The Physicists' Daughter Evans

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Copyright © 2022 by Mary Anna Evans
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Cover design by Sara Wood
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are
used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any
similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and
not intended by the author.
Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Evans, Mary Anna, author.
Title: The Physicists’ daughter / Mary Anna Evans.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, [2022]
Identifiers: LCCN 2021056220 (print) | LCCN 2021056221 (ebook) |
(trade paperback) | (epub)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3605.V369 P49 2022 (print) | LCC
PS3605.V369
(ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056220
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056221
 Contents

Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Author’s Note
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
 This book is dedicated to the women of science like these, whose
names we know, and to the women of science whose names we will
never know—
Lise Meitner, whose discovery of nuclear fission never received a
Nobel Prize but who is immortalized on the periodic table by
Meitnerium
Irène Joliot-Curie, physicists’ daughter and winner of the Nobel Prize
in her own right
Mary Golda Ross, the first Native American female engineer and co-
author of the classified NASA Planetary Handbook
Rita Levi-Montalcini, who set up a laboratory in her bedroom when
Mussolini barred Jews from academic and professional careers and
just kept working, eventually receiving the Nobel Prize for the
discovery of nerve growth factor
Chien-Shiung Wu, who was instrumental in the development of the
process for separating uranium’s U-235 and U-238 isotopes by
gaseous diffusion
Sameera Moussa, the Egyptian nuclear physicist who was the first
foreign national to be granted permission to visit secret U.S. atomic
facilities
Katherine Johnson, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
for her contributions to space exploration
Rosalind Franklin, who used X-ray diffraction to create an image of
DNA that changed our understanding of biology
Mildred Dresselhaus, the “queen of carbon science”
Tu Youyou, who won a Nobel Prize for her discovery of a treatment
for malaria based on traditional Chinese medicine, saving millions of
lives
Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman and the first Iranian to receive
the most prestigious award in mathematics, the Fields Medal
Wanda Díaz-Merced, the Puerto Rican astronomer who discovered
“sonification,” a means of using audible sound to detect patterns in
huge data sets, after losing her sight
This list is admittedly incomplete and idiosyncratic, as there are far
more women I’d like to honor than I can include here. It is arranged
in order of birth date, when available. The women featured were
chosen from a longer list compiled by the Beyond Curie project
(beyondcurie.com), which celebrates female scientists,
mathematicians, and engineers with the aim of shedding light on
their often overlooked accomplishments.
 Chapter 1

September 1944

Justine Byrne liked taking out the trash. It was her favorite part of
the workday.
Her factory work was monotonous by design. She understood that,
and she was more or less resigned to it. The whole point of an
assembly line was efficiency, and efficiency apparently required a
whole lot of people to do the same thing, over and over, all day and
every day. Monotony got the job done.
Since the world was at war, and her job was to build war machines
that would fly and float the Allied troops to victory, Justine was
happy to stand at her station all day and every day, plucking parts
off an endlessly moving conveyor belt and bolting them together.
Well, mostly happy. Daydreams of romance and faraway places
helped the long days pass.
She didn’t even know exactly what she was building. It wasn’t her
job to know, and she had sworn not to tell anybody about it anyway.
She just did what she was told, and she did it well. One of the things
she was told to do was to take out the trash every afternoon.
On this particular afternoon, Justine carried a wooden crate loaded
with soiled packing material and flattened cardboard boxes that were
past reusing. Her destination was a lowly trash pen, a square area
enclosed by tall wooden fencing that stood behind Higgins
Industries’ huge Michaud plant. In the Carbon Division, the part of
the factory where Justine worked, there was no exterior door other
than the big, open loading dock where trucks made pickups and
deliveries. This meant she had to go through the main part of the
plant to get to a door when she needed to get her trash outside.
Passing through that back door took her away from the cacophony
of an industrial plant where boats and ships and airplanes were
taking shape. It took her to a swath of pavement bounded by low
vegetation, green and shrubby, that stretched all the way to the
bank of the industrial canal where barges brought raw materials and
carried away finished products.
People who had lived in New Orleans for a good long while called
this area east of the city Prairie Tremblante, and Justine thought
there was a sweetness in the way the French words described the
land’s understated beauty. She was looking at grassland, yes, but
the scene had an only-for-now feeling. If she stepped into the
waving grass, she might sink or she might just feel the earth
tremble, vibrating at a frequency peculiar to this time and this place.
It was a beautiful place to be outside on an afternoon that was cool
for late September.
She passed through the trash pen’s gate, emptied her crate into a
bin, and walked back to the factory door, but she did these things
slowly. Fresh breezes and silence were hard to come by for the
workers at the Michaud plant, and Justine liked to make the most of
them. She used her slow stroll to admire the afternoon sunshine and
the smell of damp earth. Then she opened the factory’s heavy door,
bracing herself for clanging metal and whining machinery. Walking
through that door was always like falling into an ocean of sound, but
Justine was used to it. She was new to the Michaud plant, but she’d
worked at one Higgins factory or another for three years, since she
was eighteen.
She guessed she’d never get over her awe at walking past the long
lines where Navy boats were built. Those boats, Higgins Industries’
original product and still the pride of the company, took shape as
they moved across the factory floor, one after another. An entire
flotilla of watercraft hung overhead, some of them belly up and
some of them belly down, while workers welded and riveted and
bolted them together. Beyond them was a row of half-built airplanes
getting ready to fly. Their tremendous bulk made the carbon and
metal assemblies that she bolted together look piddly and small.
Hanging over those flashy war machines, a banner proclaimed that
“THE GUY WHO RELAXES IS HELPING THE AXIS!” Justine could
vouch for the fact that Higgins workers had precious few chances to
relax.
She knew the sounds of a manufacturing plant so well that she felt
something was wrong before she’d traveled ten steps down the boat
manufacturing line. Far above the shrieking of saws, she heard
shrieking human voices. Accompanying the thunder of
sledgehammers, she heard the pattering sound of human feet on
the concrete floor. And high overhead, she heard a rhythmic clanging
that just wasn’t right.
Looking up, she saw a tremendous wooden assembly, probably
part of the hull of a PT boat, dangling from the hoist of a gantry
crane. The metal beams supporting the crane were supposed to
stand still, vertical and strong, but they weren’t doing that. They
were swaying so hard that their load swung like a pendulum, and
Justine knew that this couldn’t go on for long. The crane wasn’t
made to move like that. Justine knew that even steel will fail when
stressed beyond its design limits.
She let the empty wooden crate fall from her hands. Her instincts
said to run toward the failing equipment and help, but she had taken
just a step toward the swaying crane when it collapsed, taking its
load to the factory floor where a cluster of three workers stood.
Justine saw it take them down.
Trying to walk upstream through the crowd of people fleeing a
disaster that had already happened, she raised her voice, hoping
someone would hear her over the din. “Somebody get a floor crane.
We’ll need it to get those people free of the wreckage.”
She couldn’t tell if anybody heard her, so she kept pushing against
the crowd, one step at a time. She knew where to find a portable
floor crane, mounted on wheels and stored in a nearby corner. If she
got to it, maybe she could get someone to help her move it to the
scene of the accident. Through a gap in the throng, she could see it
dead ahead. Its blue-painted steel beam called out to her. After a
few more struggling steps, she had her hand on it, ready to roll it to
people who needed help.
Then a voice sounded over the loudspeaker that Sam-the-
Timekeeper used to make announcements.
Sam’s voice was calm but insistent. He might be only a timekeeper,
but he had an air of command about him. “Everybody to their
stations—unless your station is in the immediate vicinity of the
accident, in which case we’re gonna need you to gather outside the
east entrance. We’ve got a rescue crew on its way.”
