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"A young person – " he began.
"Send her right in," cried John Dene.
Mr. Blair glanced uncertainly from Sir Lyster to John Dene, then back again to his chief. Seeing no contradiction in his eye, he turned and held open the door to admit Dorothy West.
"Ah! here you are," cried John Dene, rising and indicating that the girl should occupy his chair. "There's your pound of tea," pointing to the package lying before Sir Lyster, "and there's a new teapot for you," he added, indicating that object, which seemed to flaunt its pink and white and gold as if determined to brazen things out.
The girl looked at the teapot, at Sir Lyster and on to John Dene, and back to the teapot. Then she laughed. She had pretty teeth, John Dene decided.
"It's very kind of you," she said, "but there wasn't a pound of tea in the teapot you broke yesterday, and – and – "
"Never mind," said John Dene, "you can keep the rest. Now see here, I want someone to take down my letters. You're a stenographer?" he asked.
The girl nodded her head.
"Speeds?" enquired John Dene.
"A hundred and twenty – " was the response.
"Typing?"
"Sixty-five words – "
"You'll do," said John Dene with decision. "In future you'll do my work only. Nine o'clock, every morning."
The girl looked enquiringly at Sir Lyster, who coughed slightly.
"We will take up your references, Miss – er – "
"Oh! cut it out," said John Dene impatiently, "I don't want references."
"But," replied Sir Lyster, "this is work of a confidential nature.".
"See here," cried John Dene. "I started life selling newspapers in T'ronto. I never had a reference, I never gave a reference and I never asked a reference, and the man who can get ahead of John Dene had better stay up all night for fear of missing the buzzer in the morning. That girl's straight, else she wouldn't be asked to do my letters," he added. "Now, don't you wait," he said to Dorothy, seeing she was embarrassed at his remark; "nine o'clock to-morrow morning."
"I think it will be necessary to take up references," began Sir Lyster as John Dene closed the door on Dorothy.
John Dene span round on his heel. "I run my business on Canadian lines, not on British," he cried. "If you're always going to be around telling me what to do, then I'll see this country to hell before they get my Destroyer. The man who deals with John Dene does so on his terms," and with that he left the room, closing the door with a bang behind him.
For a moment he stood gazing down at Mr. Blair. "Can you tell me," he asked slowly, "why the British Empire has not gone to blazes long ago?"
Mr. Blair gazed at him, mild surprise in his prominent eyes.
"I am afraid I don't – I cannot – " he began.
"Neither can I," said John Dene. "You're all just about as cute as dead weasels."
John Dene walked along the corridor and down the staircase in high dudgeon.
"Ha! Mr. Dene, what's happened?" enquired Sir Bridgman, who was mounting the stairs as John Dene descended.
"I've been wondering how it is the British Empire has hung together as long as it has," was the response.
"What have we been doing now?" enquired Sir Bridgman.
"It's my belief," remarked John Dene, "that in this country you wouldn't engage a janitor without his great-grandmother's birth-certificate."
"I'm afraid we are rather a prejudiced nation," said Sir Bridgman genially.
"I don't care a cousin Mary what you are," responded John Dene, "so long as you don't come up against me. I'm out to win this war; it doesn't matter to me a red cent who's got the most grandmothers, and the sooner you tell the First Lord and that prize seal of his, the better we shall get on;" and John Dene abruptly continued on his way.
Sir Bridgman smiled as he slowly ascended the stairs.
"I suppose," he murmured, "we are in the process of being gingered-up."
The rest of the day John Dene devoted to sight-seeing and wandering about the streets, keenly interested in and critical of all he saw.
The next morning he was at the Admiralty a few minutes to nine, and was conducted by an attendant to the room that had been assigned to him. He gave a swift glance round and, apparently satisfied that it would suit his purpose, seated himself at the large pedestal table and took out his watch. As he did so, he noticed an envelope addressed to him lying on the table. Picking it up he tore off the end, extracted and read the note. Just as he had finished there came a tap at the door.
"Come," he called out.
The door opened and Dorothy West entered, looking very pretty and business-like with a note-book and pencil in her hand.
"Good morning," she said.
"Mornin', Miss West," he replied, gazing at her apparently without seeing her. He was obviously thinking of something else.
She seated herself beside his table and looked up, awaiting his signal to begin the day's work.
"There are some things in this country that get my goat," he remarked.
John Dene threw down the letter he was reading, twirled the cigar between his lips and snorted his impatience, as he jumped from his chair and proceeded to stride up and down the room.
"There are quite a lot that get mine," she remarked demurely, as she glanced up from her note-book.
"A lot that get yours," he repeated, coming to a standstill and looking down at her.
"Things that get my goat." There was the slightest possible pause between the "my" and the "goat."
Then John Dene smiled. In Toronto it was said that when John Dene smiled securities could always be trusted to mount at least a point.
"Well, listen to this." He picked up the letter again and read:
"DEAR MR. DENE, —
"Sir Lyster desires me to write and express it as his most urgent wish that you will pay special regard to your personal safety. He fears that you may be inclined to treat the matter too lightly, hence this letter.
"Yours truly,
"REGINALD BLAIR."
"If that chap hadn't such a dandy set of grandmothers and first cousins, he'd be picking up cigarette-stubs instead of wasting his time telling me what I knew a year ago."
"But he's only carrying out Sir Lyster's instructions," suggested Dorothy.
