CHAPTER VIII
The mills started as well as any new mills could be expected to start. They did not run perfectly; minor defects developed, machines ran stiffly, hot-boxes developed, belts required tightening; but Jim Ashe was willing to praise his millwrights for good work done. As he walked through the big plant between rows of machines which chugged or punched or sawed rhythmically; as he watched hardwood logs crawl up the slide at the rear of the mill, and pass through a multitude of processes to emerge into the warehouse finished clothespins or dishes or bowls, he felt a sense of pride in the thing he was doing. He was drawing straight from Nature to minister to the necessities of man. It was no ignoble task.
If profits came to him, they would be honestly earned profits, the results of labor. He was not wasting as timber had been wasted before his day. Every scrap of wood that came into his mill was utilized. Modern machinery made possible a saving in timber that thirty years ago would have run into hundreds of millions of feet of pine, had the pioneer wasters availed themselves of it. Thin band-saws turned a minimum of each log into ashes; with them Jim got seven boards where old-time circular saws had been able to give but six. Resaws redeemed the slabs, took from them the finest gold of the timber which lay just under the bark. In other days slab-piles had been known to burn constantly for years, a savage waste. Sawdust, remnants of slabs, edgings furnished the fuel which gave him his power. Here was nothing of which to be ashamed; much to justify pride. Here was an enterprise a man might defend before the court of posterity.
But if the mills ran to Jim’s satisfaction at first they did not improve as he demanded. In ten days from the beginning there swept over the plant a pestilence of mishaps, each mishap causing the shutdown of a department, sometimes of the whole mill. It did not abate, but continued maddeningly. The shrill toot of the little whistle which commanded the engineer to stop motion became a throb in a sore tooth to Jim. Each accident was small; the total of them reached dangerous magnitude.
Jim called in Nelson, head millwright, and his superintendent, John Beam. They came wearing the faces of harried men.
“In three days,” Jim said, shortly, “we’ve lost five hours in shut-downs. Why?”
“Every night,” said Nelson, “we inspect every belt, every pulley, every gear, every machine. We make sure nothing is wrong—and next day a dozen things go wrong.
“The last shut-down was for a split pulley on the main shaft. I went over that shaft last night myself. That pulley was as tight and sound as any pulley could be. And it twisted off this morning. We had to shut down yesterday to fix the main driving-belt. Four rivets had come loose and she’d have pulled clean apart. There wasn’t a sign of a loose rivet night before last—I’d take my oath on it.” He looked gloomily out of the window. The thing was twanging on his nerves as well as on Jim’s.
“John and I aren’t trying to make excuses for ourselves. We’d be tickled to death to take the blame if we could only fix it on to ourselves. What makes me want to roll over and howl is that we can’t fix it any place. In spite of all we can do these things happen. It’s just as he says about what he’s seen. Things I know were sound and in perfect runnin’ condition at night goes wrong in the mornin’. And how in blazes are we goin’ to explain the nails?”
“What nails?” Jim asked.
“In the logs. Every sawyer expects to find some nails when he’s sawin’ maple. Especially in a sugar country. They was drove in to hold sap buckets. But a man don’t expect to find ’em in beech and birch—and he don’t expect to find brand-new ten-penny nails, neither. The saw-filer’s tearin’ his hair. If it keeps on we won’t have a saw to cut with in the big mill. You know what a nail’ll do to a saw, Mr. Ashe.”
“Why doesn’t the sawyer keep his eyes open for them?” Jim snapped.
“Keep his eyes open! Mr. Ashe, before he puts a log on the carriage now he goes over it from end to end. You can’t see a nail that’s countersunk so the head’s half an inch in.”
“The way you say that sounds as if you meant something. Out with it.”
“I mean,” said Nelson, doggedly, “that it looks to me as if somebody was plantin’ them nails so’s we’d saw into ’em. I mean it looks to me like somebody sneaked in here and tampered with things after we get through inspectin’. I mean that the things that’s happened in this mill couldn’t ’a’ happened without bein’ helped to happen.” John Beam nodded his head in agreement.
“That’s nonsense,” Jim said, emphatically.
“Maybe it is. Maybe a crazy man’s doin’ it. But, Mr. Ashe, it’s bein’ done. I know it as well as if I’d seen the feller doin’ it.”
“How about the watchmen?”
“All of ’em worked for us in the old mills. ’Tain’t none of them. I’d take my Bible oath on that.”
Jim sat silent a moment, scowling at the floor.