Justine was absolutely in the vicinity of the accident, and her
station was nowhere near where she stood. She needed to do what
Sam said and get moving, but still she lingered, one hand on the
blue floor crane.
Justine couldn’t see two of the injured workers. That was a bad
thing, since it meant they were probably under the pile of debris.
The third worker had pulled herself to a sitting position, but her leg
was trapped under the collapsed crane’s steel beam.
Five men ran toward the pile of splintered wood and mangled
metal. One of them carried a first aid kit and the others carried hand
tools, but she could see that they were going to need much more
than that to get the three workers free. She could also see that the
first aid kit was woefully inadequate.
Justine knew one of the men slightly, a burly red-haired custodian
named Martin, and she waved both hands to flag him down.
Gripping the floor crane’s supporting beam, she called out, “You’ll
need this.”
Martin skidded to a stop and grabbed one of his companions by
the arm. “Help me move this.” He directed a tense nod at Justine,
saying simply, “Thanks. You saved us the time we would’ve spent
looking for this,” then he turned his back on her and got to work.
As they wheeled the crane away, Justine walked toward the door
to the Carbon Division section of the plant where she worked. Her
legs went unexpectedly wobbly beneath her, so she paused to watch
the rescuers at work. They were getting the blue crane into position
to lift wreckage off the sitting woman’s leg. From this angle, Justine
could see the other two workers, and bile rose in her throat at the
sight of their still bodies pinned to the floor. There was almost no
blood, just a few crimson drips and spatters on the smooth gray
concrete beneath them. Justine almost wished for a more obvious
marker of calamity to mark the spot.
Broken bodies and death were the very thing Justine and the other
factory workers were working to avoid. Everyone on the home front
wanted to bring the soldiers home whole and in one piece. Nobody
wanted their young, strong bodies to lie limp and still on beaches or
in jungles or at the bottom of the sea. Justine saw her job as a real,
palpable thing that she could do to end the war. She knew it was
dangerous. She knew that there had been industrial accidents at
Higgins plants before. She knew that there would be more because
entropy dogged all human endeavors, but this was the first time that
her day-to-day danger had been rubbed in her face.
Justine ordered her wobbly legs to take her back to her station.
She was needed there. She was needed to help stop a war that was
consuming the whole world.
 Chapter 2

Justine’s parents couldn’t have known that World War II was waiting
like a lion licking its chops outside a nursery school door. Or maybe
they did know. They’d lived through the first worldwide war, and
they could surely see that humanity hadn’t changed very much in
the years since the Treaty of Versailles.
They were teachers at heart, so Justine spent her first eighteen
years learning things, then she spent the rest of her life being
grateful she knew them. By the time she was eighteen, she could
cook and sew. She could read German, and she could speak it, too.
She could mow the grass with a push mower that ran like a top,
because she knew how to grease it and sharpen its blades. Best of
all, she could weld.
Girls didn’t weld when Justine was growing up in 1930s New
Orleans, but her father was never much for rules. He showed her
how to stick weld, then he backed off and watched his undersized,
freckle-faced daughter make an unholy mess with a rod and a torch.
All the while, he whispered things she needed to know if she hoped
to make a better mess the next time.
“Justine, honey, watch the puddle,” he said as her yellow-orange
curls escaped from her tight braids. “And soften your wrist. If you
tense up, your weld will show it.”
And her welds did show it, until they didn’t. But how’s a girl
supposed to learn, unless somebody’s willing to step back and let
her try?
Justine’s mother was willing to step way back. She stayed busy
during those welding sessions, planning lessons that taught Justine
things like differential equations and quantum mechanics, things that
other people thought girls didn’t need to know. Even after she lost
her sight, Justine’s mother had continued those lessons, carefully
explaining the most exacting subjects without a book or notes. If a
person is going to do something so stupid as to be born a girl in
1923, she could do worse than to be born to two physicists, even if
it did mean that every dinner conversation was a Socratic dialogue
and every playtime activity was a demonstration of the mechanical
advantages of simple machines.
Justine’s parents died before the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor,
thanks to a flooded Louisiana back road that hadn’t offered enough
friction to keep their car from skidding into bayou water so dark that
a day passed before they were found. When the war came, the only
good thing about it was that it gave Justine a chance to weld for
real. She burned to weld her heart out, so that the Axis powers
would take a well-deserved fall.
***
Sonny, the Carbon Division’s daytime foreman, had gathered
everyone on his shift in the open area around the loading dock, the
only place inside that part of the factory where hundreds of people
could stand together. All those bodies made the air so hot that
Justine could barely breathe.
Sonny always wore his braggadocio like an ill-fitting sport coat, but
knowing that all of his workers’ eyes were on him only made it
worse. He preened under the unaccustomed attention. Justine found
his grand stance appalling, since he had almost certainly gathered
everyone to give them tragic news.
He cleared his throat loudly to quiet the crowd. “I’m sorry to
inform you that one of our fellow Higgins employees has died. Her
name was—”
He checked a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. “It was Cora
Becker. Al Haskins is in the hospital, but they say he’s doing good
after his back surgery.”
He checked the paper again. “Yolanda Bergeron’s gonna make it,
but they’re doing an operation on her leg right now, so say some
prayers. Say some prayers for all of ’em.”
He paused, mouth agape like a man who has forgotten what he
meant to say. Justine could see it on his face when the words came
back to him. “Mr. Higgins has been in touch with their families. And…
um…he says that he’s coming to the plant a week from Sunday. He
wants to say some things to y’all about how grateful he is for what
you do here every day. And I’m sure he wants to say nice things
about Cora, Al, and…Yolanda. Yeah, Yolanda.”
A tall woman next to Justine bent her head as if to send up a
prayer for Cora, Al, and Yolanda. Then she raised her eyes to look at
Sonny again, and their expression gave no doubt as to what she
thought of their boss. Justine noticed an elegantly coiled chignon at
the nape of the woman’s long, tanned neck. She’d seen that hairdo
before. This was Georgette Broussard. Justine didn’t know her, but
she automatically liked her because of the irritated way she looked
at their foreman.
Sonny stood before them, obviously pleased that he’d remembered
all three victims’ names this time. He closed his speech by saying,
“So get back to your stations, but know that Mr. Higgins himself is
proud of you. Me, too. I’m proud of you, too. Now go build some
stuff.”
So they did—except for Justine, because Sonny walked over and
grabbed her by the elbow.
“I need you to weld something. I don’t know what’s going on with
the lateral guides, but this is the third one I’ve needed you to fix for
me this month.”
***
Ships and planes and mysterious assemblages that are probably still
classified or should be…the time came when Justine welded them all
together. But in late 1944, the only welding jobs she got from Sonny
were quick patch jobs that the real welders were too busy to bother
with. Justine wanted to be one of the real welders, so she took
Sonny’s patch jobs with a smile. She was theatrical about it, too,
making a big fuss about doing her safety checks and donning her
goggles, hoping that somebody might notice that she could be
dropped into a high-paid job in aircraft assembly without needing to
spend six weeks in welding school.
Justine occasionally fantasized that she would get one of those
jobs and her supervisors would be so happy about the way her
flawless welds always held—always!—that they would keep her on
after the war was over, but she was a realist. Higgins Industries was
well-known around wartime New Orleans as a place that hired
women to do work that they usually weren’t allowed to do. Black
people, too. But everybody knew what would happen when the
soldiers came home.
She, along with a lot of other people working themselves to the
bone for an Allied victory, would be back to slinging hash and
mopping floors, with the best possible outcome for Justine being
that she was slinging hash and mopping floors for a husband who
paid the bills. Or so everyone wanted her to believe. Maybe Justine
would believe them when she met the right man, but she’d never
met one yet who made her burn to start her day by scrambling his
eggs.
