Now, here a week or ten days ago, when I leaves Vee and my peaceful little home after a week-end swing, I expects to be shot up to Amesbury, Mass., to inspect a gun-limber factory. Am I? Not at all. By 3 P.M. I'm in Bridgeport, Conn., wanderin' about sort of aimless, and tryin' to size up a proposition that I'm about as well qualified to handle as a plumber's helper called in to tune a pipe organ.
Why was it that some three thousand hands in one of our sub-contractin' plants was bent on gettin' stirred up and messy about every so often, in spite of all that had been done to soothe 'em?
Does that listen simple, or excitin', or even interestin'? It didn't to me. Specially after I'd given the once-over to this giddy mob of Wops and Hunkies and Sneezowskis.
The office people didn't know how many brands of Czechs or Magyars or Polacks they had in the shops. What they was real sure of was that a third of the bunch had walked out twice within the last month, and if they quit again, as there was signs of their doin', we stood to drop about $200,000 in bonuses on shell contracts.
It wasn't a matter of wage scales, either. Honest, some of them ginks with three z's in their names was runnin' up, with over-time and all, pay envelops that averaged as much as twelve a day. Why, some of the women and girls were pullin' down twenty-five a week. And they couldn't kick on the workin' conditions, either. Here was a brand-new concrete plant, clean as a new dish-pan, with half the sides swingin' glass sashes, and flower beds outside.
"And still they threaten another strike," says the general manager. "If it comes, we might as well scrap this whole plant and transfer the equipment to Pennsylvania or somewhere else. Unless"—here he grins sarcastic—"you can find out what ails 'em, Lieutenant. But you are only the third bright young man the Corrugated has sent out to tell us what's what, you know."
"Oh, well," says I. "There's luck in odd numbers. Cheer up."
It was after this little chat that I sheds the army costume and wanders out disguised as a horny-handed workingman.
Not that I'd decided to get a job right away. After my last stab I ain't so strong for this ten-hour cold-lunch trick as I was when I was new to the patriotic sleuthin' act. Besides, bein' no linguist, I couldn't see how workin' with such a mixed lot was goin' to get me anywhere. If I could only run across a good ambidextrous interpreter, now, one who could listen in ten languages and talk in six, it might help. And who was it I once knew that had moved to Bridgeport?
I'd been mullin' on that mystery ever since I struck the town. Just a glimmer, somewhere in the back of my nut, that there had been such a party some time or other. I'll admit that wasn't much of a clue to start out trailin' in a place of this size, but it's all I had.