Traffic In Souls Part 31

"Well, well, my dear," stammered Trubus. "Don't be too harsh."

"I am not harsh, but I have too much respect for you and the high ideals for which I know you battle every hour of the day to endure such a thing. Suppose the Bishop had come in instead of myself? Would he consider such actions creditable to the great purpose for which the church takes up collections twice each year throughout his diocese?"

Trubus tilted back and forth on his toes and tapped the ends of his plump fingers together. He was sparring for time. The girl looked at him saucily, and the offending visitor shrugged his shoulders as he quietly started for the door.

"Tut, tut, my dear! I shall reprimand the girl."

"You shall discharge her at once!" insisted Mrs. Trubus, her eyes flashing. "She will disgrace the office and the great cause."

Trubus was in a quandary. He looked about him. Miss Emerson, with a confident smile, walked toward the general office on the left.

"I should worry about this job. I'm sick of this charity stuff anyway.

I'm going to get a cinch job with a swell broker I know. He runs a lot of bunco games, too--but he admits. Don't let the old lady worry about me, Mr. Trubus, but don't forget that I've got two weeks' salary coming to me. And you just raised my weekly insult to twenty-five dollars last Sat.u.r.day, you know, Mr. Trubus."

With this Parthian shot, she slammed the door of the general stenographers' room, and left Mr. Trubus to face his irate wife.

"You pay that girl twenty-five dollars for attending to a telephone, William? Why, that's more money than you earned when we had been married ten years. Twenty-five dollars a week for a telephone girl!"

"There, my dear, it is quite natural. She is especially tactful and worth it," said Trubus, in embarra.s.sment. "You are not exactly tactful yourself, my dear, to nag me in front of an employee. As the Scriptures say, a gentle wife...."

Mrs. Trubus gave the philanthropist one deep look which seemed to cause aphasia on the remainder of the Scriptural quotation.

For the first time Trubus noticed Mary Barton, standing in embarra.s.sed silence by the door, wishing that she could escape from the scene.

"Who is this young person, my dear?"

"This is a young girl who is in deep trouble, and without a position through no fault of her own. I brought her down to your office to have you help her, William."

"But, alas, our finances are so low that we have no room for any additional office force," began Trubus.

"There, that will do. If you pay twenty-five dollars a week to the telephone operator no wonder the finances are low. You have just discharged her, and I insist on your giving this young lady an opportunity."

Trubus reddened, and tried to object.

But his good wife overruled him.

"Have you ever used a switchboard, miss?" he began.

"Yes, sir. In my last position I began on the switchboard, and worked that way for nearly two months. I am sure I can do it."

Trubus did not seem so optimistic. But, at his wife's silent argument--looks more eloquent than a half hour of oratory, he nodded grudgingly.

"Well, you can start in. Just hang your hat over on the wall hook.

Come into my office, my dear wife."

They entered, and Mary sat down, still in a daze. She had been so suddenly discharged and then employed again that it seemed a dream.

Even the terrible hours of the night seemed some hideous nightmare rather than reality.

Miss Emerson came from the side room, attired in a street garb which would have brought envy to many a chorus girl.

"Oh, my dear, and so you are to follow my job. Well, I wish you joy, sweetie. Tell Papa Trubus that I'll be back after lunch time for my check. And keep your lamps rolling on the old gink and he'll raise your salary once a month. He's not such a dead one if he is strong on this charity game. Life with Trubus is just one telephone girl after another ... ta, ta, dearie. I'm off stage."

And she departed, leaving simple Mary decidedly mystified by her diatribe.

A few minutes brought another diversion. This time it was Sylvia Trubus and Ralph Gresham, her fiance, come for a call.

"Is my father in?" she asked, absorbed in the well groomed, selfish young man. Mary rang the private bell and announced Miss Trubus. Her father hurried to the door, and when he saw his prospective son-in-law his face wreathed in smiles.

"Ah, Mr. Gresham, Ralph, I might say, I am delighted! Come right in!"

Mary was startled as she heard the name of the young girl's sweetheart.

"I'm afraid that she will not be as happy as she thinks, if daddy has told me right about Ralph Gresham. But, oh, if I could hear something from Bobbie about Lorna. I believe I will call him up."

She was just summoning the courage for a private call when the private office door opened, and Gresham, Sylvia, her mother and Trubus emerged.

"I will return in ten minutes, Miss," said Trubus. "If there are any calls just take a record of them. Allow no one to go into my private office."

"Yes, sir."

Mary waited patiently for a few moments, when suddenly a telephone bell began to jangle inside the private office.

"That's curious," she murmured, looking at her own key-board. "There's no connection." Again she heard it, insistent, yet m.u.f.fled.

She walked to the door and opened it. As she did so the wind blew in from the open cas.e.m.e.nt, making a strong draught. Half a dozen papers blew from Trubus' desk to the floor. Frightened lest her inquisitiveness should cause trouble, Mary hurriedly stooped and picked up the papers, carrying them back to the desk. As she leaned over it she noticed a curious little metal box, gla.s.s-covered. Under this gla.s.s an automatic pencil was writing by electrical connection.

"What on earth can that be?" she wondered. The bell tinkled, in its m.u.f.fled way, once more.

The moving pencil went on. She watched it, fascinated, even at the risk of being caught, hardly realizing that she was doing what might be termed a dishonorable act.

"Paid Sawyer $250. Girl safe, but still unconscious."

Mary's heart beat suddenly. The thought of her own sister was so burdensome upon her own mind that the mention by this mysterious communication of a girl, "safe but still unconscious," strung her nerves as though with an electric shock. She leaned over the little recording instrument, which was built on a hinged shelf that could be cunningly swung into the desk body, and covered with a false front. As she did so she saw a curious little instrument, shaped somewhat like the receiver of a telephone receiver. Mary's experience with her father's work told her what that instrument was.

"A dictagraph!" she exclaimed.

Instinctively she picked it up, and heard a conversation which was so startling in its import to herself that her heart seemed to congeal for an instant.

"I tell you, Jack, the girl is still absolutely out of it. We can risk shipping her anywhere the way she is now. I chloroformed her in the auto as soon as we got away from the candy store. But that Burke nearly had us, for I saw him coming."

"You will have to dispose of her to-day, Shepard. Give her some strong coffee--a good stiff needleful of cocaine will bring her around. Do something, that's all, or you don't get a red cent of the remaining three hundred. Now, I'm a busy man. You'll have to talk louder, too, my hearing isn't what it used to be."

"Say, Clemm, quit this kidding about your ears. I've tried you out and you can hear better than I can. There's some game you're working on me and if there is, I'll...."

"Can the tragedy, Shepard. Save it for that famous whipping stunt of yours. Beat this girl up a bit, and tell me where she is."

"I'll do that in an hour, and not a minute sooner, and I've got to have the other three hundred."

Mary dropped the receiver. She wanted to know where that conversation could come from. Down the side of the desk she traced a delicate wire.