"There's something in that," he admitted grudgingly, "but if they're going to be always running around warning me of danger I know all about – " He broke off. "Why," he continued a moment later, "I was shot at on the steamer, nearly hustled into the docks at Liverpool, set on by toughs in Manchester and followed around as if I was a bell-mule. I tell you it gets my goat. This country wants gingering-up." John Dene continued his pacing of the room.
"Couldn't you wear a red beard and blue glasses and – "
"What's that?" John Dene span round and fixed his eyes on the girl.
"I mean disguise yourself," said Dorothy, dropping her eyes beneath his gaze.
"Why?" The interrogation was rapped out in such a tone as to cause the girl to shrink back slightly.
"They wouldn't know and then it wouldn't – " she hesitated.
"Wouldn't what?" he demanded.
"Get your goat," said Dorothy after a moment's hesitation.
He continued to gaze intently at Dorothy, who was absorbed in a blank page of her note-book.
"Here, take this down;" and he proceeded to dictate.
"MY DEAR MR. BLAIR, —
"I am in receipt of yours of to-day's date. Will you tell Sir Lyster that I have bought a machine-gun, a blue beard, false eyebrows, and Miss West and I are going to do bayonet drill every morning with a pillow.
"With kind regards,
"Yours sincerely."
For a few moments Dorothy sat regarding her book with knitted brows. "I don't think I should send that, if I were you, Mr. Dene," she said at length.
"Why not?" he demanded, unaccustomed to having his orders questioned.
"It sounds rather flippant, doesn't it?"
John Dene smiled grimly, and as he made no further comment, Dorothy struck out the letter from her note-book.
All through the morning John Dene threw off letters. The way in which he did his dictating reminded Dorothy of a retriever shaking the water from its coat after a swim. He hurled short, sharp sentences at her, as if anxious to be rid of them. Sometimes he would sit hunched up at his table, at others he would spring up and proceed feverishly to pace about the room.
As she filled page after page of her note-book, Dorothy wondered when she would have an opportunity of transcribing her notes. Hour after hour John Dene dictated, in short bursts, interspersed with varying pauses, during which he seemed to be deep in thought. Once Sir Bridgman looked in, and Dorothy had a space in which to breathe; but with the departure of the First Sea Lord the torrent jerked forth afresh.
At two o'clock Dorothy felt that she must either scream or faint. Her right hand seemed as if it would drop off. At last she suggested that even Admiralty typists required lunch. In a flash John Dene seemed to change into a human being, solicitous and self-reproachful.
"Too bad," he said, as he pulled out his watch. "Why, it's a quarter after two. You must be all used up. I'm sorry."
"And aren't you hungry as well, Mr. Dene?" she asked, as she closed her note-book and rose.
"Hungry!" he repeated as if she had asked him a surprising question. "I've no use for food when I'm hustling. Where do you go for lunch?"
"I go to a tea-shop," said Dorothy after a moment's hesitation.
"And what do you eat?" demanded John Dene, with the air of a cross-examining counsel.
"Oh, all sorts of things," she laughed; "buns and eggs and – and – "
"That's no good," was the uncompromising rejoinder.
"They're really quite nourishing," she said with a smile. At the Admiralty it was not customary for the chiefs to enquire what the typists ate.
"You'd better come with me and have a good meal," he said bluntly, reaching for his hat.
Dorothy flushed. The implication was too obvious to be overlooked. Drawing herself up slightly, and with her head a little thrown back, she declined.
"I'm afraid I have an engagement," she said coldly.
John Dene looked up, puzzled to account for her sudden hauteur. He watched her leave the room, and then, throwing down his hat, reseated himself at his table and once more became absorbed in his work.
Dorothy went to the Admiralty staff-restaurant and spent a week's lunch allowance upon her meal. It seemed to help her to regain her self-respect. When she returned to John Dene's room some forty minutes later, determined to get some of her notes typed before he returned, she found him still sitting at his table. As she entered he took out his watch, looked at it and then up at her. Dorothy crimsoned as if discovered in some illicit act. She was angry with herself for her weakness and with John Dene – why, she could not have said.
"You've been hustling some," he remarked, as he returned the watch to his pocket.
"We've both been quick," said Dorothy, curious to know if John Dene had been to lunch.
"Oh, I stayed right here," he said, still gazing up at her.
Dorothy felt rebuked. He had evidently felt snubbed, she told herself, and it was her fault that he had remained at work.
"See here," said John Dene, "I can't breathe in this place. It's all gold braid and brass buttons. I'm going to rent my own offices, and have lunch sent in and we'll get some work done. You can get a rest or a walk about three. I don't like breaking off in the midst of things," he added, a little lamely, Dorothy thought.
"Very well, Mr. Dene," she said, as she resumed her seat.
"Do you mind? Say right out if you'd hate it." There was a suspicion of anxiety in his tone.
"I'm here to do whatever you wish," she said with dignity.
With a sudden movement John Dene sprang up and proceeded to pace up and down the room.
From time to time he glanced at Dorothy, who sat pencil and note-book ready for the flood of staccatoed sentences that usually accompanied these pacings to and fro. At length he came to a standstill in the middle of the room, planted his feet wide apart as if to steady the resolution to which he had apparently come.
"Say, what's all this worth to you?" he blurted out.
Dorothy looked up in surprise, not grasping his meaning.
"Worth to me?" she queried, her head on one side, the tip of her pencil resting on her lower lip.
