A GIRL WITH DARK EYES
Two minutes later, Boyd Arganbright was cutting across a great silent yard filled with ingots, each standing vertically upright on its larger end, its smaller tapering end rising considerably above a man’s head, the yard itself resembling nothing so much as a cemetery full of monuments. Once, as he started down a natural aisle lying between two neat rows of innocent-looking ingots, he felt a sudden warning glow on each of his cheeks. And drew back in alarm. And out. White-hot those ingots were inside; literal raging furnaces, radiating stupendous waves of crackling heat through those deceptive black exteriors where the metal had “cooled.” If a man ever got partway down an aisle like that, he’d never get out—at least without a “cooking.” For once halfway down it would be almost too impossible to proceed, yet too late to turn back; nor would a man, in such a predicament, dare to attempt escape by cutting out between two adjoining ingots in a row. Unless, that he was ready to lose his eyelashes—and be wrapped later in linseed oil!
But now Arganbright was out of the cemetery-like yard. And was passing, with a score of other men who, like himself, had appeared from nowhere, but all swinging black-japanned tin lunch pails, through a low wooden structure surrounding a gate in the tall wooden fence that cut off the plant from the world outside. Gate Number 5—and perhaps the least used of all the 8 gates. From a rack within, containing cards, he selected his own card, and stamped it in the time machine. And replaced it in another rack. And out he went. Onto the broad dusty street, lighted with low gas-burning lamp posts, which ran directly along the outside of that tall wooden fence. A street of miserable unpainted shacks—“Hunkytown’s” Front Street!—containing here and there an occasional miserable shop, and containing also four saloons—directly facing the gate!—saloons with such unpronounceable names over their fronts that Boyd Arganbright had often wondered, curiously, whether any of the four names could be pronounced!
Toward these 4 entrances, right now, most of the men who had emerged before Arganbright, and were emerging after him, were flooding. But Boyd Arganbright passed all four, and continued down the miserable street. The little shops he passed seemed to purvey, one and all, the identically same articles—to have the same window displays: canvas gloves—snuff—overalls—lunch pails! The skies above him now were reddish pink: the Bessemers were “blowing” late tonight! From some point about a block within the fence to his left, he heard the rumbling of a rail as it passed through the rolls of Rail Mill No. 2, each rumble being ever longer than the preceding one—as even the rail itself stretched longer! And the exploding of plate scabs in the plate mill, beyond that, came to him now only as a resonant boom—boom—boom as of distant cannonading.
He turned off Front Street at the first cross-street. And hurried along this one. The cottages here, not having to face the mills, were immediately better, some being even painted. Indeed, when he struck the next street crossing this one, there were—mirabile dictu!—yards with grass. And some trees. The blight of a vast industrial plant had been left behind.
Down this street he hurried. To where a limousine was drawn up at the curb near a neat concrete lamp post. A girl sat in it. Apparently waiting. Her back was toward the direction from which Arganbright was approaching. He came up quietly. Tapped on the glass. The girl inside, who had been looking down into her lap, now looked suddenly up. And smiled a welcome. She had great dark eyes, and jet-black hair. Both emphasized by a gypsy-like silken scarf she wore about her white throat. She was about 23 years of age.
She was already flinging open the door.
“Why, Boyd!” she said. “How romantic—to see you in a lineman’s costume!”
“Is it?” he echoed. “Well, I would have been in civilized clothing, only—I lost just enough time tonight reading about the death and interment today of a man who once knew my father—a man named McCorniss, who—”
“Oh, yes—you showed me a several-page handwritten letter of his once, in your room—rather, just the first page and the signature—when we were discussing odd handwriting and handwriting character-analysis—remember?—he was a man who possessed a friend with the strange name of Geogar—in a town called Marysville—below his own—and I called your attention to the way the writer made his y’s, and said that some graphologists claim that those people always have a close friend with a very bizarre name—as did the writer in that case—viz, that Mr.—no, Professor—Geogar; and—”
“What a memory you have!” Arganbright exclaimed admiringly. “I—the recipient of the letter—can’t even remember half the details of it that you do. However, that man who wrote that letter died a few hours prior to the dawn of yesterday. And was buried yesterday. And I refer you to the papers for details!”
“Oh—the Midwest millionaire?—with the trick vault? I read only some headlines—in the Steel City Gazette—which didn’t at all tie that man up with the man who wrote you the letter. My goodness! And I told you—remember?—that his handwriting forecast that some day his final will would have some weird terms in it?”
“You did indeed!” he admitted. “That I do remember.
And it was due to just the time I lost tonight reading about just one of those weird terms—as pertained to how he should be buried—that has made me wind up here at your limousine in this lineman’s costume—as you call it. For, in reality, it’s only Variant No. 5 in my famous elastic working regalia! And isn’t really at all a lineman’s costume. Anyway, I wear it tonight because I simply didn’t get a chance to change. For today—’twas poles!”
