CHAPTER III
When Marion De Lorme first moved into the big, forbidding house facing the monument at Confederate Circle, he was no doubt the loneliest and most friendless boy in all of Louisville. He had no remembrance of his mother other than a little snapshot of a small and frightened looking woman with a bouncing baby in her arms. As for his father, silent, stooped and almost blind, he knew little of and seemed to care less for the stalwart, handsome lad whom he occasionally used as a staff but more frequently sent out of his presence. One thing Mr. De Lorme required of the boy, and that was regularity in his school attendance and good rating in his studies. Marion was the star student wherever he went, but with all his application he knew that he could not offer a report to his father that would wholly meet with his approval.
When Marion heard him railing over a percentage of ninety-eight and declaring that the boys of the present day were no good, and Marion the worst of the lot, his son was sometimes tempted to bring him a percentage of about sixty, just to see the result.
Mr. De Lorme was a chemist. He had long since explained his business or profession to his son. He was an analytical chemist, and his work was all done in his private laboratory, for big firms, corporations, and sometimes even for nations. It was a strange business. Marion had long ceased feeling any curiosity concerning the queer looking, whiskered persons who came to the house, usually during the evening, any more than he hoped to have any acquaintance with the suave, perfectly-dressed gentlemen who drove up in taxis during the day.
All these visitors, clients or customers called but rarely. All day long Mr. De Lorme, shut up in his laboratory, worked away with his strange and delicate instruments, leaving Marion to his own devices, with two ironclad rules: the first, that he should stand always at the head of his classes; the second, that no other boys should ever be permitted to enter the house.
Every morning, early, before school time, leaning heavily on his son’s arm, Mr. De Lorme made the round of the park three times. Every night after dark he repeated the journey. Marion dreaded these walks. His father, stumbling and nearly blind, attracted a good deal of sympathetic attention.
One thing puzzled Marion a great deal, and that was how his father, handicapped by his blindness, could put through laboratory tests that called for the most exquisite accuracy of sight as well as touch and judgment. He decided that the young assistant who worked always with his father must supply in himself the needed vision.
Marion hated the assistant, a greasy, dark-browed, long-haired fellow named Zipousky, but who answered cheerfully enough to Zip. Zip was a strange mixture of youth and age. Marion doubted if there was much of anything that he did not know, yet the fellow showed an almost pathetic eagerness to be with Marion.
When the De Lormes moved to Louisville from Chicago, Marion determined to make some friends. He spent many evenings walking up and down the block, his eyes seeking the uncurtained windows where he could catch glimpses of the family life he so longed for. But the silence of the De Lorme household seemed to throw a spell over the boy. Other boys felt it and made few advances. And Marion did not know how to come half way.
Eddie Rowland did not mind that at all. He was willing to go half way, and able to go the rest of the way if necessary. A stranger to Eddie meant a territory to explore, a new country to travel. So he proceeded to explore Marion, to that young man’s great surprise. He liked it. He liked the way Eddie scorned the name Marion and called him Dee, introducing him as such to the other fellows in the neighborhood. He liked the incidental way in which Eddie treated Marion’s halting excuses for not asking any of the boys to his great gloomy house.
“I should worry!” said Eddie airily. “Beats the deuce how a fellow’s folks cut up sometimes! Wish you could have seen my father once when I brought home a goat. Dandy little one, just a baby. I was going to feed it with a bottle. I only paid a quarter for it, and a dime for the bottle. I got the bottle cheap off Skinny Tweeters. It was one their baby had, but Skinny said she had two, three other ones, so he let me have it cheap. Well, say, Dee, you would have thought I had brought an elephant the way dad cut up! I had to give it away, and lost the quarter, and Skinny wouldn’t take the bottle back either. Said their baby wouldn’t eat after a goat. Such airs! What would she know about it? Huh? Gee, I think you are lucky, myself, to get out all you want to except being home to take your dad out for a walk. Just you come along with me, and you will get to know all the fellows in two shakes. It’s a dandy crowd up here on Confederate Place. Why, trouble is the boys think you are proud.”
“Proud!” said Dee with a groan. “Why, Rowland, I am crazy to know the fellows.”
“Then that’s all there is about it,” said Eddie. “Can you play tennis?”
Dee could and would play tennis, and showed himself such a general good sort that Eddie sang his praises loudly.
It was nearly supper time on the great day of the founding of the Wireless Club before Eddie had time to go down to Dee’s house and whistle. Dee came out immediately, cap and slicker in hand.
“That’s right!” Eddie sang out. “Got something important to tell you.” He hurried him up the street to Bill’s and they went running up to the club room, looking better than ever in the fading light. Dee was crazy over the idea.
“What are you going to do for lights?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” said Bill. “I suppose we will have to meet in the house at night, because I don’t think dad will like the idea of a coal oil lamp.”
“Well, here is where I come in,” said Dee with a sigh of genuine pleasure. “If there is one thing I can do, it is wire for electricity. In Chicago I had a license.”
“Well, if this isn’t falling on the soft side of the fence!” chortled Eddie. “What will it cost us?”
“I don’t think it will cost us anything,” said Dee. “I think I brought enough wire and fittings along with me.”
“Let’s go get ’em now,” said Bill, beaming.
“All right,” said Dee. “They are pretty bulky.”
The boys went down the street, Skinny and Fat trailing along behind. When they reached the house, the boys, at Eddie’s suggestion, sat in a row on the step, while Dee went in to find his wires. Eddie took the opportunity to tell the boys about Dee’s peculiar father. They were not particularly interested because as Eddie had said, you never can tell what a fellow’s folks are apt to do.
