Joan and Co.

It was the office boy who found Forsythe. When the lad came in that morning to perform his usual tasks he saw the man in his chair leaning forward with his head on his desk as though asleep. He tiptoed about his work in order not to wake him. And then—in passing closer to the desk—he saw something crimson like red ink spattered over the papers upon which the head rested. Then he saw the clasped hand and the revolver.

Holding his breath, as though more than ever anxious now not to awaken the man, he stole out. In the corridor he began to lift his voice in a panic.

“He’s shot himself!” he cried.

Dicky answered the telephone that rang wildly that morning at seven, and at the news said quietly:

“Notify the police. Don’t ring up here again. I’ll be right down.”

He was out of the house fifteen minutes later and at the office at half-past seven. Already the officers were there, but after feeling of the cold dead pulse they ordered the man left where he was until the coroner arrived. Dicky took one look at him—at the stiff figure and the brushed-back hair and went on to his father’s office. He sat down in the old swivel chair and called up Wentworth, his father’s lawyer. He got the man out of bed.

“I wish you could come down right away,” he said. “There’s the devil to pay all round.”

“But, my dear fellow,” protested Wentworth, “a couple of hours from now will do quite as well.”

“Oh, come on,” pleaded Dicky. “I’m all hollow in the pit of me.”

“Then I’d suggest a good breakfast.”

“Come on, will you?” shouted Dicky. “There’s a dead man here and I don’t know what’s coming next.”

He hung up the receiver without further identifying the dead man, which perhaps is what brought Wentworth down there within an hour. But he was needed to answer the thousand questions the reporters put, if for no other reason. And after that, when things were cleaned up a little and the two were alone, Dicky in his father’s old swivel chair and Wentworth opposite him, the lawyer began to go to the heart of the matter.

“Tell me all you know,” he demanded.

Dicky told him, but, everything considered, it was not much.

“I guess dad has been cleaned out all right enough,” concluded Dicky.

“But this Forsythe—where does he come in?” inquired Wentworth.

“He owned some stock in the company,” answered Dicky. “He was all worked up trying to put through a deal to acquire a new process which he thought was going to put us out of business. When I told him what had happened to dad he seemed pretty well worried, but—Holy Smoke! I didn’t think it would lead to anything like this.”

“Perhaps there was something else,” suggested Wentworth.

“Not that I know of.”

“Your father might know. I think I ought to see him.”

“Now, look here,” protested Dicky. “Let’s leave him out of this. He has troubles enough as it is. What I’d like to do is to clean this all up without bringing him into it.”

“If I know him, that’s going to be hard to do.”

“I think we can manage it. I’m going to break him into golf this afternoon, and I have a notion that when we get back he’ll be so dog-tired he won’t be able to think.”

“But, my boy, you haven’t the authority to take over his business.”

“Then I’ll get it. Can’t you make out some sort of paper?”

“He could give you a power of attorney, of course.”

“Then fix it up and I’ll have him sign it. In the meanwhile you can go ahead and find out where he stands with Toole & Co., can’t you?”

“I suppose the firm will let us know that. There is probably a letter in his morning mail.”

The mail was on the desk. Dicky ran through it and picked out an envelope with a Wall Street address in the left-hand corner.

“Here it is,” he nodded.

He tore it open. It was a cold-blooded statement of yesterday’s transactions and showed a debit of two hundred and ten thousand dollars.

“That’s going some,” he observed as he handed it to Wentworth. The latter glanced it over in amazement.

“What has he got to cover this?” he asked.

“Hanged if I know,” answered Dicky.

“You’d better find out right off. Accounts of this sort aren’t allowed to stand long. I’ll make out the power of attorney for you and then you’d better call in an auditor to make an inventory. The sooner we begin, the better.”

“Right. And the sooner we get through it the better. It looks as though I’d better be hunting around for a job somewhere.”

Burnett senior was inclined to rebel at this arbitrary method of being relieved of his business.

“I’m not dead yet,” he protested.

“Far from it,” agreed Dicky. “The point of this new arrangement is to keep you from being dead for a long while to come.”

“But what in thunder do you know about the business?” inquired Burnett.

“Not much,” admitted Dicky. “However, I’m willing to learn. Besides, in this present emergency I’m turning things over to Wentworth. When he gets through, we’ll hold a war council and see what comes next.”

“Yes—Wentworth is a good man,” nodded Burnett.

Dicky was further aided and abetted by Mrs. Burnett, so that in the end Burnett signed the power of attorney. Armed with this, Dicky went back to the office and gave Wentworth carte blanche to go ahead and do whatever he pleased. It was then noon, and he rang up Hastings at the Harvard Club and reminded him of an invitation he had frequently extended to take him out to the Dale Country Club whenever he had a half-day.

“I want you to give my father his first lesson in golf this afternoon,” he informed Hastings.

Whatever the latter’s emotions were upon receipt of this news, he politely concealed them and generously offered to do his best.

Dicky sat on the club piazza drinking ginger ale with his mother while his father started around the course. Two hours later his father came back perspiring. He had made one half the holes in three hundred and forty, but it must be remembered that his nerves were not in the best of condition.