“You men know what shut-downs mean,” he said. “Here’s five hours in three days—half a day’s time gone. That means a loss in wages alone of a hundred dollars, which is a small part of it. It’s got to stop. I don’t care whether these accidents are accidents or whether somebody is arranging them-they’ve got to quit, and quit sudden. Suppose we lose a hundred dollars every three days. That’s two hundred a week and ten thousand a year. Have you talked about this to anybody?”
“No,” said Nelson.
Beam shook his head,
“Is there any talk in the mill?”
“Haven’t heard any.”
“Well, keep quiet about it. If you fellows are right, we don’t want to advertise it. Now clear out of here and do the best you can. Keep your eyes open. Don’t get suspicious of anybody till you have mighty good reason. I’d hate to think it was any of the crew.”
“It’s somebody that knows the run of things.”
“Yes.”
“What possible reason could anybody have, Mr. Ashe—”
“That’ll be my job—to find out. This suspicion of yours is upsetting. I want to think about it. Then I’ll do something.”
Nelson’s eyes twinkled as he glanced sideways at Beam. As they went out Jim heard him say in a low tone:
“You bet he’ll do somethin’—and it’ll come sudden and astonishin’. Sudden Jim!” There was a note of affection in Nelson’s voice as he pronounced the name.
Jim settled down to think about it. That some one was planning deliberately to cripple the plant by injuring its machinery was illogical. It affronted Jim’s reason. Yet it was a theory impossible to dismiss. It must be considered. In that case, who had an adequate motive? Nobody, so far as Jim could see at first glance.
He set up the possibilities, only to knock them down one by one. It might be the work of a man with a mania for malicious destruction. Highly improbable, thought Jim. It might be workmen or a workman with a grievance practising sabotage. But so far as Jim knew there was no discontent; the crew were satisfied; there had been no complaints, no unrest. That possibility must be dismissed. It might be some individual in Diversity with a grudge to work off against the company. But Jim had never heard of conflict between the company and a citizen, nor had unfriendliness developed since his arrival. This, too, was dismissed.
Who had an interest in the failure of the concern? A thought which lay deep in his mind, which he had hoped to conceal even from himself, obtruded: the Clothespin Club. As an organization of men who had fought upward through adverse conditions, against obstacles, side by side with his father, Jim did not believe them guilty. But organizations of honorable business men often employ underlings, concerning whose methods their masters neglect to make close inquiry. Might this not be the case? It was the sole possibility to stand erect before Jim’s reason.
The Club brought up speculations on Morton J. Welliver—which led to Michael Moran and Zaanan Frame. They led to the Diversity Hardwood Company, of which Moran was now the head. Should the Ashe Clothespin Company fail, who was most likely to succeed it? Who would be in the best position to take over the wreck and operate it? To that question there was but one answer—the Diversity Hardwood Company. Now Jim became obsessed by a real suspicion—and he would act upon it until evidence showed him he was at fault. He would move on the theory that Welliver, Moran, and Frame were not clean of hand. Frame! What had he to base a suspicion of Zaanan Frame upon? Nothing but an evident acquaintance with Welliver, a patent closeness of relations to Moran. No, the old justice’s name must stand among the suspected.
“Where’s Mr. Ashe?” roared an angry voice in the outer office.
Jim heard Grierson’s parchment voice give the direction, and heavy feet pounded down the hall to his door. Watson, foreman of the veneer room, burst in, a huge veneer knife in his arms—no mean weight. “Look at that,” he said, belligerently, dropping the knife on Jim’s desk with a bang. “Look at that! Two knives this mornin’.”
There was plain to view a generous nick on the cutting edge.
“What did it?” Jim asked.
“Nail. Twice this mornin’. Now I’ve got to shut down one lathe till the other knife’s ground down. What land of timber is this, anyhow, with nails hid all over it?”
“Nothing the matter with your eyesight, is there?”
Watson glared at Jim, shook a grimy finger at him.
“I kin see nails as far as anybody, but I can’t look through an inch of timber to ’em. We always look out for nails, but it’s easy to see ’em. Bolts come to us from the vats with the bark peeled, and mostly the peelers get the nails with their spuds. But nobody kin see a nail that’s sunk an inch and the hole plugged. Yes, sir, that’s what I mean. The hole was plugged!”
“How do you know?”
“Strip of veneer showed it. Slice of plug was still stickin’ in. And we went over a dozen more bolts with a fine-tooth comb. We found one with a spot in it that looked suspicious. Dug it out and it was a plug! And we notched in and hit the nail. Now what does that mean?”
