The Efficiency Expert Part 20

"Come," he said, "Krovac, there is no use in our quarreling. You can help me and I can help you. There must be some other way to get around this."

"What are you trying to do?" asked Krovac. "I got enough on you now to send you up, and I don't mind tellin' yuh," he added, "that I had a guy hid down there in the shop where he could watch you drop the envelope behind my machine. I got a witness, yuh understand!"

Mr. Bince did understand, but still he managed to control his temper.

"What of it?" he said. "n.o.body would believe your story, but let's forget that. What we want to do is get rid of Torrance."

"That isn't all you want to do," said Krovac. "There is something else."

Bince realized that he was compromised as hopelessly already as he could be if the man had even more information.

"Yes," he said, "there is something beside Torrance's interference in the shop. He's interfering with our accounting system and I don't want it interfered with just now."

"You mean the pay-roll?" asked Krovac.

"It might be," said Bince.

"You want them two new guys that are working in the office croaked, too?" asked Krovac.

"I don't want anybody 'croaked'," replied Bince. "I didn't tell you to kill Torrance in the first place. I just said I didn't want him to come back here to work."

"Ah, h.e.l.l, what you givin' us?" growled the other. "I knew what you meant and you knew what you meant, too. Come across straight. What do you want?"

"I want all the records of the certified public accountants who are working here," said Bince after a moment's pause. "I want them destroyed, together with the pay-roll records."

"Where are they?"

"They will all be in the safe in Mr. Compton's office."

Krovac knitted his brows in thought for several moments. "Say," he said, "we can do the whole thing with one job."

"What do you mean?" asked Bince,

"We can get rid of this Torrance guy and get the records, too."

"How?" asked Bince. "Do you know where Feinheimer's is?"

"Yes."

"Well, you be over there to-night about ten thirty and I'll introduce you to a guy who can pull off this whole thing, and you and I won't have to be mixed up in it at all."

"To-night at ten thirty," said Bince.

"At Feinheimer's," said Krovac.

CHAPTER XX.

AN INVITATION TO DINE.

As the workman pa.s.sed through the little outer office Edith Hudson glanced up at him.

"Where," she thought after he had gone, "have I seen that fellow before?"

Jimmy was in the shop applying "How to Get More Out of Your Factory" to the problems of the International Machine Company when he was called to the telephone.

"Is this Mr. Torrance?" asked a feminine voice.

"It is," replied Jimmy.

"I am Miss Compton. My father will probably not be able to get to the office for several days, and as he wishes very much to talk with you he has asked me to suggest that you take dinner with us this evening."

"Thank you," said Jimmy. "Tell Mr. Compton that I will come to the house right after the shop closes to-night."

"I suppose," said Elizabeth Compton as she turned away from the phone, "that an efficiency expert is a very superior party and that his conversation will be far above my head."

Compton laughed. "Torrance seems to be a very likable chap," he said, "and as far as his work is concerned he is doing splendidly."

"Harold doesn't think so," said Elizabeth. "He is terribly put out about the fellow. He told me only the other night that he really believed that it would take years to overcome the bad effect that this man has had upon the organization and upon the work in general."

"That is all poppyc.o.c.k," exclaimed Compton, rather more irritably than was usual with him. "For some reason Harold has taken an unwarranted dislike to this man, but I am watching him closely, and I will see that no very serious mistakes are made."

When Jimmy arrived at the Compton home he was ushered into the library where Mr. Compton was sitting. In a corner of the room, with her back toward the door, Elizabeth Compton sat reading. She did not lay aside her book or look in his direction as Jimmy entered, for the man was in no sense a guest in the light of her understanding of the term. He was merely one of her father's employees here on business to see him, doubtless a very ordinary sort of person whom she would, of course, have to meet when dinner was announced, but not one for whom it was necessary to put oneself out in any way.

Mr. Compton rose and greeted Jimmy cordially and then turned toward his daughter.

"Elizabeth," he said, "this is Mr. Torrance, the efficiency expert at the plant."

Leisurely Miss Compton laid aside her book. Rising, she faced the newcomer, and as their eyes met, Jimmy barely stifled a gasp of astonishment and dismay. Elizabeth Compton's arched brows raised slightly and involuntarily she breathed a low e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, "Efficiency expert!"

Simultaneously there flashed through the minds of both in rapid succession a series of recollections of their previous meetings. The girl saw the clerk at the stocking-counter, the waiter at Feinheimer's, the prize-fighter at the training quarters and the milk-wagon driver.

All these things pa.s.sed through her mind in the brief instant of the introduction and her acknowledgment of it. She was too well-bred to permit any outward indication of her recognition of the man other than the first almost inaudible e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n that had been surprised from her.

The indifference she had felt prior to meeting the efficiency expert was altered now to a feeling of keen interest as she realized that she held the power to relieve Bince of the further embarra.s.sment of the man's activities in the plant, and also to save her father from the annoyance and losses that Bince had a.s.sured her would result from Torrance's methods. And so she greeted Jimmy Torrance pleasantly, almost cordially.

"I am delighted," she said, "but I am afraid that I am a little awed, too, as I was just saying to father before you came that I felt an efficiency expert must be a very superior sort of person."

If she placed special emphasis on the word "superior" it was so cleverly done that it escaped the notice of her father.

"Oh, not at all," replied Jimmy. "We efficiency experts are really quite ordinary people. One is apt to meet us in any place that nice people are supposed to go."

Elizabeth felt the color rising slowly to her cheek. She realized then that if she had thrown down the gage of battle the young man had lost no time in taking it up.

"I am afraid," she said, "that I do not understand very much about the nature or the purpose of your work, but I presume the idea is to make the concern with which you are connected more prosperous--more successful?"

"Yes," said her father, "that is the idea, and even in the short time he has been with us Mr. Torrance has effected some very excellent changes."

"It must be very interesting work," commented the girl; "a profession that requires years of particular experience and study, and I suppose one must be really thoroughly efficient and successful himself, too, before he can help to improve upon the methods of others or to bring them greater prosperity."