CHAPTER IV
AT HEADQUARTERS
I
The International Power Company remained a puzzle in suspended animation before the business world. Its campaign, whatever it was, went on behind closed doors and closed mouths. The men who were backing John Rawn were doing so with daring and courage, yet with business discretion and business eagerness for results. There was no leak anywhere, but the capitalists who were showing their faith in the basic idea of the company began to grow impatient because of the slow advancement of the most important of their plans; those bearing on wireless transmission from the central generating station on the Mississippi River.
Rawn's duties at the central offices, as president of the company, although steadily increasing, were still to very large extent perfunctory matters of routine; but the president's office evinced very early a singular efficiency in executive affairs. Rawn's directors looked on him with mingled approval and cautiousness, coming almost to the belief that, if the progress of the central distributing plant, or "Wireless No. 1," as it was known in the company's literature, did not seem all it should be, at least the president of the company was not to blame therefor. They turned to the department of mechanical installation; which brought Charles Halsey under investigation.
II
Halsey and his wife, John Rawn's daughter, had taken up their residence in the small Chicago suburb in which the central plant had been located. Their cottage was a small one, and it was furnished much like other cottages thereabout, occupied by salaried men, mechanics, persons of no great means. It retained something of the complexion of the old quarters in Kelly Row. The furniture was of imitation mahogany, the pictures had been, for the most part, bought by mail, the decorations were a jumble of inharmonious inadvertencies. The two young folk, their means as small as their tastes were undeveloped, gave themselves small concern over architects' plans and "collectors' pieces." They were busy as are most young couples in the delights of their first experiment in housekeeping; and Halsey himself now was deep in the strong and somber delight of developing a beloved idea.
Naturally, Halsey was often taken to the central offices in the city for conferences with the president of the company. He frequently met there Virginia Delaware, even at times gave dictation to her—a thing he never failed to remember, but never remembered to mention in his own home. As do many men even in this divorceful age, he set aside comparisons, forced himself into loyalty. Moreover, he yet was very young in married life, and always had lived in an atmosphere where man, married or single, coveted not that which was his neighbor's. It was but unconsciously, as though moved only by force of gravitation, that he drifted to Miss Delaware with his correspondence. He said to himself that it was because she was so efficient. Yes, that was it, of course, he assured himself, frowning when, once upon a time, he detected a flush on his face in answer to a sudden question of his soul. Thereafter he went not infrequently to the general offices.
III
On one such occasion he found himself in the position known among salaried workers as being "called upon the carpet" before "the old man." Rawn held a letter in his hand to which he referred as he chided Halsey for the delays in his department of the work.