"Well," he said, "you don't sound like bad news."
"I don't believe we are very bad," replied Hilda.
"Should say not," put in Max. "It's finer'n silk."
Hilda said, "Max," in a low voice, but he went on:—
"The best thing, Mr. Bannon, was when I told him it was Hilda that had been sending things around. He thought it was you, you see, and Grady'd told him it was all a part of the game to bamboozle him out of the money that was rightfully his. It's funny to hear him sling that Grady talk around. I don't think he more'n half knows what it means. I'd promised not to tell, you know, but I just saw there wasn't no use trying to make him understand things without talking pretty plain. There ain't a thing he wouldn't do for Hilda now—"
"Max," said Hilda again, "please don't."
When they reached the house, Max at once started in. Hilda hesitated, and then said:—
"I'll come in a minute, Max."
"Oh," he replied, "all right." But he waited a moment longer, evidently puzzled.
"Well," said Bannon, "was it so hard?"
"No—not hard exactly. I didn't know he was so poor. Somehow you don't think about it that way when you see them working. I don't know that I ever thought about it at all before."
"You think he won't give us any trouble?"
"I'm sure he won't. I—I had to promise I'd go again pretty soon."
"Maybe you'll let me go along."
"Why—why, yes, of course."
She had been hesitating, looking down and picking at the splinters on the gate post. Neither was Bannon quick to speak. He did not want to question her about the visit, for he saw that it was hard for her to talk about it. Finally she straightened up and looked at him.
"I want to tell you," she said, "I haven't understood exactly until tonight—what they said about the accident and the way you've talked about it—well, some people think you don't think very much about the men, and that if anybody's hurt, or anything happens, you don't care as long as the work goes on." She was looking straight at him. "I thought so, too. And tonight I found out some things you've been doing for him—how you've been giving him tobacco, and the things he likes best that I'd never have thought of, and I knew it was you that did it, and not the Company—and I—I beg your pardon."
Bannon did not know what to reply. They stood for a moment without speaking, and then she smiled, and said "Good night," and ran up the steps without looking around.
CHAPTER XIII
It was the night of the tenth of December. Three of the four stories of the cupola were building, and the upright posts were reaching toward the fourth. It still appeared to be a confused network of timbers, with only the beginnings of walls, but as the cupola walls are nothing but a shell of light boards to withstand the wind, the work was further along than might have been supposed. Down on the working story the machinery was nearly all in, and up here in the cupola the scales and garners were going into place as rapidly as the completing of the supporting framework permitted. The cupola floors were not all laid. If you had stood on the distributing floor, over the tops of the bins, you might have looked not only down through a score of openings between plank areas and piles of timbers, into black pits, sixteen feet square by seventy deep, but upward through a grill of girders and joists to the clear sky. Everywhere men swarmed over the work, and the buzz of the electric lights and the sounds of hundreds of hammers blended into a confused hum.
If you had walked to the east end of the building, here and there balancing along a plank or dodging through gangs of laborers and around moving timbers, you would have seen stretching from off a point not halfway through to the ground, the annex bins, rising so steadily that it was a matter only of a few weeks before they would be ready to receive grain. Now another walk, this time across the building to the north side, would show you the river house, out there on the wharf, and the marine tower rising up through the middle with a single arc lamp on the topmost girder throwing a mottled, checkered shadow on the wharf and the water below.
At a little after eight o'clock, Peterson, who had been looking at the stairway, now nearly completed, came out on the distributing floor. He was in good spirits, for everything was going well, and Bannon had frankly credited him, of late, with the improvement in the work of the night shifts. He stood looking up through the upper floors of the cupola, and he did not see Max until the timekeeper stood beside him.
"Hello, Max," he said. "We'll have the roof on here in another ten days."
Max followed Peterson's glance upward.
"I guess that's right. It begins to look as if things was coming 'round all right. I just come up from the office. Mr. Bannon's there. He'll be up before long, he says. I was a-wondering if maybe I hadn't ought to go back and tell him about Grady. He's around, you know."
"Who? Grady?"
"Yes. Him and another fellow was standing down by one of the cribbin' piles. I was around there on the way up."
"What was they doing?"
"Nothing. Just looking on."
Peterson turned to shout at some laborers, then he pushed back his hat and scratched his head.
"I don't know but what you'd ought to 'a' told Charlie right off. That man Grady don't mean us no good."
"I know it, but I wasn't just sure."
"Well, I'll tell you—"
Before Peterson could finish, Max broke in:—
"That's him."
"Where?"
"That fellow over there, walking along slow. He's the one that was with Grady."
"I'd like to know what he thinks he's doing here." Peterson started forward, adding, "I guess I know what to say to him."
"Hold on, Pete," said Max, catching his arm. "Maybe we'd better speak to Mr. Bannon. I'll go down and tell him, and you keep an eye on this fellow."
Peterson reluctantly assented, and Max walked slowly away, now and then pausing to look around at the men. But when he had nearly reached the stairway, where he could slip behind the scaffolding about the only scale hopper that had reached a man's height above the floor, he moved more rapidly. He met Bannon on the stairway, and told him what he had seen. Bannon leaned against the wall of the stairway bin, and looked thoughtful.
"So he's come, has he?" was his only comment. "You might speak to Pete, Max, and bring him here. I'll wait."
Max and Peterson found him looking over the work of the carpenters.
"I may not be around much tonight," he said, with a wink, "but I'd like to see both of you tomorrow afternoon some time. Can you get around about four o'clock, Pete?"
"Sure," the night boss replied.
"We've got some thinking to do about the work, if we're going to put it through. I'll look for you at four o'clock then, in the office." He started down the stairs. "I'm going home now."
"Why," said Peterson, "you only just come."
Bannon paused and looked back over his shoulder. The light came from directly overhead, and the upper part of his face was in the shadow of his hat brim, but Max, looking closely at him, thought that he winked again.
"I wanted to tell you," the foreman went on; "Grady's come around, you know—and another fellow—"
"Yes, Max told me. I guess they won't hurt you. Good night."