“It means you’re to keep your mouth shut about it, and tell some kind of a story to your gang to keep their mouths shut.”
“Somebody’s goin’ to get hurt,” Watson said, darkly.
“Yes,” said Jim, slowly, “somebody is going to get hurt—bad.”
“I s’pose I’ll have to look over every bolt with opery-glasses,” growled Watson.
“I’ll give you a man who is to do nothing else. Tell Beam I said so.”
Jim put on his coat and hat and went to dinner. His physical machine was such that it required nourishment, no matter what was happening to the mental department. Some men lose their appetites when things go wrong. Not so Jim Ashe. Some men drown their troubles in drink. Jim had his drowned three times daily in hunger.
When he had eaten his dinner—for the Widow Stickney had only vaguely heard of a strange custom of moving that meal along till six o’clock and having a thing at noon called luncheon; to her, luncheon was something you put up in a basket and took to a picnic—he leaned back in his chair for his usual midday chat with the old lady.
“You’ve lived here long, Mrs. Stickney?”
“Born in the county.”
“You ought to be pretty well acquainted with folks hereabout.”
“Don’t have to live here long to be that. Everybody you meet is boilin’ over with anxiety to give you the true life history of everybody else. You kin git to know Diversity consid’able well in a week, if you’re willin’ to listen.”
“Justice Frame’s lived here a long time, too, hasn’t he?”
“Him and me was children together.”
“Mrs. Stickney, I’m not asking this wholly out of curiosity. I’m new to you all. I’ve got my hands pretty full, and there are people in the world who would be glad to see me spill part of my load. It’s a fine thing to know whom you can depend on and whom you want to shy at. So I’m asking you to tell me something about Zaanan Frame.”
“He’s a stiff-spined old grampus,” said the widow, promptly. “Him and me squabbles so’s the neighbors ’most come a-runnin’ in to part us. He’s powerful set on havin’ his own way—and mostly he gits it. He’s sharper ’n a new sickle. He’s been justice of the peace here since before Mary Whittaker was born, and Mary’s got a boy of ten herself. Hain’t never been nothin’ more ’n just justice of the peace, but he runs the whole blessed county out of his office. He’s one of them things the papers call a political boss; but if I do say it, Zaanan Frame does a good job of it. But he runs it so folks git the wuth of their taxes, and so that them that wants justice gits it.
“About dependin’ on him,” she went on, after drawing a breath, “you won’t never find him dodgin’ about underhand. If he likes you, he hain’t apt to show it by runnin’ up and kissin’ you in public; and if he don’t like you, he don’t cuss you and try to hit you with a pebble whenever you meet—but you soon git to know. I’ve knowed him to give a man he didn’t like all the best of a deal—so nobody’d accuse him of workin’ a personal spite. I’ve knowed him to refuse things to a friend he’d ’a’ done for a stranger. They say he stretches the powers of his office and does things a justice hain’t got no right to do—and I calc’late he does. But it’s in time of need for somebody. He meddles into folkses’ fam’ly affairs, and plans to marry off this girl to that feller—which plans mostly works out to his notion.
“He’s got a sort of notion he was put here by God Almighty to be father and mother to every man, woman, and child in the county. But there hain’t no complaints of him as a parent, though he’s a mean-dispositioned, meddlin’, sharp-tongued, stubborn-minded old coot.
“Diversity hain’t given much to sayin’ anythin’ but meannesses about folks; we don’t speak none about Zaanan, but I calc’late there’s growed men that’ll walk behind him to the cemetery with tears a-runnin’ down their cheeks, and wimmin that’ll be sobbin’ and leetle children that’ll know what it means to lose their pa. If there’s any argument when Zaanan gits to stand before the great white throne, he’s got a right to say: ‘Wait a minnit, Lord, till we kin git in a number of souls that’s here but was bound for the other place till I got my hands on the reins.’ If you’re worryin’ as to where Zaanan Frame stands, I kin tell you—he stands where it’s honestest and lightest for him to stand. My goodness! but hain’t I been goin’ on about him! Thinkin’ as high of him as I do, it’s a wonder I don’t up and make him my third.”
Jim sat gnawing his finger silently for many minutes after the widow was done speaking. She spoke as one who knew. Jim knew she would have testified in a court of law just as she had spoken to him. Nor would she have spoken so except from certainty. He was compelled, therefore, to revise his judgments and suspicions.
“If you were in a hard place, Mrs. Stickney, and needed advice, would you go to Zaanan Frame?”
“I’d hitch up and go at a gallop,” she said.
“That,” said Jim, “is about what I think I’ll do.”