The Flying Mercury Part 9

He glanced over his shoulder; as he pulled shut the door Emily fancied she heard an echo, as if the two young men left the next room.

Bitterly disappointed, she sank back.

"That was your manager with you?" Mr. Ffrench frigidly inquired.

"Yes; he went up-stairs to see how the new drill is acting." Bailey pulled out a handkerchief and rubbed his brow. "Excuse me, it's warm.

Yes, he wants me to strengthen a knuckle--he's spoken considerable about it. I guess he's right; better too much than too little."

"I do not see that follows. I should imagine that you understood building cha.s.sis better than this racing driver. You had best consult outside experts in construction before making a change."

"Uncle!" Emily cried.

"There's a twenty-four hour race starts to-morrow night," Bailey suggested uneasily. "It's easy fixed, and we might be wrong."

"We have always made them this way?"

"Yes, but--"

"Consult experts, then. I do not like your manager's tone; he is too a.s.suming. Now let me see those papers."

Emily's parasol slipped to the floor with a sharp crash as she stood up, quite pale and shaken.

"Uncle, Mr. Lestrange knows," she appealed. "You heard him say what would happen--please, please let it be fixed."

Amazed, Mr. Ffrench looked at her, his face setting.

"You forget your dignity," he retorted in displeasure. "This is mere childishness, Emily. Men will be consulted more competent to decide than this Lestrange. That will do."

From one to the other she gazed, then turned away.

"I will wait out in the cart," she said. "I--I would rather be outdoors."

d.i.c.k Ffrench was up-stairs, standing with Lestrange in one of the narrow aisles between lines of grimly efficient machines that bit or cut their way through the steel and aluminum fed to them, when Rupert came to him with a folded visiting card.

"Miss Ffrench sent it," was the explanation. "She's sitting out in her horse-motor car, and she called me off the track to ask me to demean myself by acting like a messenger boy. All right?"

"All right," said d.i.c.k, running an astonished eye over the card.

"No answer?"

"No answer."

"Then I'll hurry back to my embroidery. I'm several laps behind in my work already."

"See here, Lestrange," d.i.c.k began, as the mechanician departed, sitting down on a railing beside a machine steadily engaged in notching steel disks into gear-wheels.

"Don't do that!" Lestrange exclaimed sharply. "Get up, Ffrench."

"It's safe enough."

"It's nothing of the kind. The least slip--"

"Oh, well," he reluctantly rose, "if you're going to get fussy. Read what Emily sent up."

Lestrange accepted the card with a faint flicker of expression.

"d.i.c.k, uncle is making the steering-knuckle wait for expert opinion,"

the legend ran, in pencil. "Have Mr. Bailey strengthen Mr. Lestrange's car, anyhow. Do not let him race so."

Near them two men were engaged in babbitting bearings, pa.s.sing ladlefuls of molten metal carelessly back and forth, and splashing hissing drops over the floor; at them Lestrange gazed in silence, after reading, the card still in his hand.

"Well?" d.i.c.k at last queried.

"Have Mr. Bailey do nothing at all," was the deliberate reply. "There is an etiquette of subordination, I believe--this is Mr. Ffrench's factory. I've done my part and we'll think no more of the matter. I may be wrong. But I am more than grateful to Miss Ffrench."

"That's all you're going to do?"

"Yes. I wish you would not sit there."

"I'm tired; I won't fall in, and I want to think. We've been a lot together this spring, Lestrange; I don't like this business about the steering-gear. Do you go down to the Beach to-morrow?"

"To-night. To-morrow I must put in practising on the track. I would have been down to-day if there had not been so much to do here. Are you coming with me, or not until the evening of the start?"

d.i.c.k stirred uncomfortably.

"I don't want to come at all, thank you. I saw you race once."

"You had better get used to it," Lestrange quietly advised. "The day may come when there is no one to take your place. This factory will be yours and you will have to look after your own interests. I wish you would come down and represent the company at this race."

"I haven't the head for it."

"I do not agree with you."

Their eyes met in a long regard. Here, in the crowded room of workers, the ceaseless uproar shut in their conversation with a walled completeness of privacy.

"I'm not sure whether you know it, Lestrange, but you've got me all stirred up since I met you," the younger man confessed plaintively.

"You're different from other fellows and you've made me different. I'd rather be around the factory than anywhere else I know, now. But honestly I like you too well to watch you race."

"I want you to come."

"I--"

One of the men with a vessel of white, heaving molten metal was trying to pa.s.s through the narrow aisle. d.i.c.k broke his sentence to rise in hasty avoidance, and his foot slipped in a puddle of oil on the floor.

It was so brief in happening that only the workman concerned saw the accident. As d.i.c.k fell backward, Lestrange sprang forward and caught him, fairly s.n.a.t.c.hing him from the greedy teeth. There was the rending of fabric, a gasping sob from d.i.c.k, and reeling from the recoil, Lestrange was sent staggering against a flying emery wheel next in line.

The workman set down his burden with a recklessness endangering further trouble, active too late.

"Mr. Lestrange!" he cried.