By the time Justine welded that third lateral guide, donning her
welding goggles with a look-at-me-I’ve-got-valuable-skills flourish
was automatic. This left her mind free to chew on an interesting
problem.
Why did the same part keep breaking?
Not the exact same part. Her first weld of a broken lateral guide
had been solid, and it had held. So had the second one. It was just
that one lateral guide after another was failing. She pondered this
problem as she laid down her usual beautiful bead.
Was the problem poor design? That seemed unlikely, since Higgins
Industries had been using the same brand and model of conveyor
belt for years.
Metal prices had skyrocketed as soon as the war broke out. Maybe
the parts manufacturer was cutting corners. This was possible, even
likely.
It seemed far-fetched, but she supposed that somebody could be
deliberately tampering with the equipment. Mr. Higgins employed
thousands and thousands of people, and sometimes people got mad
at the boss. But would anybody really take their anger out on the
manufacturing machinery when there was a war on? People’s lives
depended on the things Higgins Industries built.
The constantly broken conveyor belt served just one line at one
factory among hundreds of wartime factories across the country, but
it was hers. Justine’s cousin Fred was in the South Pacific, and last
she heard, her childhood playmate Harold was somewhere in Africa.
She couldn’t go help them. All she could do was work her
monotonous assembly job, fastening two pieces of bright, shiny
metal together and making them ready to be joined to pieces of
meticulously machined carbon.
Justine coveted the machinists’ jobs almost as much as she
coveted a welding job. The Carbon Division was just two weeks old,
but the division’s handpicked machinists were quickly acquiring
legendary status. There they stood, long lines of workers, mostly
women, using their drills and grinders and lathes and saws to shape
pure carbon to exacting specifications.
And in return for that detailed work? Each and every one of them
pulled down good wages. A man’s wages. A skilled man’s wages.
The machinists generated tons of coal-black dust. Or at least it
seemed like tons of coal-black dust. There was always an unholy
cloud of carbon over their heads, as black as a Louisiana
thundercloud. As a result, the Carbon Division was tucked into a
back corner of Higgins’s Michaud plant, surrounded by a wall built to
contain all that dust.
After her first day on the job, Justine had run to the bathroom to
rinse her face before getting on the bus, but she’d quickly found that
nothing short of a full bath with soap and hot water would get all
the carbon dust off. The black powder was a badge of honor,
showing everyone that she’d been chosen to work on something
special. It clung to her face, her neck, even her ears, making her
oddly proud of being dirty at the end of the day as she hustled
through a cavernous factory building to make it to the bus on time.
The carbon dust found its way inside the navy blue canvas
coveralls that were supposed to protect her street clothes. It
penetrated those street clothes. It was an all-pervasive nuisance.
Still, the dust said, “I’m doing my part to bring our soldiers home.”
She couldn’t imagine how the machinists ever scrubbed the dust
off after standing right at the source of it for a full shift. At quitting
time, they looked like they’d been painted with the stuff. Maybe it
was permanent. Maybe, over time, it would soak into their skin like a
tattoo.
Justine wanted to look like that. She wanted it to be obvious at the
sight of her that she, a woman, had skills that were needed. She
also wanted to fatten up her nest egg as a defense against the day
when she was once again stuck supporting herself on a store clerk’s
paycheck.
Justine didn’t just envy the carbon machinists’ paychecks. She
envied them for their specialized knowledge of whatever-in-the-heck
she and her friends were making. They’d been told they were
making radio parts, and maybe they were, but they were the
weirdest-looking radio parts she’d ever seen. The company had been
supremely close-lipped about its brand-new Carbon Division, even
while focusing its attention on big things that flew and floated.
Justine had been sworn to secrecy when she took the new job,
which seemed strange for radio parts, but that was the nature of
military contracting. Everything she’d ever done for Higgins had
been secret. The only thing that had been different about this job
was that the man training her for it had been really serious about
the oath of secrecy. Maybe three years at war had just made
everybody jumpy. These days, the Army probably made everybody
in its vicinity take an undying oath of silence, even if they were just
building latrine seats.
All that secrecy probably made the broken lateral guides seem
more serious than they were. Still, any disgruntled employee
targeting this assembly line was targeting her livelihood. Worse than
that, the sabotage targeted Fred, Harold, and millions of soldiers,
airmen, and sailors. She looked around at her coworkers. Some of
them she liked and some of them she didn’t, but she couldn’t
imagine any of them doing such a thing. It was far more likely that
the repetitive stresses and strains of long hours of service were
simply snapping the metal at a vulnerable point.
In any case, she had to make it whole so that the assembly line
could keep running. Jerry, the Carbon Division’s maintenance chief,
did the best he could, but metal parts were hard to come by after
years of war. He had no spare parts to speak of.
She vowed that she would do whatever it took to keep the line
running, no matter what. Probably, that vow just meant that she
would weld anything that broke. If somebody was breaking things
on purpose, though, then she would find them, and she would find a
way to put a stop to it.
Justine kept her wrist soft and watched her puddle while she
plotted a betrayer’s downfall.
 Chapter 3

Mudcat pondered his options. He didn’t have many eyes inside

Higgins Industries’ Michaud plant, other than his own. And he
needed more eyes.
There was only one place in the plant that he himself couldn’t go,
but it was the most important place of all. He’d been able to put just
one person behind the doors hiding the Carbon Division from him.
His operative had valuable skills, but there was only so much
snooping around that one person could do without being obvious
about it. One person couldn’t pass through every closed door or chat
up every worker making classified gadgets, not without getting
caught. One operative simply wasn’t enough support to accomplish
Mudcat’s mission. He needed somebody else. So far, he had failed to
secure that person.
This was an unprecedented failure. Mudcat had amassed
considerable expertise in identifying people with potential. His
superiors had noticed, and this had kept him in their good graces.
It all came down to finding each target’s soft spots. Then, when
the time was right, he poked them. A love of money was the most
obvious soft spot—and, in the end, doesn’t everybody love money
and want more of what it can buy?—but his targets also needed the
ability to deceive everybody around them. Precious few people had
the wits to do that. Most of all, his targets needed a sense of
adventure that drove them to take risks, just for thrills.
When faced with the right recruit, Mudcat could smell an
adventurous soul. At the moment, he had his eye on an orange-
haired woman whose eyes were full of thoughts she didn’t share. He
sensed that she had the wits to be a great agent if he could find the
right words to make her say yes.
Mudcat patrolled New Orleans like a bottom feeder patrolling a
muddy river, ready to gulp down any information that served his
cause. He had liked the image of the bottom feeder so much that
he’d gone to the waterfront and chatted up fishermen, asking the
names of the fish that lurked at the bottom of the broad, brown river
that carried cargo from the Port of New Orleans to a world at war.
Their tales of the mudcat, a carnivorous fish that grew to the size
of a full-grown human being, had intrigued him. He’d listened to the
fishers talk until he could say “mudcat” with the varied vowel sounds
of speakers from all around southern Louisiana, from Irish Channel
neighborhoods to rural Cajun towns to the Ninth Ward. He’d even
heard a soft Uptown accent that had made him wonder what twists
of fate had led the man from a patrician home to a life of grinding
work on docks smeared with fish guts. For a moment, he’d
considered recruiting the misplaced man—as an informant, at least—
because people who have had money and lost it will often do
anything to get it back. And then the smell of last night’s rum had
penetrated the odor of fish entrails and explained the man’s hard
fall. Mudcat couldn’t risk taking on an operative who wasn’t fully in
control of himself, so he’d shoved the idea aside and just listened to
the man talk. His dialect was easy on the ear, but not nearly so
interesting as the harsh tones of the hardworking people around
him.
