting most respectfully for her now in the hall when she got out of the elevator, and she gave him her hat and walked into the office according to programme, going straight to the big glass bookcase full of calf-bound volumes, and selecting one after running her finger over two rows of them. She was as cool as though her part had been rehearsed many times, although her heart was pounding most unmercifully, and it seemed as though the people in the next room must hear it. She stood and opened her book, casting a casual glance about the room.
There, sure enough, quite near to her, sat the two men, fairly bursting with impatience. The once immaculate hair of the loudly dressed one was rumpled as if he had run his fingers through it many times, and he played nervously with his heavy rings, and caressed half viciously his elaborate mustache, working his thick, sensuous lips impatiently all the while. Shirley took a good look at him, necktie, scarf-pin, and all; looked keenly into the face of the gray one also; then coolly closed the door of the bookcase and carried the book she had selected into Sidney Graham's office.
Graham was there, standing to receive her, and just back of him stood a kindly-faced elderly man with merry blue eyes, gray hair, and a stylishly cut beard. By their attitude and manner Shirley somehow sensed that they had both been watching her. Then Graham introduced her.
"This is my father, Miss Hollister."
The elder man took her hand and shook it heartily, speaking in a gruff, hearty way that won her from the first:
"I'm glad to know you, Miss Hollister. I certainly am! My son has been telling me what you've done for us, and I think you're a great little girl! That was bully work you did, and I appreciate it. I was watching you out there in the office. You were as cool as a cucumber. You ought to be a detective. You found your men all right, did you?"
"Yes, sir," said Shirley, much abashed, and feeling the return of that foolish trembling in her limbs. "Yes, they are both out there, and the short one with the rings and the blue necktie is the one that did the talking."
"Exactly what I thought," drawled the father, with a keen twinkle in his kindly eyes. "I couldn't somehow trust that chap from the start. That's why I sent my son out to investigate. Well, now, will you just step into my private office, Miss Hollister, and take your seat by the typewriter as if you were my stenographer? You'll find paper there in the drawer, and you can just be writing—write anything, you choose, so it looks natural when the men come in. When we get to talking I'd like you to take down in shorthand all that is said by all of us. You're pretty good at that, I judge. Sid, will you phone for those officers now? I think it's about time for the curtain to rise." And he led the way into his own office.
Shirley sat down at the typewriter as she had been directed and began to write mechanically. Mr. Graham touched the bell on his desk, and told the office boy who answered to send in Mr. Kremnitz and his companion.
Shirley was so seated that she could get occasional glimpses of the men without being noticed, and she was especially interested in the twinkle that shone in the bright blue eyes of the elder Graham as he surveyed the men who thought he was their dupe. Her heart warmed to him. His kindly, merry face, his hearty, unconventional speech, all showed him to be a big, warm-hearted man without a bit of snobbishness about him.
The son came in, and talk began just as if the matter of the mine were going on. Mr. Kremnitz produced some papers which he evidently expected to be signed at once, and sat complacently answering questions; keen questions Shirley saw they were afterwards, and in the light of the revelation she had overheard in Mr. Barnard's office Kremnitz perjured himself hopelessly by his answers. Presently the office-boy announced the arrival of some one in the next room. Shirley had taken down minutely a great deal of valuable information which the Grahams had together drawn from their victim. She was surprised at the list of wealthy business men who were to have been involved in the scheme.
Then suddenly the quiet scene changed. The elder Graham gave a signal to his office-boy, which looked merely like waving him away, and the door was flung open, revealing four officers of the law, who stepped into the room without further word. Graham arose and faced his two startled callers, his hand firmly planted on the papers on his desk which he had been supposed to sign.
"Mr. Kremnitz," he said, and even in the midst of this serious business Shirley fancied there was a half-comic drawl to his words. He simply could not help letting his sense of humor come on top. "Mr. Kremnitz, it is not going to be possible for me to sign these papers this morning, as you expected. I do not feel satisfied that all things are as you have represented. In fact, I have the best evidence to the contrary. Officer, these are the gentlemen you have come to arrest," and he stepped back and waved his hand toward the two conspirators, who sat with startled eyes and blanched faces, appalled at the sudden developments where they had thought all was moving happily toward their desired end.
