Bound to Succeed/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
A BUSINESS CALL
Frank watched Dorsett dismount from the gig and tie his horse. He realized that he would be up into the insurance man's office in a few minutes.
"I must do something, and quickly," thought Frank. "The second that man sees me he will suspect my mission here. He is a person of substance, and will carry weight. I shall be left if he gets into action first."
Frank reflected rapidly. The old clerk, as he had already found out, was unapproachable. Frank was seized with a wild impulse to leap over the wire railing and rush past the clerk to the door of Mr. Pryor's private office.
"Maybe it's locked, though," said Frank. "No, I won't do that. I don't see that I can do much of anything, except to wait and take my chance of getting the check into Mr. Pryor's hands before Mr. Dorsett guesses what's up.
Frank glanced at the clock. It showed ten minutes to eleven. He went out into the hall and drew back into the shelter of a big fuel box there.
Dorsett came up the stairs, buggy whip in hand. He bustled into the office in his usual self-important way. Frank noticed that the old clerk sat down on him promptly. He was not one bit impressed with the bombastic visitor from Greenville.
Dorsett scowled as the clerk pointed to the clock, and impatiently fumbling the whip, sat down with the others in the office to await the royal pleasure of its closeted proprietor.
Frank did a lot of thinking. He planned all kinds of wild dashes when the door of that private office should open. Then, happening to stroll down the hall, a new idea was suggested to him.
"Would it win?" Frank breathlessly asked himself.
He had come out on a little landing. This was that platform of stairs running down into the rear of the lot that the bank and the insurance office occupied.
Six feet away from it to the left were two windows. They were both open. The low hum of voices reached Frank's ears. Judging from the situation of the apartment beyond, Frank was sure that he had located the insurance man's private room.
"I wonder if I dare?" he challenged himself. "I wonder if it would work?"
His eyes snapped and his lingers tingled. Then Frank studied the outlook more carefully. He calculated first his chances of getting to the first window. He also planned just what he would say in the way of explanation and apology once he reached it.
Two feet away from the platform a lightning rod ran straight up the building. Frank seized this. He fearlessly swung himself free of the platform, bracing his toes on a protending joint of the rod.
At the side of the nearest window, top and bottom, were two hinge standards. They had been imbedded in the solid masonry when the place was built to hold iron shutters, if such were ever needed. The bank floor below was guarded with these, but none had been put in place on the upper story.
Frank swung one hand free, and bending to a rather risky angle hooked a forefinger around the upper one of these standards. At the same time he gave his body a swing clear of his footing.
He aimed to land his feet on the sill of the nearest window. In this Frank succeeded. There was no time, however, to chance losing the foothold thus gained. He promptly slid his free hand down under the frame of the raised window. He got a firm clutch. Relaxing his hold of the hinge standard, he stooped.
The next moment, on a decidedly reckless and awkward balance, Frank tumbled rather than dropped inside of the room that was his objective point of assault.
"Hello! what's this?" instantly hailed him.
Frank nimbly gained an upright position. He faced two men who, seated at a table covered with papers, began to push back their chairs In a somewhat startled way. They stared hard at the intruder.
Frank promptly doffed his cap. He made his most courteous bow.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," he said in a rather flustrated way, "but which Is Mr. Pryor, please?"
"I am Pryor," answered one of the twain, and Frank saw from the gathering frown on the speaker's face that a storm was brewing unless he headed it off summarily.
"I must beg your pardon, Mr. Pryor," said Frank, "but it is a matter of some business importance. I have been waiting for over an hour to see you. It won't take but a moment, sir," and Frank swiftly produced the check and the receipt entrusted to him by Mr. Buckner. Before Pryor realized it, they were thrust into his hands and he was looking at them.
"Oh, this can wait," he said pettishly. "I don't like this kind of an intrusion, young man."
"I am very sorry, Mr. Pryor," interrupted Frank in a gentle, polite tone, "but I am only a paid messenger, and I promised Mr. Buckner to be back with that receipt at a certain time."
"So you seized the bull by the horns," broke in Pryor's companion with a great chuckle. "And outwitted old Grumper, the clerk, ha! ha! Pryor, nail the boy on a year's contract. He's got the making in him of a first-class insurance solicitor, in his originality, daring and—"
"Cheek," muttered Pryor. "Well, well—here's your receipt."