Mudcat had chatted with the fishers and dockworkers for hours,
crouching on a wet dock watching wet men do wet work. The full
size and power of the river came home to him there, as he stood at
the waterline and looked up at oceangoing vessels. Trees uprooted
by an upriver flood floated past the spot where he stood. They
dwarfed him, and the ships dwarfed them.
He’d enjoyed his day on the docks. Even better, it had helped him
firm up his grasp of the local dialect in both English and French.
Losing the last traces of his German accent was going to be a
lifelong challenge. Perhaps it was better to say that he would be
spending his life learning to submerge his mother tongue, pushing it
into the depths of his brain. The German language would always be
there at the riverbed of his innermost self, where his subconscious
mind would feed on it like a broad, silent mudcat, but hard work and
close listening would hammer its sounds and idioms into something
that sounded like America.
To be a truly great bottom feeder, a spy needed the improvisational
ear of a jazz musician. Self-preservation demanded it.
***
While Mudcat was crouching by the Mississippi River, a man who
sometimes called himself Fritz walked through Higgins Industries’
cave-like Michaud plant. He was pretending to work as he gazed up
at half-built boats and planes. It was almost unbelievable what
people could do when properly motivated. And, by proper
motivation, he meant fear. Fear of attack, fear of destruction, fear of
violent death—these were the driving forces behind the orgy of
construction that had resulted in all of these war machines. Soon,
they would roll out of the plant, fully built and ready for battle, and
the next crop of war machines would be sown.
Day by day, Fritz watched them come together, memorizing every
detail that his superiors would want to know, so that he could go
home and commit them to paper, but a stout wall stood between
him and the workers of the Carbon Division. He couldn’t breach it.
He had placed a single half-witted agent behind those doors, but two
eyes were not enough to see all of the things that Fritz needed to
know. He needed more eyes, and he needed those eyes to be set
into a skull that also housed a functioning brain.
So far, Fritz had failed to secure the agent he needed—eyes, brain,
and all—but perhaps his luck was about to turn. There was a woman
with a sharp-eyed face that called to him. She kept to herself, which
was an excellent quality in an agent, but her silent presence was not
sullen. She watched. She considered. Her lively eyes missed nothing.
He was aware of her whenever she was near because the flame-
colored cloud of her hair drew his eye. Her glorious hair meant
nothing in terms of her value as an agent, but if Fritz had a soft
spot, it was his deep-seated appreciation for beauty.
Soon the whistle would blow to signal quitting time. Fritz would
see her exit the restricted area of the Carbon Division and enter the
main part of the plant. He would watch her walk past him, crowned
with a golden-red cloud, and he would meditate on how he might
convince her to do the things he wanted her to do.
 Chapter 4

“Got a problem, sugar?”

Justine liked having a job, so she didn’t turn to the lecherous
Sonny and say, “I have a problem with you calling me ‘sugar.’”
Instead, she just stared at him and let him read her mind. Some of
her female coworkers had given her private attagirls when she failed
to kowtow to Sonny and his ilk, but others had taken a “Who does
she think she is?” view of the matter. Those other women were not
Justine’s friends, but then Justine didn’t have many friends.
“Got a problem, Justine?” Sonny made a face like her name tasted
bad.
Sonny called men by their last names, so she wanted to insist that
Sonny call her “Byrne,” but she decided it was wiser to stay quiet
and savor her victory over his attempt to label her his “sugar.” In the
two short weeks since she had transferred to the Michaud plant and
started working under Sonny, she’d already learned that nothing
good came of poking too hard at his vindictive streak.
Sonny carried a chip on his shoulder the size of Lake Pontchartrain.
Children can be cruel, and Sonny’s clubfoot had probably earned him
years of playground insults when he was a little boy, so maybe he’d
always nursed a long list of grudges. Now that his foot was keeping
him out of the military, he was an easy target for folks who resented
any man under forty who wasn’t in uniform. It wasn’t fair, but if
people were always fair, maybe there wouldn’t be wars at all.
There was a reason Justine was talking to Sonny, and she couldn’t
let the fact that he was an unpleasant person get in her way. She
needed to tell him that somebody might be fouling up the works. If
she brushed elbows every day with a coworker who was upset with
the company, her boss should know it. She opened her mouth to tell
him what she was thinking, then she closed it again.
“Got something to say, Justine? You look like a catfish on the hook
when you flap your lips open and shut like that.”
She didn’t like Sonny looking at her lips—nor talking about them—
but she opened and closed them a few more times, hoping to
distract him from the fact that she was thinking hard. What if Sonny
was the worker who was upset about how the company was treating
him? Maybe he wanted a raise and didn’t get it. Maybe he didn’t like
his job in the Carbon Division, supervising a crew that was mostly
women. Maybe he wanted to be out in the main part of the plant,
bossing around the people building flashy things like airplanes, and
maybe the plant manager had turned him down. Maybe the plant
manager had told him to get comfortable in this job, because he was
going to be working it for the rest of his life. Somebody like Sonny
would want to strike back at anyone who told him no.
It would have been so easy for Sonny to tamper with the conveyor
belt and its lateral guides. She supposed he might even have found
a way to tamper with the crane that had killed Cora Becker. Any time
Sonny got in the mood to do something that he didn’t want anybody
to see, he could just assign the people working nearby to another
part of plant, out of his way. He could even tell them to clock out
early, which he had done three times in two weeks and which
Justine and her pocketbook deeply resented.
The gossips among Sonny’s crew thought that he was sneaking a
few minutes with a girlfriend when he did that, and Justine thought
that they were probably right. But why should she miss a quarter-
hour’s pay because Sonny wanted to run around on his wife? Now,
though, she wondered whether he might be using that time to hurt
a lot more people than Mrs. Sonny and their kids.
She dropped any idea of telling Sonny about her suspicions. He
was still looking at her, waiting to find out why she’d walked up to
talk to him.
“Um…I need to go to the bathroom.”
“You just went an hour ago. Mr. Higgins ain’t paying you to shit,
and he especially ain’t paying you to pretend like you’re shittin’ while
you sneak a cigarette.”
Justine stammered, “It’s not that. It’s…” She let her voice trail off
while she moved her hands slightly, as if to cradle a cramping belly.
Then she stood there and let him imagine menstrual blood.
Sonny flushed to his hairline and barked, “Why, oh, why do they
gotta make me work with women?” Turning his back on her, he
pointed to the big clock on the wall, the one everybody watched as
its hands inched closer to quitting time. “Go, but be quick about it,
because I’ll be watching the time. And if you smell like cigarettes
when you come back, you’re fired.”
Justine didn’t smoke, because her parents had convinced her that
pulling hot vapor and particulate matter into her lungs wasn’t smart,
but she wasn’t all that quick about coming back from the bathroom,
either. She wanted a few quiet minutes to think. If she couldn’t go to
her boss and say something simple, like, “I think somebody’s
sabotaging our equipment,” then what were her options?
The security guards, at least the ones she’d met, would listen half-
heartedly and then say, “Don’t you worry, little lady. We’ll take care
of things.”
Justine knew this, because that was exactly what they’d said when
somebody filched five bucks out of the pocket of her coworker,
Candace. A week had passed, and Candace was still short five
dollars. If somebody had told Justine that one of the guards had
picked Candace’s pocket himself, she would have believed it.
She knew most of the guards. She really liked one of them—
Charles, a quiet, bookish man who spent a lot of time flirting with
her without actually asking her out. She just wasn’t sure Charles or
any of his fellow security guards cared much about…well, about
security. They clearly weren’t worried about the security of the
Carbon Division’s work because they could never be found in that
part of Higgins’s vast Michaud plant. They spent their time patrolling
the areas where the big, flashy war machines got made.
