Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

WHERE book, Henry. 1 want to prepare a little statement for those—er-—-for the directors to-morrow.” He tucked the eternal brief case under his arm. Although the effect was a trifle forced, he did look much like himself again. ‘Quarter of eight—sharp!” he con- cluded. And he departed, and as many years as he had been in the firm, I will venture to say that he never departed in just that frame of mind before. CHAPTER YV. THE SANER VIEW. SHAT thing of running through the early 1920 correspondence sounded - sumple, of course. Maybe it would have been simple if the president wrote more letters, and said more in those he did write: but he hates corre- spondence, and anything along that line that can be done by a department head is done by «a department head. Another thing, Mr. Berford is probably the most cautious man in the world when it comes to moneing his lJetters; I Aammer them out achine, but while the fellows who ped Gam probably know what they’re about, four times out of every five I haven't much more than a strong suspicion! And in spite of all that, getting a line on the president’s activities on January 9, 1920, didn’t seem much of a job—until I had been at it for half an hour. So far as { could judge, Mr. Berford had been more than ordinarily uncommunicative during the early part of that January; that, or he had been away somewhere on a trip. Simce I have been with him he has had a very nice system for keeping me busy during his absences. The afternoon before his de- parture he has always spent dictating like a streak of greased lightning, arid by the time he has returned I have cleaned up everything in the way of postponed, unim- portant letters, signed them with his auto- graph rubber stamp, and filed away the carbons. But back here there were gaps and gaps. The one that interested me most began on WAS I? eS nee ee aed the 4th of January, and I’m hanged if I could find trace of any letter having been written in the president’s office from that date until the eleventh. The worst feature of this gap was that nothing seemed to have gone before it and nothing followed it, that would give a clew. Now in the previous November, just before one of the empty spots, there was a letter in which he said: | “I expect to be in Chicago Thursday and Friday of this week;” and in December of the same year, after five days of nothing at all in the way of filed carbon copies, there was one that began: “Since talking with you in Cleveland day before yesterday,” and so on. But if this particular gap indicated a trip, it had been a different kind of trip, because there was not a solitary word in any letter of the fourth as to where he was going, and there wasn’t a word in any letter after the eleventh as to where he had been. And—oh, well, I’m human, of course. Tl admit that 1 put in a minute or two won- dering whether this queer reticence did mean anything, but it was only a minute or two. I know Mr. Berford, and on some counts I’m proud to work for him, because a citizen who speaks the unqualified truth — just one hundred times out of a possible hundred is quite a man. However, wondering wasn’t getting me very far, and I’d been staring into those files for an hour or more, and the clock had worked beyond half past six. I hated not io make a job of it, but there was no help for that. I went off to find some dinner and then get uptown to Mr. Berford’s home and tell him the worst. He lives in a dandy old mansion, a couple of dozen steps from Central Park—one of © those wide, white affairs they used to con- struct when land was a little cheaper and building mechanics didn’t have to support servants and automobiles themselves. It seems like a lot of house for one man to occupy, but the president is fond of it; his father built it, and his parents both died . there, and the place has a certain aristo- cratic dignity that fits the boss very nicely. I expected to find him considerably fret- ted about what had happened that after- noon. He wasn’t. The Eomicboolksicom =