“Poles?” She shuddered. “I’ve such a fear of height that if I ever went 3 feet up a pole I think I’d fain—but what do you mean, Boyd, it isn’t a lineman’s costume? For outside of one very, very important point I know of—it seems to be one hundred per cent so.”
“Does it?” he chided her. “Well, for one thing it requires climbers and a safety-belt to make a lineman’s costume. For another thing, the around-the-waist belt’s wired to carry test tubes only—not tools. And last but not least, no lineman I’ve ever known wore a shirt so screamingly green that, beside it, the grass looked dun gray—in fact, this shirt isn’t a shirt at all!—it’s Laboratory Test Specimen No. 41 of Massey’s S.P.D.”
“Massey’s S.P.D.? What on earth—I don’t understand?”
“No, I know you don’t. It’s just that a young chemist friend of mine named Massey is a dye experimenter, and is aiming to put on the market a really S.P.D.—sun-proof dye. And I’m his laboratory! For this shirt is dyed in a compound which is his 41st variation, and it’s being watched—with a control piece, of course—to see how many hours of weather—dry and damp—sun and shade—heat and cold—it can take without fading. And until it does, I shall be—I fear—a walking green neon light!” He paused. “But here—what’s that detail of lineman’s costume I’m overlooking? After all, you know, I must keep my stage costumes reasonably up to snuff?”
“Why, you lack the bandanna, Boyd! A true lineman always has a bandanna around his neck to keep cinders and dust out. Here—for next time you go a-poling.” And deftly unhooking a small brooch under her petite chin, she flicked off her silk scarf, and tossed it around his neck. Tying it there, too.
“Now,” she said, “you’ll at least be a convincing-looking lineman—when you are a lineman. You see, I saw the play Strike in New York with Father—and from having seen the character Slim, the Lineman, over three entire acts. I know!”
“But see here,” he retorted, feeling up at the gossamer silken thing, “do you think I’m going to wear this beautiful thing—going up a filthy smoke-covered splintery pole to get some specimen-grease off a cable or something?” He started to untie it, but she stayed his fingers.
“Please, Boyd! I’ve a deeper reason for putting that on you than just—just completing a costume. You see, I bought it in Paris from a queer humpbacked vendor who said it would bring me luck in many ways. And three times, Boyd, I’ve escaped serious trouble when that was on. Twice when cars driven by reckless drivers almost knocked my limousine into kingdom come. And once when Father and I checked out of the St. George Hotel in Quebec just before that disastrous fire that killed so many persons. And you see, Boyd, linemen do fall—and touch live high-tension wires and—but promise me, Boyd, will you, you’ll always wear it from now on when you go up a pole—where you go anywhere where there is any kind of physical danger? Promise me?”
“I,” he said graciously, “will always carry it on me from now on. For 5 good reasons.”
“Five?” she exclaimed. “But—”
“The first being,” he said gravely, “that it protects meh from danger! Reasons two and three being that it artistically completes meh costume—at least when I’m a lineman. Reasons four and five and six being that you gave it to meh.”
She laughed.
“That’s sufficient, I guess. But come, darlin’—get inside. Before we wake everybody up on this street.”
He climbed in hastily beside her. For he knew how angry Hunkytown householders could be—at anybody sitting in a limousine!
“In fact,” she said, “I’m going to drive you tonight only to your boarding house. For I must get back home. I—I—well, you see, I’m going to the convent tomorrow—St. Cecilia’s—at Steel City—at noon—to stay all day—at least till 6 o’clock—with Mother Superior Anastasia who, as a sister, taught me my music. It’s her birthday tomorrow, and always, for her birthday, she asks that one of her old pupils be with her. And tomorrow, I’m the one! Catholic though I am not!”
“Oh, yes, I see,” he said, as the car started off. “And I suppose she’ll make up!—in that one long visit—for the entire year in which she’s had no news of the outside worl—though, does that odd convent still rigorously exclude radios and newspapers?”
“Rigorously—and quite! And she’s a quite wonderful woman, Boyd. And probably won’t ask a single question about the outside world.”
“Oh, yes—I see.” He was conscious, somehow, that this whole convent business, was some kind of sidetracking. “But see here,” he said suddenly, “you say you must get back home now—but Steel City’s only a half-hour from Irontown—and you say you go to the convent only at noon tomorrow—so—”
“Yes, Boyd. Well, all I just told you now about going to the convent tomorrow is, of course, the truth—but the real reason I’ve got to get back home now is that—well, Father—Father is on the warpath. And about you!”
“On the warpath?” he exclaimed, as the car maneuvered gracefully and easily to avoid a declivity in the roadway. “And about me? But good heavens, darlin’, when last I parted from him he was genial enough. He—”
“Yes,” the girl replied quietly, “but since that hour he’s learned all about—your marriage—to Sadie!”