If Higgins Industries didn’t see the Carbon Division as important
enough to give it any security guards of its own, then Justine was
going to have trouble getting anybody’s attention with a few broken
conveyor belt parts that truthfully weren’t very hard to repair. It
wasn’t like she and her coworkers were building aircraft to top-secret
designs. They were just assembling radio parts that probably weren’t
critically important to anybody but them.
Taking her fears all the way up the ladder to the plant manager
crossed Justine’s mind, but she wouldn’t have known him if he’d
walked up and bit her. It would have made as much sense to try to
get face-to-face with Andrew Higgins himself as to get face-to-face
with the Carbon Division’s plant manager, who was his son Frank.
She’d at least seen Andrew Higgins (from a long, long distance), and
she would know him if she saw him again because he had the stocky
shape and overstated swagger of a robber baron. His son had been
one of those little men trailing along in the big man’s shadow, and
she had no recollection of what he looked like.
She’d even heard Andrew Higgins’s voice, which she supposed
made her feel like she knew him, when she most certainly did not.
Mr. Higgins liked to get on the plant’s loudspeaker and deliver his
own version of FDR’s fireside chats. He sounded almost fatherly, if a
voice with the hucksterish bravado of a master salesman could be
fatherly.
Andrew Higgins had a habit of inventing things that moved Allied
troops where they needed to go, even when getting there seemed
impossible. This was why the war had exploded his seventy-five-
person boatbuilding business into a military contracting outfit that
employed twenty thousand souls at plants spread across New
Orleans and into the Louisiana countryside. He had better things to
do than worry about one conveyor belt that wouldn’t stay fixed. The
truth of the matter was that Justine didn’t know how to get the
attention of anybody she trusted to help her.
What to do?
For about thirty seconds, Justine thought about paying her
godmother a visit. Gloria was a physicist, and Justine held a deep-
seated belief that physicists knew everything, probably because it
had always seemed to her that her parents did. As did Gloria.
Unfortunately, the big problem with the idea of talking to Gloria
was the fact that Justine hadn’t seen her in the three years since
she’d buried her parents. While they’d lived, she had breathed in air
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 am most grateful to you. When you have time, I hope you will
send me your photograph—we have not one of you—and
also a few lines to cheer up our long dull days. How I wish we
could afford to go away for a change! I dare say Honor has
told you that at first I was the one who was to have gone out
to you, but afterwards it was decided by the prudent ones of
the family (Jessie and Honor) that I was to remain at home.
Still I have always had a sort of feeling that I belonged to you,
because for three whole days I was the chosen one, and
could hardly eat or sleep, I was so happy. Excuse this
rambling letter; I am not a bit clever, like the others, but I am
ever
“Your loving niece,
“Fairy.
“P.S.—Is Honor engaged yet? She never mentions any
admirers.”
It was the epistle of a Cinderella, and yet all her life Fairy had been
made the family queen. Honor’s cheeks crimsoned with anger (her
aunt imagined that it was the flush of shame or a guilty conscience)
as she thought of the various little privations of her own and Jessie’s
life, that Fairy might go softly; of the miles she had tramped, the
shabby clothes she had worn for Fairy’s sake. It was but the other
day that she had sent her eight pounds out of her allowance, instead
of spending it on that pink ball-dress. Now that she was absent,
there was, as Mr. Kerry had bluntly indicated, a larger margin for
luxuries at home; it was really too bad that Fairy should write out to
simple Aunt Sara, in this martyr-like vein.
Honor looked vexed, as she raised her eyes and met her aunt’s
gaze—an inquiring gaze.
“And so the other child wanted to come?”—handing the letter from
Honor to her husband. “And you never told me, you that are so free
and open. Tell me now, since her mind was so set on it, what
prevented her?”
 “Aunt Sara, Fairy is not strong, not fit for long journeys or
excursions, late hours, or a foreign climate. Our doctor said it would
be madness for her to venture, and that was one reason. She
changed her mind of her own accord. She has always been the
family pet.”
“But you mention one reason. What was the other?”
Honor now became scarlet. “It was no harm—I would rather not
say,” she stammered; “you will know some day,” and she looked
desperately distressed.
“I wonder if she would come out now?” said Mrs. Brande,
musingly. “We can put up two as easy as one. Eh, P.? The Hadfields
expect Gerty in November. She might come with her, and get five or
six months’ fun after all. It will give her something to talk of in future,
and unless I’m mistaken, she will give people something to talk
about. Eh, P.?”
Mr. Brande was slowly perusing his niece’s letter, but it did not
appeal to him; it had a cringing fawning smack. Bright-eyed,
impetuous Honor could never have penned such an epistle.
“There is a letter on the ground that you have not seen, Mrs.
Brande,” said Mark Jervis, as he picked it up.
“So there is, I declare; it is from Mrs. Primrose. I’m sure she wants
me to see about getting her house aired. She is rather late up this
season.” Mrs. Brande ran her eyes over the paper, and gave vent to
an expression of genuine dismay.
“What is the matter?” inquired her husband quickly.
“She cannot get away for ten days, and she is afraid to keep the
child down there any longer, the heat is so awful. She wants me to
take her?”
“O Lord!” ejaculated Mr. Brande. “We would sooner take anything
—short of small-pox. Wire at once—no room here—there are
telegraph forms on my writing-table.”
“Too late,” groaned Mrs. Brande; “she has sent her off—‘trusting,’”
quoting the letter, “to my ‘well-known kindness and good nature!’ I’m
a great deal too good natured, that’s what I am,” said Mrs. Brande,
with unusual irritation. “The child and ayah are actually at the station
now, and will be here the day after to-morrow.”
“Then I shall clear out, if I can possibly manage it,” said her
husband, emphatically.
“What is there about this child, Uncle Pel, that throws you and
Aunt Sara into such a panic?”
“Panic! I thank thee, niece, for teaching me that word! Yes; the
very word—panic. Oh! I forgot you and Jervis here are new-comers,
but most of the North-West have seen, or heard of, or suffered from
‘Sweet Primrose.’”
“Sweet! What a name! A play on words, I suppose,” said Honor.
“And a gross misfit,” growled Mr. Brande.
“Pray give us a few more particulars, sir,” urged Mark. “Prepare us
—put us on our guard.”
“She is six years of age—an only child—‘cela va sans dire.’
Extremely pretty, and graceful, and intelligent.”
“Ah, I believe I shall like her,” said the young man, with an
appreciative nod. “I am prepared to be her champion. I’m rather fond
of children—especially pretty little girls.”
“She is as sharp as a surgical needle, active, greedy, restless,
prying—with a marvellous memory for the conversations of her
elders, and an extraordinary facility in relating them! The things that
child has said, with the air of a little innocent saint; the secrets she
has divulged to a whole room; the malapropos questions she has put
——”
“Pelham!” interrupted his wife sternly, “if you are going to repeat
any of them, please wait until Honor and I have left the verandah.
The child is innocent enough,” she explained to Mark, “but
mischievous, and she delights in seeing her elders look miserable.
Oh dear me! dear me! I wish the next ten days were over. Ben can’t
abide her, and no wonder—she dropped hot wax on his nose; and
last time I had her here, she tried on every one of my best caps and
bonnets, and threw them all over the place. But that was not the
worst. At breakfast, one morning, she heard Mr. Skinner telling some
story of a horse he had bought, which turned out to be a screw, and
she clapped her hands in great glee and screamed, ‘I know what that
is! I heard mother say that you were an awful screw.’ I thought I
should have had a fit, and Mr. Skinner has never put a foot inside
this house from that day.”
 CHAPTER XXV.
SWEET PRIMROSE JUSTIFIES HER
REPUTATION.