Frank seized the paper that Pryor signed with a swift scrawl of the pen, with an eagerness that was a kind of delighted rapture.
"Oh, thank you, sir," he said, "and a thousand apologies for my rude intrusion."
"Hold on," ordered Pryor, as Frank returned towards the window.
"Yes, unless you carry extra accident insurance," put in Pryor's companion. "You might not find it so easy getting out of that window as you did getting in, young fellow."
Mr. Pryor had gone to the clouded glass door, which Frank knew opened Into the main office. He slipped Its catch and opened It. Frank understood that he was to pass out that way. He started forward, making a deferential bow to his host.
"Hi, I say, Pryor—one minute!" sounded a voice in the outer office, and Frank wondered what was about to happen as he recognized the tones as belonging to Dorsett.
"In a few minutes," responded Pryor, with an impatient wave of his hand.
"All right. It's about the salvage business, you know," went on Dorsett from behind the wire grating. "Want to pay you the money and close up the deal."
"Oh, that?" spoke Pryor, with a sudden glance at Frank and a grim twinkle in his eyes. "You young schemer!" he said to Frank in an undertone, with a slight chuckle. "I understand your peculiar tactics, now. You'll do, decidedly, young man!"
Frank tried to look all due humility, but he could not entirely suppress a satisfied smile. As he passed out Pryor said to Dorsett: "You are too late on that matter. I have just closed the salvage business with Buckner of Greenville."
"You've what?" howled Dorsett, with a violent start. "Why, I'm here first. No one passed me on the road. I—er, hum"—Dorsett turned white as his eye fell on Frank. He glared and shook his driving whip.
The animated and interested friend of Pryor stuck his head past the open doorway.
"I say, youngster," he asked guardedly, his face all a-grin, "how did you circumvent the old chap?"
"Well, I nearly swam part of the way," explained Frank. "Thank you, Mr. Pryor," he added, as the latter opened the wire gate for him to pass out.
The old clerk had sprung to his feet, gaping in consternation at him. Pryor's friend was convulsed with internal mirth. Pryor himself did not look altogether displeased at the situation.
Frank thought that Dorsett would actually leap upon him and strike him with the whip. The latter, however, with a hoarse growl in his throat, allowed Frank to proceed on his way unhindered.
"We shall hear from this of course—my mother and I," said the youth to himself as he gained the street. "Mr. Dorsett will store this up against me, hard. All right—I've done my simple duty and I'll stand by the results."
A minute later, looking back the way he had come, Frank saw Dorsett come threshing out into the street. He kicked a dog out of his path, rudely jostled a pedestrian, jumped into the gig and went tearing down the homeward road plying the whip and venting his cruel rage on the poor animal in the shafts.
Frank started back towards Greenville the way he had come. He was greatly pleased at his success, and cheeringly anticipated the good the five dollars would do his mother and himself.
As Frank passed the spot where he had noticed the farefooted, mud-bespattered urchin lying asleep by the side of the ditch, he could find no trace of the lad.
A little farther on Frank came in sight of the high board fence he had so curiously observed on his way to Riverton.
The wind was his way, and as he approached the queer barrier he was somewhat astonished at a great babel of canine barking and howls that greeted his ears.
"Sounds like a kennel," he reflected, "but's a big one. Why, if there isn't the little fellow with the package of meat."
Frank wonderingly regarded a tattered, forlorn figure at a distance seeming to be glued right up face forward against the fence.
The boy had piled two or three big boulders on top of one another. These he had surmounted, and was peering through a high up crack or knot hole in the fence.
On one arm he carried the newspaper package Frank had noticed. Bit by bit he poised its contents, hurling them over the fence.
A loud clamor of yelps and barkings would greet this shower of food. Frank drew nearer, mightily interested.
The little fellow would throw over a bone and peer inside the enclosure.
"Get it, Fido!" Frank heard him shout. "They won't let him—those big ones," he wailed. "Oh, you dear, big fellow, help him, help him. No, they wont' let him. Fido, Fido, Oh, my! oh my!"
The little fellow slipped down to a seat on the boulders now and began to cry as if his heart would break. Frank approached and pulled at his arm.
"Hi, youngster," he challenged, "what in the world are you up to, anyhow?"