CHERRY FELT PLEASANT AND AT EASE WITH THE WORLD when she went to her locker to get her handbag and powder her nose, after telling Lloyd Barclay to meet her in the visitors’ lounge.
She had reason to be happy. Her patient was mending. And didn’t she have a date with a man most of the girls would have given their eye teeth to go out with in spite of their feeling that he was “snobbish.”
Lloyd saw her in the doorway of the lounge, got up quickly, and came forward. He observed Cherry admiringly, then said shyly, “I’m surely a lucky fellow to be taking out such a pretty girl.”
“Thank you, Sir,” she told him demurely.
They went outside. “I’m depending on you to lead us to the best soda in town,” he warned as they started down the walk.
“If you’re like my twin brother Charlie, it’s the place where they give you the two biggest scoops of ice cream,” she informed him.
“Any brother of yours is bound to have the right idea,” he assured her.
He wanted to know about Charlie, so Cherry launched into an enthusiastic account of her brother’s work. At the corner, she stopped to drop Sir Ian’s letter in the mailbox and went on talking. “Charlie was always, even as a kid, interested in aeronautics,” she told Lloyd. She giggled suddenly. “You should have seen that room of his! It was piled to the ceiling with models of planes.”
Walking down the street, from almost everyone they passed, it was “Hi, Cherry!” or “Hello, Miss Ames!” and an interested glance at the handsome stranger at Cherry’s side.
“People in this town all seem to know you,” remarked Lloyd.
“I’ve lived here all my life and my parents before me, so I suppose the Ames family could be called old-timers. That accounts for it,” explained Cherry.
“That’s the way with us on the island,” he said. “Everyone knows the Barclays. Most of us on the island are what you call old-timers. Our families came there in 1750 and a good many have clung to the rocky place like lichens ever since. In fact, until my uncle’s generation, none of the Barclays left the island except to go to school in Scotland or for travel in Europe to round out their education. But I rather spoiled the tradition by going to the Colorado School of Mines and working in the States.”
Hilton’s favorite ice-cream parlor was charming and old-fashioned. Cherry and Lloyd sat talking over their strawberry ice-cream (two huge scoops) sodas. It was Lloyd really who did the most talking and Cherry listened. He seemed to feel the need to talk to someone.
As he said, “In the past week my uncle and I have become better acquainted with you than people we’ve known for years. We’ve come to think of you as not only a nurse, but as a friend, too. It may seem strange to you, but Uncle Ian and I are shy. It’s often hard for us to make friends. He covers up his shyness by being stiff and arrogant, while I give the impression of being sort of a cold fish. At least, that is what the fellows told me at the Colorado School of Mines until they really got to know me.” He paused, then continued, “But with you, Cherry—I hope you don’t mind my calling you Cherry, and you call me Lloyd—with you it’s different, somehow.”
For a time, he went on talking of the island, the various families, his student days at the mining school. Suddenly, Cherry, who busied herself with her soda, caught a more serious tone in his voice. She sensed that he was leading up to a confidence of some sort.
“Cherry,” he began at last, “I suppose you’re wondering about Mr. Broderick, Jerry Ives, the plane, and all the rest.”
“It isn’t any of my business, Lloyd,” Cherry pointed out gently and smiled. “But, frankly, now that you yourself brought it up, I am curious.”
“I was hoping you would be,” he returned with a grin. “Especially since I hope that we can be good friends.”
“Carry on then, Friend Lloyd,” Cherry encouraged him, keeping her tone light so that he would not feel shy or embarrassed.
“Let’s begin, then, with Mr. James Broderick,” said Lloyd. “He is a man of wide interests in shipping, construction, plastics, mines, mining machinery, and equipment. Now, Uncle Ian had to have all new machinery and equipment to start work on and then operate the new mine, the Number 10 you’ve heard us speak of.
“Uncle Ian went to James Broderick and arranged to purchase what he needed for the mine through companies that Broderick controlled. Uncle Ian had to borrow a very great deal of money to do this.”
Cherry shook her head. “Oh, dear, to owe money worries everyone. Of course Sir Ian is worried.”