Two days after this conversation, Sweet Primrose was kicking her
long legs in Rookwood verandah, as she lay flat on the matting,
absorbed in a picture-book. A picture-book, no matter how quaint,
novel, or voluminous, never lasted this young lady for more than five
minutes—as Mrs. Brande well knew. She would toss it scornfully
aside, and once more begin to wander to and fro with her wearisome
little parrot cry of “Amuse me, amuse me!”
At present she was on her good behaviour. She had taken an
immense fancy to Mark, and she was surprisingly polite to Honor;
and as she was undoubtedly a most lovely little creature, with
delicate features, wistful violet eyes, and hair like spun silk, the
young people were inclined to make much of her, and to believe that
Mr. and Mrs. Brande were a prejudiced elderly pair, who did not
know how to take the right way with children; and this particular child
was disposed to favour them with a great deal of her society—and
they enjoyed it.
She accompanied them about the garden,—generally walking
between them, tightly holding their hands. She spent a considerable
time every morning in Honor’s room, fingering all her knickknacks,
unfolding her handkerchiefs, upsetting pin-boxes, and watching with
undisguised interest how Honor did her hair.
The result of the inspection being, that at breakfast she was in a
position to announce to the company the following gratifying
statement—
“I saw Honor doing her hair; it’s long and real, like mine,” with a
conceited toss of her blonde locks—“down to here,” indicating the
length on her own small person. “She does not put on bits, like
mamma. Mamma’s fringe is all pinned on, with long pieces that
fasten it at the side, like this,” demonstrating their situation with tiny
tell-tale fingers; “or like you,” turning to Mrs. Brande. “I saw your
plait!”
“Well, I hope you admired it!” rejoined the lady, with somewhat
staggering sang froid. “It grew on my own head once.”
And Sweet, finding that the topic was not a painful one, ceased to
pursue it.
She was fond of sitting on Mark’s knee, with her arm closely
locked round his neck, her cheek pressed against his, looking at
pictures or listening to stories. Indeed, he seemed (as Mrs. Brande
remarked) to have hypnotized her. Ben still distrusted the child, so
did Ben’s grandpapa and grandmamma; but every one else
appeared to think that Sweet Primrose was now quite a pattern—a
reformed character. She went down to the band, exquisitely dressed,
in fluffed out petticoats and fine silk stockings, in charge of her fat,
jewelled ayah; there she secretly administered pinches right and left
to other children, and rudely criticized their clothes. She strolled into
the ladies’ room, ostensibly to look at the picture papers; and she
was, among her elders, so quiet, so piano, such a dainty, flounced-
out little mortal, that old acquaintances could hardly realize that this
was their own original and most disagreeable “Sweet.”
It was Mrs. Brande’s birthday, and Mrs. Brande’s birthday had not
been forgotten by her friends. There were cards, letters, and little
presents from some of the “boys,” a lovely sachel from Honor
(secretly manufactured as a surprise), bouquets, an exquisite silver
lamp from Mark Jervis, which she remarked to Honor “must have
cost the poor boy a frightful sum!”—last, not least, a silver
photograph-frame, with “Ben’s respects.”
Mrs. Brande’s face was radiant. She went straight up to Mark with
her presents in her hands.
“It was too bad of you to buy me such a grand present, and just
what I was longing for—and Ben. That was your idea too! Do you
know that I have a great mind to give you a kiss,” she said
threateningly.
Sweet, who was playing with her porridge, stiffened with
expectation, and awaited further developments with a pair of
enormous eyes.
But Mrs. Brande did not carry out her menace—no; she merely
said—
“You are only a boy, and I’m an old lady. How old are you, by the
way, eh? I must make a note of your birthday.”
“I was twenty-six last April.”
“Twenty-six! Why, you don’t look it by five years,” sitting down
before the teapot and a pile of letters and little parcels which lay
beside her plate.
“Pelham always gives me diamonds,” she went on, “but I have
plenty; and, in case you might suppose he had forgotten me this
time, he has given me a large cheque for the new Orphanage; so I
have done splendidly.”
“Did you get any chocolates?” asked Sweet, anxiously.
“No, my dear; but I’ll buy a box for you after breakfast.”
“And is this really your birthday?”
“Yes. Why? Doesn’t it look like it?” triumphantly.
“I thought it was only ladies who had birthdays,” remarked this
charming little guest, with a severe air; “and Mrs. Dashwood says
you are not a lady.”
“Well, not by birth, my dear, though I dare say I am as well-born as
she is; and, anyway, I take the pas of her in all society.”
“Whose pa?” was the sternly put question.
As Mark and Honor greeted this query with a burst of laughter, the
mite looked excessively pleased with herself.
 “You will soon find her quite in her best form,” muttered Mr. Brande
from behind the Pioneer. Then added, in French, “She has been
pretty good for a week, and that’s her very longest interval. I saw her
down at the fowl-house before breakfast, Honor, with your smart
white-silk parasol.”
“Mamma always talks just as you do when she is talking about me,
or about anything she does not want me to know,” cried Sweet,
vivaciously. “I’ve done my breakfast,” slipping off her chair, “and I’m
going down to see the syce’s children. Oh, won’t I pull their hair;” and
she darted away.
Sweet was possessed of a demon of unrest that morning—nothing
pleased her for more than two minutes, and her indolent ayah calmly
left the task of entertaining her to others. Little Miss Primrose never
played games, or dressed dolls, or made shops—indeed, Sweet’s
tastes were far too advanced for these tame juvenile delights; they
had palled years previously. It afforded her far keener pleasure to
harry her elders, and to rule her fellow-housemates with a scourge.
She wandered aimlessly about, with her piteous shrill cry of,
“Amuse me, amuse me! Oh, will no one amuse me!” She had tired of
Honor’s hats and new dresses, of chocolates, of Mark’s stories; and
her irritating and monotonous appeal had become as maddening as
the constant slamming of a door.
“Look here, Sweet. I have a grand idea,” said Mark at last. “Would
you like me to draw your picture?”
“And colour it?” she asked judicially.
“Yes; and put in your blue sash, and all.”
“And my necklace?”
“Certainly—your necklace too, if you please.”
“Then do—do—do it this instant minute!”
“You must wait till I get my drawing things and paints; and you will
have to sit quite, quite still for a whole hour. If you cannot do that,
there will only be an ugly picture! Do you understand? My easel and
things are at Haddon Hall. I must send for them; so if you like to go
and smarten yourself up, you can.”
He had scarcely ceased to speak, ere the vain little creature
strutted straight off to her own room, loudly calling for her ayah in
imperious Hindostani.
Mrs. Brande could hardly believe her eyes when an hour later she
came into the verandah, in some trepidation, to see what made
Sweet so quiet, and discovered the “little blister,” as she mentally
called her, seated demurely on a chair, as rigid and motionless as a
statue.
“See, I’m having my picture took,” she chirped out. “But I must not
move. Please look how far he has got,” nodding towards Mark, who
was painting away steadily, though rather embarrassed by the loss
of the use of his left arm.
Mrs. Brande and Honor went over to examine the portrait,
expecting to see a feeble little outline, something done just for good
nature, and to keep the child quiet. But they almost started, as their
eyes fell on a roughly sketched-in head—the living, breathing face of
Sweet, looking at them from the canvas, with her best—in short, her
“angel” expression.
“Well, I never! Why—you are a regular artist!” gasped Mrs. Brande
at last.
“A very irregular one,” he answered with a laugh. “I have not
painted a portrait for more than a year. Of course I have, like every
one who comes up, and can hold a brush or pencil, attempted the
snows! But my snows are simply like a row of blobs of cotton wool. I
cannot do landscapes, though I am pretty good at faces and
animals.”
“I should rather think you were,” said Mrs. Brande, emphatically.
