Dangerous Days

"Better keep her on for a month or two, anyhow," he said. "They're up to

something, and I miss my guess if it isn't directed against you."

"How about Herman Klein?"

"Nothing doing," stated Mr. Dunbar, flatly. "Our informer is tending bar

at Gus's. Herman listens and drinks their beer, but he's got the German

fear of authority in him. He's a beer socialist. That's all."

But in that Mr. Dunbar left out of account the innate savagery that

lurked under Herman's phlegmatic surface.

"You don't think it would do if she was moved to another office?"

"The point is this." Dunbar moved his chair forward. "The time may come

when we will need the girl as an informer. Rudolph Klein is infatuated

with her. Now I understand that she has a certain feeling of--loyalty

to Mr. Graham. In that case"--he glanced at Clayton--"the welfare of the

many, Mr. Spencer, against the few."

For a long time after he was gone Clayton sat at his desk, thinking.

Every instinct in him revolted against the situation thus forced on him.

There was something wrong with Dunbar's reasoning. Then it flashed on

him that Dunbar probably was right, and that their points of view were

bitterly opposed. Dunbar would have no scruples, because he was not

quite a gentleman. But war was a man's game. It was not the time for

fine distinctions of ethics. And Dunbar was certainly a man.

If only he could talk it over with Natalie! But he knew Natalie too well

to expect any rational judgment from her. She would demand at once that

the girl should go. Yet he needed a woman's mind on it. In any question

of relationship between the sexes men were creatures of impulse, but

women had plotted and planned through the ages. They might lose their

standards, but never their heads. Not that he put such a thought into

words. He merely knew that women were better at such things than men.

That afternoon, as a result of much uncertainty, he took his problem to

Audrey. And Audrey gave him an answer.

"You've got to think of the mill, Clay," she said. "The Dunbar man is

right. And all you or any other father of a boy can do is to pray in

season, and to trust to Graham's early training."

And all the repressed bitterness in Clayton Spencer's heart was in his

answer.

"He never had any early training, Audrey. Oh, he had certain things. His

manners, for instance. But other things? I ought not to say that. It was

my fault, too. I'm not blaming only Natalie. Only now, when it is all we

have to count on--"