TAKE IT—OR LEAVE IT!’
—Boyd Arganbright, structural inspection chemist—first night-shift—for the Irontown Steel Company, leaned back against his safety-belt, atop the tall pole where he hung, and waited for the near-midnight “pour” that, within a few seconds now, would be taking place far below him in Open-Hearth Mill No. 3. For once that molten white-hot metal was in full flow into the ingot crucibles, the dusty road outside of Mill No. 3 would, he knew, be almost as light as day; and, even far up the pole where he now was, it would be light enough to read the finest print.
To read again—and for the 20th time that night—the cruel and mercenary letter he had received from—
Now it was coming.
The pour!
Great jets of white-hot metal.
One—two—three—four—five—
The light literally seemed to run up the very pole.
Bathing Boyd Arganbright in it as though he were in a weird spotlight.
And so, from his breast pocket, he withdrew that typewritten communication that had reached him only that afternoon before going on duty. And, holding it just above the level of his eyes, and tilted slightly so that the light from below would illumine it, he re-read it bitterly. It ran:
Dear Boyd:
You can take it or leave it kiddo. My price for a divorse is twenty-five thousand smackers. (And of corse I aint talking about kisses.) Hard cash, see? And paid in hand to my atturney wholl immiditly furnish you with enough “ev” for a duzzen divorses.
Jist because, Boyd, you married me in a stage purformance dont make us no less man and wife. In voo of the fact that that stage parson was all the time the McCoy and speshully in voo of the little marrig lisense you was so kind as to take out for us to help me out on that other matter. But no need for me to rehurse all that, for you yorself looked into all the law on that and long ago.
If youre wise kiddo youll dig up the coin from HER. Oh yes I know all abowt your being madly in love with Alyda Westover, daughter of Milroy Westover, president and high-squeeze of Irontown Steel. You shure aim high kiddo. But the point nevthless is kiddo that youd better dig up the coin from your Alyda. Since if-and-when you hitch with her youll be sure to be made Cheef Chemmist for Milroy aint going to let his only gal starve on a strucktural inspeckshun monk’s wages like yours. So the point is—your marrig to the Alyda gal means mazuma. And twenty-five grand will be cheep freadom for to git marrid. And youll git the money all right.
And if you do—or when you do, heh, kiddo?—just see my lawyer “Hooky”—hooky you know for short because of the shape of his nose?? Hes got everthing thats needed, see? Me, I’m off tnight to go round the world with a guy whos nuts about me. But cant marry me account hes got a wife. Im his sectary oh yes I know what you think dear darling hubby but you cant prove nothing, see? And if I come home in a mink coat clear to my heels—dunt esk!
The letter wasn’t signed. And it didn’t have to be—for Boyd Arganbright. Indeed, from certain defects in the type, and the color of the ribbon, he knew exactly where and when it had been written. Right on his own typewriter. In his own room. That day Sadie had waited for him. Oh cunning cunning woman—at least when she was of that type. Oh—
Bitterly, as he gazed from the top of the pole over the entire southward extent of Irontown Steel, which stretched so far that, at least under the canopy of the night, he could not see the furthest mill—the Bloomer No. 2—he indulged in one single reflection:
“Twenty—five—thousand bucks! My God—and I couldn’t raise twenty-five thousand cents.”
He sighed again, disgustedly, and commenced ripping the note to pieces, for as evidence of anything at all it was nil, he knew—absolutely one hundred per cent nil! Unsigned as it was—written on his own machine as it was—containing half a dozen artful misspellings which Sadie had added to her own—it could only mark itself, if ever offered in court as proof of anything at all, as but a desperate production of his own. And even if it didn’t—then what? He was still married to Sadie. By bell, book and candle.
But by the time he had reduced the note savagely to four pieces, he suddenly remembered that he had ascended this particular pole at the particular moment he had, because the electric pocket torch in his back pocket was nearly dead; and he could, here and now, get the advantage of the light from the “pour”; and so, while that light was still coming up, he jammed his quadri-torn note into his side coat pocket, and fell to with what he was there for.
With a single light but tempered steel tool, he scraped at an enormous green pit in the thick copper cable that swung close to his left ear. Carrying, that cable, heaven knows how many amperes of current right at this moment, but as harmless as a plaiting of grass—so long as one didn’t reach out and take hold of its companion, on the opposite arm of the cross-arm! As he scraped, he caught the scrapings in an open glass test tube. Which he then corked, and hung with other corked test tubes on his leather specimen belt. A belt that could carry specimens—yes—but heavy tools none! Though heavy tools were not the elements of Boyd Arganbright’s armamentarium. He glanced down: the “pour” was coming to an end.