Fatty Bascom was on the end of the line and as he sat there he became conscious of an odor that filled him with a great longing. He was minded to hurry off to his own home and call for supper, but the fragrance that trailed around the corner of the house was too good to leave. It seemed to be a mixed smell. Perhaps fried chicken and tarts, and fruit cake, and prune soufflé and plum pudding could make it, but there was a palate-tickling tang besides that Fatty had never known. He hitched himself over, and lifted a keen nose in the air. It was a hot smell, too. Something for Dee’s supper put out on the pantry window to cool; that was it.
Fatty could not endure it. He felt that he owed it to himself to see what it was. He knew if he could tell his mother about it, she would make him one. Quietly, without ostentation, he slid down and followed his nose around toward the back of the house. Passing through a high trellised gate, he gained the back yard and the bricked porch outside the kitchen. Something was steaming on the sill of the window—a window just too high for Fatty to reach. He was all honest boy. He would not have taken a crumb, he would not have touched the edge even of the mysterious dish, but he could not resist a look. The light from the kitchen streamed out, making the porch quite light. From within, Fatty heard an old voice singing something in a strange, guttural tongue. It made Fatty feel very queer. He looked around for something to stand on. There were three small boxes, quite new, standing on end against the house. Fatty noiselessly piled them under the window, then regardless of his muddy feet, mounted and received the shock of his life. While he had stooped to fix the boxes, someone had removed the dish! It was gone! Fatty ground a heel into the soft pine box in his rage, then sulkily betook himself back to his mates.
No one had seen him; no one had missed him. He resumed his seat, and soon Dee appeared, piled high with all sorts of things for wiring the club room. He made three trips before he was ready to take the things up to Bill’s and, each one accepting a share of the load, they carried their treasure and put it carefully in Bill’s attic.
Then Dee had to hurry home to supper, and Fatty thought with anguish of the mysterious dish. He signalled to Skinny Tweeters, and they walked down with Dee.
“Got a good cook?” asked Fatty.
“I suppose so,” said Dee. “I never thought much about it. She gives us plenty.”
“I thought I smelt something cooking when we were down there tonight,” remarked Fatty. “Made me wonder if she was a good cook.”
“I guess she is all right,” said Dee.
Fatty held his breath, but nothing more was said. No offer to find out what it was, no suggestion that Dee would go get a piece for Fatty. There was nothing, absolutely nothing to do but say good-night and go home; which Fatty did, marvelling at the stupidity of Marion De Lorme.
Dee found his father waiting for him, and as they walked slowly around the little park, Mr. De Lorme asked Dee what he had been doing with himself. Dee told him briefly and then, growing enthusiastic, told his father that six of the neighborhood boys were starting a club. He was about to add that it was a wireless club, but his father interrupted.
“A club, eh?” he snarled disagreeably. “Um! Well, you are about the age to take that disease. All boys want to form a club. Go ahead; but see that you don’t get into mischief.”
“I do not intend to get into any scrapes,” said Dee. “I never have, have I?”
“Not yet,” said Mr. De Lorme. “I just warned you. I am a busy man, an important man and I must not be disturbed.”
“I should think some of the cut-throat looking people who come to the house would disturb you,” said Dee. “A lot of them look like Bolsheviki, and a lot of them like plain tramps.”
Mr. De Lorme was silent for a moment. “You can’t judge a man by his looks, young man. Some day you may be glad to be included in the circle with just such men. The efforts of those very men will be felt as long as the nation stands.”
“I should think they might shave,” objected Dee.
“Stop criticizing!” ordered his father, bringing his cane down with a stroke as though it was a sword. “But there! What does it matter? If you are worthy of knowledge, some day we will see. In the meantime, amuse yourself. What do the boys think of your father?”
Dee sensed that this apparently trivial question was really an important one.
“They think you are about like most everybody’s father, only they are sorry you can’t see better.”
Mr. De Lorme nodded and sighed. “That’s so,” he said. “I am glad they are so sympathetic. Tell them that your poor old father is almost blind; almost blind, Marion.”
“I have,” said Marion, wondering at his father’s whining tone. “And tell them I must have peace, peace and quiet for my studies: that is why you cannot entertain them.” He shuddered. “Why, Marion, a jar in that house, a heavy fall sometimes, well, it would upset some of my finest and most difficult calculations.”
“I know, father,” said Dee gently. “You have always told me that. I would not injure your work for the world. I am sure it is important. I don’t see, though, why you never let me come into the laboratory. What harm could I do?”
Mr. De Lorme shook his head.
“Not yet!” he said. “Get your schooling, get through your play, and then you will be ready for what I have in mind for you.”
They had made the third round of the Park and as they approached the house Zip ran out and bought an extra from a passing, yelling newsie. He glanced at the headlines, smiled and as Mr. De Lorme made his way up the steps, spoke to him rapidly in Russian.
“Good, good!” said Mr. De Lorme. “Sooner than I expected!”
“And so neatly; with such power!” said Zip, breaking into English. “I congratulate you, sir.”
“It is nothing, Zip; nothing!” said Mr. De Lorme, looking pleased however.
He dropped Dee’s arm, and placing his hand affectionately on Zip’s shoulder walked upstairs. Zip had dropped the paper. Dee picked it up and carefully looked it over. He could not find a single word about chemistry or anything else that might have a bearing on his father’s work.
He refolded the paper, and for the first time noticed running across the front page, in enormous letters:
ANOTHER BOMB DELIVERED
TO MAYOR SCUDDER OF CHICAGO
SAVED BY THE QUICK WIT OF HIS SECRETARY
Dee threw the paper on the floor.
“Every one of those fellows mixed up in these bomb plots ought to be hanged!” he said to himself.