"Arrest! Who? On what charge?" flashed the little gaudy Kremnitz, angrily springing to his feet and making a dash toward the door, while his companion slid furtively toward the other end of the room, evidently hoping to gain young Graham's office before he was noticed. But two officers blocked their way and the handcuffs clanked in the hands of the other two policemen.
"Why, arrest you, my friend," said Graham senior, as if he rather enjoyed the little man's discomfiture. "And for trying to perpetrate the biggest swindle that has been attempted for ten years. I must say for you that you've worked hard, and done the trick rather neatly, but you made one unfortunate slip that saved all us poor rich men. It seems a pity that so much elaborate lying should have brought you two nothing but those bracelets you're wearing,—they don't seem to match well with your other jewels,—but that's the way things go in this world. Now, take them away, officer. I've no more time to waste on them this morning!" and he turned and walked over by Shirley's desk, while the curtain fell over the brief drama.
"Do you know how much money you've saved for us, little girl,—just plain saved? I'll tell you. A clean hundred thousand! That's what I was going to put into this affair! And as for other men, I expected to influence a lot of other men to put in a good deal also. Now, little girl, I don't know what you think about it, but I want to shake hands." He put out his hand and Shirley laid her own timid one in it, smiling and blushing rosily, and saying softly with what excited breath she had, "Oh, I'm so glad I got you in time!" Then she was aware that the man had gone on talking. "I don't know what you think about it," he repeated, "but I feel that you saved me a clean hundred thousand dollars, and I say that a good percentage of that belongs to you as a reward of your quickness and keenness."
But Shirley drew away her hand and stepped back, her face white, her head up, her chin tilted proudly, her eyes very dark with excitement and determination. She spoke clearly and earnestly.
"No, Mr. Graham, nothing whatever belongs to me. I don't want any reward. I couldn't think of taking it. It is utterly out of the question!"
"Well, well, well!" said the elder Graham, sitting down on the edge of his desk, watching her in undisguised admiration. "Now that's a new kind of girl that won't take what she's earned,—what rightly belongs to her."
"Mr. Graham, it was a very little thing I did,—anybody would have done it,—and it was just in the way of simple duty. Please don't say anything more about it. I am only too glad to have had opportunity to give a little help to people who have helped me so much. I feel that I am under deep obligation to your son for making it possible for us to live in the country, where my mother is getting well."
"Well, now I shall have to inquire into this business. I haven't heard anything about obligations, and for my part I feel a big one just now. Perhaps you think it was a very little thing you did, but suppose you hadn't done it. Suppose you'd been too busy, or it hadn't occurred to you to take down that conversation until it was too late; or suppose you hadn't had the brains to see what it would mean to us. Why, then it would have become a very big thing indeed, and we should have been willing, if we had known, to pay a mighty big sum to get that evidence. You see a hundred thousand dollars isn't exactly a very little thing when you're swindled out of it. It's the swindling that hurts more than the loss of the money. And you saved us from that. Now, young lady, I consider myself under obligation to you, and I intend to discharge it somehow. If I can't do it one way I shall another, but in the meantime I'm deeply grateful, and please accept our thanks. If you are willing to add one more to your kindness, I shall be glad if you will make a carbon copy of those shorthand notes you took. I may need them for evidence. And, by the way, you will probably be called upon to testify in court. I'm sorry. That may be unpleasant, but I guess it can't be helped, so you see before you get through you may not think you did so very small a thing after all. Sid, I think you better escort this young lady back to her office and explain to Barnard. He's probably been on the verge of being buncoed also. You said Kremnitz was waiting for him when the conversation took place? I guess you better go with Miss Hollister and clear the whole thing up. Say, child, have you had your lunch yet? No, of course not. Sidney, you take her to get some lunch before she goes back to the office. She's had an exciting morning. Now, good-by, little girl. I sha'n't forget what you've done for us, and I'm coming to see you pretty soon and get things squared up."
So that was how it came about that in spite of her protests Mr. Sidney Graham escorted Shirley Hollister into one of the most exclusive tea-rooms of the city, and seated her at a little round table set for two, while off at a short distance Miss Harriet Hale sat with her mother, eating her lunch and trying in vain to "place" the pretty girl she did not recognize.