“Don’t look so sad,” Lloyd told her. “To borrow money in business and industry, Cherry, is an everyday matter. It isn’t the borrowing of itself that makes a business safe or unsafe. It’s how much can be borrowed with safety by a particular company.
“Balfour Mines is a family-owned company. Uncle Ian, my cousin Meg, Aunt Phyllis and Uncle George in England, and I—we own the mines. There are few such companies that have survived. And for a very good reason. It takes too much money to run them and compete with enormous industrial and business concerns—the giants. You know yourself, Cherry, that the small grocery store finds it hard to compete with chain stores and supermarkets.
“It’s the same with the Barclay-owned iron mines. We are little compared with the modern giants. When Uncle got the money for the new Number 10 mine, he had to borrow more than was safe for our family-owned mines. He stretched his credit too far. He has been able so far to make payments on the loans. But he hasn’t been able to meet the full payments regularly. And Broderick would leap at the chance to gobble up Balfour Mines. I gathered all this from the few bits of information that Uncle Ian let drop when we were visiting the mines.”
Cherry frowned, trying to understand how it all fitted together.
“You seem puzzled,” Lloyd said.
“I am,” Cherry replied. “I don’t understand Mr. James Broderick. He’s a hardheaded businessman, ready to gobble up the Barclay mines one moment, and the next, he’s sending you and your uncle on a mining tour in his private plane with his personal pilot, Jerry Ives.”
Lloyd burst into a hearty laugh. Cherry’s face must have changed its expression to a wounded one, for he apologized, “Cherry lass, don’t look so hurt. It’s just that James Broderick is so easy to understand. He’s simply interested in taking over companies that are not going as well as they should and making them operate efficiently and profitably. In the process, Mr. Broderick becomes tremendously wealthy and powerful. He advanced money for machinery and equipment for Balfour Mines, so he’s interested in seeing that the mines are operating at top level if he ever has to take them over. If observing modern efficiency methods in other mines would help Uncle and me to do this, Mr. Broderick was going to see that we got to visit the most modern mines.”
“Well, then,” argued Cherry, “isn’t Mr. Broderick taking a big chance? If you operate the mines very profitably, the loans will be paid off and Mr. Broderick can’t gobble up the mines.”
“But that’s a chance he’s willing to take,” Lloyd said. “You see, either way he doesn’t really lose. As for the Barclays, they have just about everything to lose if the loans can’t be paid off.”
“No wonder Sir Ian is so worried about the mines,” Cherry mused aloud. “No wonder he was so upset over the trouble in that Number 2 mine you are reopening.” She thought of the letter Sir Ian had written Jock Cameron. Now she could understand why Sir Ian felt it urgent to return as soon as possible. He had to be there to see that there was no trouble in the mines. His being there would probably make no difference one way or another, but he felt he should be there. Trouble meant loss of money. He dare not let the mines lose money.
Lloyd turned his attention to his soda and took a last noisy suck. He gave Cherry a smile, as bright as the sun breaking through clouds. “Away dull care!” he cried softly in a bantering voice. “Ah, Cherry lass, ’tis a good thing there’s na more to drink or there’s na tellin’ but I waud ha’ tawked your ears off your bonnie head.” He leaned back and considered her with mock seriousness. “Mind ye, I’m not one to throw my money away on a mere snippet of a gurl, but waud ye have another strawberry soda?” he asked.
Cherry thanked him, laughing at his imitation of a canny Scotsman, but told him she had promised to be home by five o’clock.
“I really must fly,” she said, glancing at the time. “The Women’s Camp Committee is meeting at our house tonight on final plans on day camps for children this summer. I’m supposed to help Mother.”
Lloyd paid the check, then insisted upon taking her home in a taxi. “Will you have dinner with me one evening?” he asked as he left her at her door.
“Perhaps you’ll come for dinner and meet my family,” she countered.
“I would he delighted,” he said. He ran down the steps and drove off in the cab.
“Who was that nice-looking young man who brought you home?” her father asked. He was sitting near the window in the living room, reading the evening paper.
“Yes, I think he’s rather nice,” agreed Cherry, stopping to preen herself before the hall mirror. She stuck her dainty nose in the air and announced in stilted accents, “He’s only the nephew of the famous Sir Ian Barclay.”
