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Updated: June 9, 2025
A danger to the community because of his brains." But what of Hilmer? Fred Starratt had a feeling that Hilmer would be discreet to a point of silence. He could see every printed phrase as plainly as if he were reading it all himself. How many times in the old days had he not perused some such story over his morning coffee, thanking himself unconsciously that he was not as other men!
But, in a day when young and pretty women were at a premium, one did not have to live in a mansion to attract desirable suitors, and Fred Starratt had often heard his mother remind his father without bitterness of the catches that had been thrown her way. Not that Starratt, senior, had been a bad prospect matrimonially. Quite the contrary.
In days gone by, when his mother was alive, he had heard almost the same remark leveled at his father: "Well, I suppose some people could save on our income. But we've got to be decent we can't go about in rags!" He knew from long experience just the sort his mother had meant by the term "some people." Brauer was a case in point. Mrs. Starratt always spoke of such as he with lofty tolerance.
It ended in a list being made of the chief offenders owners, managers, irascible foremen. Fred Starratt listened like a man in a dream. When Hilmer was named he found himself shivering. These people were plotting murder now cool, calm, passionless murder! There was something fascinating in the very nonchalance of it. Storch's eyes glittered more and more savagely.
It's bad enough to take your business without letting you bring it in on a day like this..." Hilmer made a contemptuous gesture. "Wind and weather never made any difference to me... I've traveled twenty miles in a blizzard to court a girl." "Oh, when a woman's involved, that's different," Fred laughed back. "There's nothing as alluring here." "Well, Mrs. Starratt, what do you say?"
Starratt replied, coldly. "But that's neither here nor there. What's done is done. But I don't want any more of it. I'm playing a square game. I was ready to throw Hilmer overboard rather than compromise, and I'll " "Do the same thing to me, I suppose!" Brauer challenged. Fred looked at him steadily. "Precisely," he answered.
"I've got something for you to-day," Hilmer went on, as he unbound the bundle of papers and sat down beside Fred. Starratt saw the edge of a blue print in Hilmer's hand. This spelled all manner of possibilities, but he checked a surge of illogical hope. "That's fine," he answered, heartily. "But why didn't you send for me? I could have come over.
Presently Starratt went up to his wife and said, deliberately: "Hilmer is going ... you better give him back his papers." She turned a glance of startled innocence upon them both. "Oh!" she exclaimed, petulantly. "How disappointing...and just as I was becoming interested... Why don't you men go have your usual drink? I'll be through with them then."
In confused moments Fred Starratt fell to wondering whether he really had escaped from Fairview, whether the forms about him were not the same motley assembly that used to gather in the open and exchange whines. The wails now seemed keyed to howls of defiance, but the source was essentially the same. Fred wondered how he lived through these dreadful evenings with the air thick to choking.
The next day Fred's friend said again: "Kendrick's doing some gum-shoe work, Starratt... You'd better go awful slow." With the coming of May other anxieties claimed Starratt's attention. Bills that he had forgotten or neglected began to pour in.
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