It never occurred to her for a moment that Sidney Graham's companion might be a stenographer, for Shirley had a knack about her clothes that made her always seem well dressed. That hat she wore had seen service for three summers, and was now a wholly different shape and color from what it had been when it began life. A scrub in hot water had removed the dust of toil, some judiciously applied dye had settled the matter of color, and a trifling manipulation on her head while the hat was still wet had made the shape not only exceedingly stylish but becoming. The chic little rosette and strictly tailored band which were its sole trimming were made from a much-soiled waist-ribbon, washed and stretched around a bottle of hot water to dry it, and teased into the latest thing in rosettes by Shirley's witching fingers. The simple linen dress she wore fitted well and at a distance could not have been told from something better, and neither were gloves and shoes near enough to be inspected critically, so Miss Hale was puzzled, and jealously watched the pretty color come and go in Shirley's cheek, and the simple grace of her movements.
Fortunately, Shirley did not see Miss Hale, and would not have recognized her if she had from that one brief glimpse she had of her picture on the society page of the newspaper. So she ate her delectable lunch, ordered by Graham, in terms that she knew not, about dishes that she had never seen before. She ate and enjoyed herself so intensely that it seemed to her she would never be able to make the rest of her life measure up to the privileges of the hour.
For Shirley was a normal girl. She could not help being pleased to be doing just for once exactly as other more favored girls did constantly. To be lunching at Blanco's with one of the most-sought-after men in the upper set, to be treated like a queen, and to be talking beautiful things about travels and pictures and books, it was all too beautiful to be real. Shirley began to feel that if it didn't get over pretty soon and find her back in the office addressing the rest of those envelopes she would think she had died in the midst of a dream and gone to heaven.
There was something else too that brought an undertone of beauty, which she was not acknowledging even to her inmost self. That was the way Graham looked at her, as if she were some fine beautiful angel dropped down from above that he loved to look at; as if he really cared what she thought and did; as if there were somehow a soul-harmony between them that set them apart this day from others, and put them into tune with one another; as if he were glad, glad to see her once more after the absence! All through her being it thrilled like a song that brings tears to the throat and gladness to the eyes, and makes one feel strong and pure. That was how it seemed when she thought about it afterward. At the time she was just living it in wonder and thanksgiving.
At another time her sordid worldliness and pride might have risen and swelled with haughtiness of spirit over the number of people who eyed her enviously as they went out together; over the many bows and salutations her escort received from people of evident consequence, for she had the normal human pride somewhere in her nature as we all have. But just then her heart was too humble with a new, strange happiness to feel it or take it in, and she walked with unconscious grace beside him, feeling only the joy of being there.
Later, in the quiet of her chamber, her mother's warning came to her, and her cheeks burned with shame in the dark that her heart had dared make so much of a common little luncheon, just a mere courtesy after she had been able to do a favor. Yet through it all Shirley knew there was something fine and true there that belonged just to her, and presently she would rise above everything and grasp it and keep it hers forever.
She felt the distinction of her escort anew when she entered Barnard and Clegg's in his company, and saw Mr. Clegg spring to open the door and to set a chair for his young guest, saw even Mr. Barnard rise and greet him with almost reverence. And this honor she knew was being paid to money, the great demagogue. It was not the man that she admired to whom they were paying deference, it was to his money! She smiled to herself. It was the man she admired, not his money.
All that afternoon she worked with flying fingers, turning off the work at marvellous speed, amused when she heard the new note of respect in Mr. Barnard's voice as he gave her a direction. Mr. Barnard had been greatly impressed with the story Graham had told him, and was also deeply grateful on his own account that Shirley had acted as she had, for he had been on the verge of investing a large trust fund that was in his keeping in the new mining operation, and it would have meant absolute failure for him.
When Shirley left the office that night she was almost too tired to see which trolley was coming, but some one touched her on the arm, and there was Sidney Graham waiting for her beside his car,—a little two-passenger affair that she had never seen before and that went like the wind. They took a road they had not travelled together before, and Shirley got in joyously, her heart all in a tumult of doubts and joys and questions.