Mrs. Ames came in from the kitchen just then. Her sweet face was puzzled for a moment, then she smiled, her eyes twinkling in amusement. “Miss Ames, I don’t like to interrupt an actress who is throwing herself into her part—and I do mean throwing—but …”
“I’ll be right with you,” Cherry sang out. She tossed a kiss to her mother and dashed upstairs to her room.
When dinner was eaten and the dishes washed, Cherry and her father escaped to the back porch and sat on the steps, leaving Mrs. Ames and the ladies to carry on their committee work inside the house. To escape the hectic preparations for the meeting, Charlie had decided to dine out that night.
“I’m to stand by in case they have any questions on health, physical examinations, and the like,” Cherry told her father. Because of her experience as a camp nurse, she served as a sort of volunteer consultant to her mother’s committee. Cherry gave one of her delightful little giggles. “Otherwise,” she said, “the ladies prefer to do their own planning with no interference from fresh young things like me. I think, this year, they are going to hold the free day camp in the woods near the lake and take the children there and back each day by bus. Right now, they are in a swivet over how to raise some more money.”
Mr. Ames groaned. “I smell a White Elephant Sale or a Spring Auction coming up. And your mother is going to make me give up one of my treasured possessions.”
Cherry sniffed. “Something like that hideous desk lamp you bought because you felt sorry for the man? Or the stuffed owl that molted? You bought that, I believe, because you wanted to help the Boys’ Taxidermy Club get started. If it weren’t for the ladies’ sales and auctions,” she scolded fondly, “this house would soon look like a whatnot museum.”
“Women!” snorted her father. “No appreciation of the finer things in life.”
Silence fell on the two. They looked out on the lawn where trees cast mottled shadows in the moonlight. From Mrs. Ames’s garden the odor of spring flowers was wafted to them by a little breeze that came up suddenly and as suddenly died away. There was a feeling in the air of contentment.
“Why don’t you ask that young fellow to dinner sometime?” asked Mr. Ames apropos of nothing at all.
Cherry knew “that young fellow” meant Lloyd. “I already have,” she said. “I know you and mother will like him.” She talked about Lloyd and his uncle then for a while.
Her father listened, asking a question now and then.
“You know, Cherry,” he said finally, “I think this whole ulcer trouble is probably due to worry over money. Sir Ian is sick with worry. That’s an old-fashioned expression, but it is very apt at times.”
“Yes, money worry is probably the clue to the whole thing,” Cherry agreed musingly.
Without their being aware of it, the house had become silent and snatches of conversation no longer drifted out to them.
They heard a movement behind them and Mrs. Ames walked out on the porch. “Meeting’s over and they have all gone home,” she announced, then without a break continued, “Cherry Ames, I distinctly heard you use the word ‘clue.’ Now, you’re not going to start playing Miss Sherlock Holmes again, are you? You’ll end up in a book just the way he did,” warned her mother, laughing.
“The Barclays are very interesting people,” remarked Mr. Ames in a hurt tone. “And we were talking about them. I don’t know how the word ‘clue’ came into the discussion, do you, Cherry?”
“I suppose it sneaked in when nobody was looking,” replied Cherry, joining her father in teasing her mother.
“Oh, you two!” exclaimed Mrs. Ames. “Incidentally, while you were doing so much talking about the Barclays, did you decide to ask the young man to dinner?”
“We did,” Cherry and her father declared in unison.
Cherry and her mother and father set a date that seemed best for everyone—Friday of the following week. The next day, Cherry was giving Sir Ian his noontime milk and cream when Lloyd came to visit his uncle, and she invited Lloyd to dinner. He accepted enthusiastically.
“The nerve of the chit!” exclaimed Sir Ian. “Asks you to a good dinner at the same time she’s conniving with the doctor to keep me on Dr. Sippy’s slops for three weeks.”
Sir Ian might growl, but all the same, Cherry could see that he was enormously pleased.
“And what do I have to do to receive an invitation?” he demanded.
“Get well, sir,” she told him cheerfully.
That was Saturday. It had been arranged for Cherry to have a day off on Sunday. It would be Monday morning at eight before she would be on duty again. By then, Sir Ian had already seen the disturbing news item in the paper, which changed everything.