Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise

"Wonderful ties!" sneered Ernest. "Charley has turned me down, my father has turned me out and you've beaten me up."

Roger concealed a grin. "Poor old chap!" he murmured. "So a woman's at the bottom of it all, eh?"

"I don't know why her refusing me affected me so," said Ernest, as if to himself. "But I felt as if nothing mattered. And then to have the Sun Plant a failure and my father's attitude! O pshaw, what's the use? Let me alone, Roger. I'm going to pack up and get out of here."

"Ernest," said Roger, "if you don't stay by while we straighten this out, I'll never get over it and no more will you. We've loved each other too long, Ern. Our lives have become interwoven. If we break now we'll go lame all our days. You know that, don't you, old man? You folks have all done so much for me. I've got to keep your friendship in order to pay up some of my indebtedness, eh, Ernie?"

Ernest drew a long breath and suddenly dropped his head into his hands and burst into tears.

"And now I'm crying!" he said. "Now I'm crying! There's no limit to my weakness."

Roger, still with a little twisted grin, lighted a cigarette. "A peach of a superman you are, eh, Ern?"

Ernest did not answer and Roger walked up and down the room, waiting. Finally Ernest lifted his flushed face and took the cigarette which Roger offered him, and began to speak, rapidly: "I was desperate, after the Smithsonian turned me down. Seems that they didn't like the look of things Austin did and that's why they dropped you. Werner looked me up. I found out later that Gustav had kept him informed, and that Werner had got Austin just as they got me. I honestly thought I was doing a great thing for you and the world, Rog. Werner showed me a list of names of people in this country that're helping Germany that would make your eyes start. And he was always praising America."

"Ernest, has Werner any drawings of the plant?" asked Roger.

"No, he hasn't."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, because that's the first thing he asked me for, this afternoon. All our stuff that Austin had, his widow burned with his other papers. She said he told her to if anything happened to him. And you know I brought yours back, as I promised. What Gustav may have sent him I don't know, but evidently not satisfactory drawings or he wouldn't have been so keen to get more!"

"I wonder about the new engine," mused Roger. "Well, I have little fear of that. Gustav isn't enough of an engineer to guess what he doesn't see. He couldn't make a drawing of the idea of that engine to save his neck. And Dean Erskine's got the only plan I ever finished of it."