“Is it pretty?” called out the model imperiously. “Is it pretty, like
me?”
“Who said you were pretty?” demanded Mrs. Brande.
“Every one says, ‘Oh, what a pretty little girl!’”
 “It is much too nice for you, I can tell you that.” To Mark, “It is
wonderful. Why, you could make your fortune as a portrait painter!”
“So I have been told, perhaps because there is no chance of my
ever putting the advice into practice. I can catch the likeness, and
make the picture resemble my sitter, but I cannot finish. After a
certain point, if I go on, I spoil the whole thing.”
“Oh, please,” whined a small voice in acute agony, “don’t spoil
me!”
“No need, you are quite spoiled enough,” rejoined the artist with
unusual emphasis.
“Why did you never let us know of this talent, Mark? What a
pleasure to your friends,” said Mrs. Brande, leaning heavily on his
chair. “I wish you would make a little tiny sketch—of—Ben?”
“No sooner said than done. I must leave this to dry for to-day, so
call up the next victim; I have another block ready. Ben, old man, I
am going to hand you down to posterity.”
Ben did not make half as good a model as Sweet, probably
because he had not one atom of personal vanity. Every now and
then he disturbed his “pose” by dashing at some mocking little devil
of a squirrel, who peeped through the trellis-work, and dared him to
do his worst! He dared, and it invariably came to nothing.
How the morning had flown! When “P.” appeared at two o’clock,
his wife rushed at him with two pictures—a sketch of Sweet, and a
half-worked-in outline of Ben, to the life.
“Ben is splendid!” he exclaimed, “the twinkle in his eye, the white
spot on his lip, and his Sunday-go-to-meeting expression. Ah! and let
me see—my ‘Sweet,’ her most angelic and butter-would-not-melt-in-
my-mouth look! Beautiful child!” apostrophizing her. “I think I can
manage to remember you without the assistance of a speaking
likeness!”
“Uncle Pelham, how can you be so horrid!” remonstrated Honor,
taking him in to lunch.
 Luncheon (tiffin) was an exceedingly merry meal. It is well that we
cannot see into the future, for dinner was the most dismal repast that
the present tenants had ever discussed under the red-tiled roof of
Rookwood.
Mark Jervis had been ten days with the Brandes, and had never
found an opportunity yet of opening his heart, or telling his secret to
Miss Gordon. Now that he was under the same roof, his hopes fell
low, and his courage ebbed. He believed that she would be
extremely indignant when she heard the truth from his own lips, viz.
that he was the millionaire! Moreover, “that diabolical child,” as, alas!
he had now begun to call her, never left them alone, or out of her
sight for one second. He had become an ardent convert to Mr. and
Mrs. Brande’s views—though he kept his conversion strictly to
himself!
That same afternoon he found that his opportunity was
approaching. Sweet was engaged to a children’s party, Mrs. Brande
was pledged to attend a mothers’ meeting. Mr. Brande, who was
busy over some returns, said—
“Honor, you and Jervis go up the forest road and I will be after you
in a quarter of an hour. No ponies, we will walk, and give ourselves a
colour, and an appetite. You may as well take Ben, and give him a
run among the monkeys.”
Honor and her escort set out, he with his arm still in a sling, and
they walked briskly along the wide sandy carriage-road that wound
up and up, at a very gentle slope among the pines. It was a
delicious, still afternoon; the aromatic smell of the woods had
impregnated the thin hill air, and acted on their spirits like
champagne.
“Our nephew,” alluding to Ben, who was cantering gaily ahead,
“seems to be enjoying himself,” remarked Jervis.
“He does; this is his favourite road. That was a happy thought
about his present!”
“Yes,” with a smile, “I’m glad Mrs. Brande was so pleased. Mrs.
Sladen helped me with suggestions.”
 “Poor Mrs. Sladen. She says that only for you she would have
been killed the day that Toby Joy sent you both down the khud—that
you put out your arm and saved her, and you won’t even allow her to
say so.”
“No, indeed; I certainly will not.”
“Colonel Sladen has been winning, and I have great hopes that he
may allow her to go home this season.”
“I hope he will, with all my heart; if I were her, I would remain at
home, for good.”
“She has not seen her children for five years, and little things
forget so soon.”
“Not always,” significantly. “Our little friend has a wonderful
memory!”
“No, no; but ordinary children. Sweet is extraordinary. Colonel
Sladen has won ever so much money from Captain Waring, and if it
pays her passage, for once gambling will have done some good. All
the same, I wish he would do something better with his money.
Uncle Pelham says it is such a frightful example to other young
men.”
“Yes; and he has no luck. He might just as well draw a cheque,
and send it to the secretary to distribute among the members, for it is
only a loss of time, and would amount to precisely the same thing in
the end.”
“Minus the delightful excitement of gambling, you forgot that! It
seems too bad to squander money in that way—when there is such
poverty and misery everywhere. Even a few pounds can do
wonders, and change people’s lives altogether. Sometimes it
appears to me that money is in wrong hands—and its owners don’t
recognize their responsibilities.”
“A great fortune is a great responsibility,” remarked her companion
gravely. “It is so hard to know when to give, and when not to give. I
think people with moderate incomes have much the best of it.”
 “It is a capital joke, if any one could but hear us—deploring the
drawbacks of wealth, you and I—the two poor relations. At least I
speak for myself,” with a merry smile.
“And I must speak for myself. I have long wished to tell you
something, Miss Gordon. I have rather shirked doing it, because I’m
afraid you will be vexed; but——”
The sudden snapping of a twig on the edge of the bank
overhanging the road caused him to glance up. There stood a large
leopard, in the act of springing; like a flash it alighted just a yard
behind them, and then bounded back with poor Ben in its mouth! It
all was the work of two seconds.
“Oh, Ben—poor Ben!” shrieked Honor, frantically. “Let us save
him; we must save him.”
Jervis snatched the alpenstock from her hand, and ran up the
bank. Leopards are notorious cowards; the brute halted one instant,
dropped his prey, and sprang lightly away among the undergrowth.
But, alas! poor Ben was stone dead; three minutes ago he had
been full of life, now a bite in his throat had ended his happy
existence; there he lay, with his eyes wide open, fixed in an
expression of frozen horror. His death was on him almost ere he
knew it; he was dead as he was carried off the road.
As he lay limp across Honor’s lap, her tears trickled slowly, and
dropped on his still warm body.
Aunt Sara—who was to tell her? Oh, what an ending to her
birthday! And she had often dreaded this end for Ben—almost as if it
was a presentiment, and had always been so urgent to have him
home by sundown. There was scarcely a house in Shirani that had
not paid toll to the “lugger buggas,” as the natives call them, who
were specially keen about dogs—short-haired dogs, and who hung
about paths and cookhouses in their vicinity after dark. But this
murder had been done in broad daylight, long ere it was even dusk.
“Come, Miss Gordon,” said her escort, “you really must not take on
like this; you have only known him three months, and——”
 “Don’t say he was only a dog!” she interrupted indignantly.
“Well then, I won’t, and I feel most awfully cut up myself. Yes,” in
answer to her upward glance, “I am indeed. It is something to know
that his end was instantaneous—he scarcely suffered at all.”
“And how is this to be broken to them?”
“Mr. Brande is coming after us. I will go and tell him, if you will wait
here. No, on second thoughts, that would never do to leave you
alone, and that brute in the wood—not that I believe he would face a
human being. Ah, here comes your uncle.”
The tragedy was gradually broken to Mrs. Brande, and deep was
her grief when her little dead dog was brought in, and laid at her feet.
All the native household mourned (whether sincerely, or from their
servile instincts, who shall say?). The only one who did not mourn
was Sweet, who candidly exclaimed, as she cut a happy caper—
“Nasty ugly dog! I am so glad he is dead!”