And while the light was still available—and still brighter than he could have thrown with the partly dead electric pocket-torch that stuck up from his hip pocket—he brought his eyes close to that pit—rather to many smaller ones about it—pits suggesting they had been made by some weird cuprous smallpox. And studied them intently. Satisfied now, he unhooked one end of his safety belt, planting the palm of his free hand immediately on the opposite side of the pole where already the palm of his other hand pressed. Down he went now, slowly—cumbersomely—for this art he had attained by much training was one that was really mastered only by daily practice. Each time he released a leg, encased in its rigid steel climber, he planted the sharp spur of that climber, which protruded out from back of his heel, firmly—meticulously so!—in the soft wood below. Trying it first carefully—ever so carefully!—to see that it was firmly imbedded. And—only when 101 per cent satisfied!—did he work the other heel loose by a series of circular motions. Never plucking it directly out, for, to do so, would only be to drive the remaining heel in too tight ever to loosen!
Thus—foot by foot—as the pour came to an end—he came down.
Till he stood—wobbly kneed as always he did!—at the base of the pole. No more than 25 feet from the train of flatcars in Open-Hearth Mill No. 3 which carried great crucibles from the open tops of which—now glowing a dull orange—angry, sparkling scintillations flew off.
The 11:15 whistle from the universal-plate mill, far to the south, warned him it was time to knock off—at least if he were to meet Alyda outside the plant at midnight.
So, test tubes swinging at his belt, he started at once for the laboratory, tramping along that wide dusty road which fronted so many of the plant’s larger mills.
But because of the hour, he did not go to the laboratory in the manner that a map of the huge plant would have dictated one’s going! Instead, he proceeded to cut through Plate Mill No. 2—which rolled plates not as did the universal-plate mill: according to standard widths only—but according to thicknesses and widths as demanded by any purchase-order. No door did he have to open to do this; nor door did he have to close behind him. For the simple reason, of course, that steel-making mills had no doors and no windows; they were one and all comprised of but steel pillars holding roof trusses which themselves supported corrugated iron roofs. As open in 20 degrees below zero as in the 101 degrees of summer! Threading his way through seemingly acres of goosenecks—those rigid vertical pipes, rising 2 feet from the floor, and carrying in their open ends pivoted revolving wheels over which, in any direction, the heaviest of steel plates could be propelled by a push, he made his way toward the rear edge of the mill. Nodding friendily to Sid Beemy, the controller-man in the plate-checking shanty, who, by dint of speeding up motors geared to certain rollers which lay amongst the goosenecks, was shunting a huge and still very hot—judging from the visible dancing air waves coming off of it—plate into the cooling yard.
Now Arganbright was rounding the back of the plate-making rolls themselves. A great crew of “bohunks,” with unshaven faces, shirts open at necks, were waiting, “clincher-spanners” in hand, for a plate they had sent through to return—to return exactly one millimeter thinner. Now it came—red hot!—a great luminescent ribbon 6 feet wide—how long?—still coming—still coming!—18 feet long? And as it came roaring through, it spit sparks here and there from its surface; though it could be noticed that here—and there—at many places on that surface—were black patches that looked sullenly resentful of the cheerful glow all about them.
“The oxide,” Arganbright commented to himself, “is bad tonight. Dampness in the air acts as a catalyzer!”
The foreman, a huge ox of a man, had a different word for the black patches.
“Too much—” And Boyd Arganbright grinned at the other’s succinctness of nomenclature, “—on the plate! Give it plenty, Spurzya.”
Spurzya, a great Bulgarian with a great black beard, clad from the waist up in a red flannel undershirt only, reached into a keg of white powder near him—reaching into that keg was Spurzya’s sole business—and even before the plate reached the end of its forward swing—became grasped in the notches of the waiting “clincher-spanners” to be hurled back again—he threw, lightning-like all over its surface, and often exactly where the black was, handfuls of the white powder.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Violent explosions all over it. The whole Japanese army letting loose with its artillery. Ear-splitting! But with each explosion the magical disappearance of a patch of oxide.
Potassium nitrate, that magical white powder, as Boyd Arganbright, being a chemist, knew. Or in simpler language, saltpeter: used in gunpowder—used in curing corn beef—used in medicine as an anti-aphrodisiac—used—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A literal machine gun, that plate—as it hurtled back through the rolls—the pressure of those rolls exploding all the as-yet-unexploded patches of potassium nitrate.
And Boyd Arganbright, threading his way now through more goosenecks toward that rear edge of the mill, devoutly wished he had some spiritual “potassium nitrate” to blow away the unhappy black patches in his soul caused by Sadie’s hopeless demand!