DUSKIN Read Online Free

president. I’ll fix that up. Nobody will notice it isn’t as usual. I suppose, though, you’ll have to give me power to act in your stead. I’ve written this. I think it’s what you wrote for me once before when you were away in Maine.”
    She handed him a paper, neatly typed, which would answer as her credential, and put his fountain pen in his hand.
    He seemed somehow to take heart at the sight of the businesslike sentences. After all, he had trained her, and she was an unusually good secretary. But how would she do when she was on her own? He drew a long sigh that seemed to be rent from the depths of his soul. How could a mere slip of a woman take his place?
    “The papers are there in the top of my bag.” He motioned toward the corner where she had put his things. “You’ll find my wallet in the safe with money and tickets. I have reservations for the six o’clock train. Can you make it?”
    “Yes of course,” she said crisply. “My bag is all packed, you know.” She smiled, and he suddenly remembered, and his face went blank. Perhaps he was not such a heartless old bear after all.
    “Your
vacation
!” he said. “You can’t go! You mustn’t go of course! I had forgotten.”
    “Nonsense!” said Carol with a quick gulp of renunciation in her throat. “What’s a mere vacation? One can have that any time.”
    As if she hadn’t been waiting for hers a whole lifetime! For the rocks and the sand and the excellent hotel and her pretty new clothes—faultless they were, for she had been working on them all winter—and the two friends— But what folly!
    “You want me to go straight to the building itself and find out with my own eyes just how far things have progressed?” she said in a businesslike voice. “And this Mr. Duskin—why shouldn’t I carry this letter to him instead and tell him you sent me? Of course, I know you were intending to stop over in Chicago and expected the letter to get there ahead of you, but that won’t be necessary now, will it? I can wire the Chicago people to meet me at the station with the papers and ask those questions you had me write out. That will save a whole day.”
    He looked at her wonderingly. She did know what she was doing even if she was only a woman, and a young, pretty one at that.
    After all he found he needed to give her very few directions. Armed with money, tickets, reservations, and the other necessary papers, she stood aside as the orderlies from the ambulance came to take her employer downstairs, and her eyes filled with unaccountable tears.
    “Good-bye!” said Fawcett, suddenly rousing and putting out his hand quite humanly. “I know it’s a raw deal for you. It’s pretty nervy of you to offer to go, but I suppose really the game’s up!” He dropped back with a strange hopeless expression as if the worst had come.
    “Oh, no!” cried Carol brightly, suddenly anxious to lift that burden from his tired face. “The game’s not up at all. I’m in it to win! You’ll see me coming back with flying colors to help you get well!”
    He cast a sudden, unexpected smile up at her, strangely sweet on the harsh old face that was gray with pain now, as if he had cast away all pretenses.
    “Good-bye, little girl,” he said gently. “Thank you!”
    They carried him out on a stretcher to the elevator. The doctor lingered an instant.
    “You’re a good little sport!” he said. “Keep the wires hot with comforting messages home and we’ll pull him through. Let me know if you have any difficulties, and if you need to ask him any questions, wire them
to me
, not to him! I can keep my mouth shut as well as the next one, so you needn’t be afraid.”
    They were off, and suddenly Carol felt very old and sorry, as if she were going to cry, and very much weighted down with care and responsibility. Here but an hour before she had been reviling Mr. Fawcett for being cross and bearish and hard, though all the time she knew he was carrying an immense burden, and