Fortunately Mrs. Brande did not hear her, or she would probably
have sent her straight out of the house, to test the comforts of the
dâk bungalow.
Poor Mrs. Brande had cried so much that she was not fit to be
seen; she did not appear at dinner. Next morning Ben’s unfinished
sketch called forth another flood of tears, and she was not
presentable all the forenoon.
Meanwhile Sweet posed for her portrait, and chattered incessantly.
She had been to a large party, and no other little girl had worn gold
bangles, or pink garters with satin rosettes. So she had frankly
assured her audience, Mark and Honor—the latter was surrounded
by quite a stack of books, and intent on solving an acrostic in the
World.
“The tea was pretty good,” continued Sweet, affably. “I got nine
crackers and a fan, and a little china doll quite naked; but the sweets
were not Pelitis’s, only bazaar-made, I am sure. Percy Holmes tried
to kiss me, and I scratched his face, and he cried. Such a Molly! I
shall always call him Baby Holmes!”
 Thus she babbled on garrulously, with her infantile gossip.
Suddenly she seemed struck by an important thought, and gravely
asked, with a widening of her big violet eyes—
“What does detrimental mean—de-tri-men-tal?” pronouncing the
word as if she had got it by heart.
“You had better ask Miss Gordon,” replied Mark. “Miss Gordon,
there is a dictionary at your hand.”
“Oh, what does it matter?” exclaimed Honor, who was beginning to
be rather distrustful of Sweet’s seemingly artless questions.
“Find out, find out!” cried the imp, swinging her legs impatiently to
and fro. “I want to know, and I am sitting very nicely—am I not?”
Mark made a sign to Miss Gordon to humour her, adding—
“I never saw such a small person for picking up big words.”
“Here it is,” said Honor, at length, “and much good may it do you!”
reading out—“Detrimental—injurious, hurtful, prejudiced.”
“That’s what Mrs. Kane said he was,” pointing a gleeful finger at
the young man. “A shocking detrimental, and that Mrs. Brande was a
fool to have him here.”
“Sweet! How dare you repeat such things?” cried Honor, with
blazing cheeks. “You know it is very wrong. What a naughty little girl
you are!”
“But she said it,” boldly persisted Sweet; “and she is grown up.”
“She was joking, of course; grown people often joke.”
“She said a great deal. She said that——”
“Hus-s-sh! We don’t want to hear tales,” breathlessly interrupted
Honor.
“She said,” screamed a piping triumphant voice, high above the
hus-s-sh, “he was in love with you!”
“Now,” cried Honor, her passion having risen beyond all control, as
she surveyed the pert, self-complacent little model—she dared not
look at Mark Jervis—“I told you not to repeat stories. I have told you
that over and over again, and yet you delight in doing it because it
annoys people—and you do it with impunity. No one has ever
punished you—but—I shall punish you.”
And before Mark guessed at what was about to happen, Miss
Gordon—actively precipitate in her resentment—had snatched the
picture from the easel before him, and torn it into four pieces!
“There!” she cried breathlessly, “you can get off that chair at once,
Sweet. Mr. Jervis has done with you.”
Sweet opened her great violet eyes, and gazed in incredulous
amazement. Never had she been so served. She had always
hitherto made people angry, uncomfortable, or shocked, and gone
scathless, and had invariably enjoyed what is known in sporting
circles as “a walk over.”
Never had she seen such an angry young lady. How red her
cheeks were—how brightly her eyes glittered. Then Sweet’s gaze
fastened on her own picture, her mouth opened wide, and gave vent
to an ear-splitting yell, as she tumbled off her chair, like a canary off
its perch, and lay on the verandah, kicking and screaming.
“After all,” said Jervis, with an air of humble deprecation, “you
need not have been so angry with the poor little beggar; she only
spoke the truth.” (That he was a detrimental, or that he was in love
with her—which?)
Attracted by vociferous shrieks, Mr. and Mrs. Brande rushed upon
the scene from opposite doors. The languid ayah also appeared, and
raised up her sobbing charge, who now and then varied her sobs by
a shrill squeal of fury.
“What is it?” cried Mr. Brande, eagerly appealing to Honor and
Mark. “I thought you were putting her to torture—at last!”
“What is it, dearie? What is it? tell me!” pleaded Mrs. Brande.
“Come to me, lovey, and tell me all about it, doatie. There now—
there now,” making dabs with her handkerchief at the child’s eyes.
 “That,” suddenly stiffening herself in the ayah’s arms, and pointing
a trembling finger at the guilty party, “that pig girl, tore up my pretty,
pretty picture, because—I told her Mrs. Kane said that Mark was in
love with her—she did say it, at the tea to Mrs. King, and that beast
of a girl has torn my picture—and I’ll tell my mamma, I will—I will—
and Mrs. Kane did say it—and Mrs. King said——”
“For Heaven’s sake, take her away!” shouted Mr. Brande,
excitedly.
Thereupon Sweet was promptly carried off, kicking desperately,
and still shrieking out, “She did say it. She did—she did—she did!”
 CHAPTER XXVI.
THE RESULT OF PLAYING “HOME, SWEET
HOME.”

It may appear in a ludicrous light to most people, but it was,

nevertheless, a solemn fact that Mrs. Brande fretted so dreadfully
after her dog, that her medical adviser (Dr. Loyd) suggested to her
husband: “A few days’ change, just to get her mind off it! You
frequently go for a week’s trip among the hills—go now.”
Such an excursion did not mean the wild, trackless jungle, but a
country intersected by good roads and bridle-paths, dotted at
reasonable intervals by comfortable rest-houses. Neither the
sympathy of her friends, nor a neat little grave and head-stone
inscribed “Ben,” had had the smallest effect in taking the keen edge
off the bereaved lady’s grief; and she would have nothing whatever
to say to a sweet little pup which Mark had procured for her, but
indignantly hustled it out to the Ayah’s go-down. No, there was
nothing for it but the prescribed expedition. Mrs. Sladen was to have
been one of the party, but failed (as usual) to obtain leave from
home. Mr. Jervis would gladly have joined them, but he dared not
absent himself from Shirani, in case the expected summons might
arrive whilst he was absent. The long marches would have afforded
capital opportunities for tête-à-têtes with Miss Gordon—he would
have told her all as he rode by her side; the only difficulty was, that
he was now rather doubtful as to whether Miss Gordon would be
interested in his confidences? Her indignation when Sweet had
blurted out the most sacred secret of his soul had opened his eyes,
and when he had ventured to add that the child had spoken the truth,
Miss Gordon had simply withered him. Yes, Waring was right when
he had spoken of her haughty eyes. Her anger had eventually
passed over like a short thunderstorm, and she had meekly
apologized for her outbreak, but without the smallest or faintest
reference to his remark—as possibly being beneath notice.
“You have seen me in a rage before,” she had declared—“not that
that is any excuse for me, but rather the reverse. Of course I had no
business to touch your drawing, and I am exceedingly sorry that I
gave way to such a mad impulse. I wanted to give that wretched
child a lesson, and I caught at the first weapon that I thought would
punish her. I don’t often behave in such a shameful and unladylike
way, I do assure you.”
And he assured himself that he might keep his real identity and his
fine prospects locked for ever in his breast as far as she was
concerned. The two days occupied in preparing for the march he
spent in finishing Ben’s portrait. He held himself a good deal aloof;
he seemed silent and out of spirits; and Mrs. Brande confided to her
husband that she was sure his wrist was hurting him—he had been
making too free with it, and she gave him many instructions on the
subject ere they parted, he to return to Haddon Hall, and she to lead
the way out of the station. He was to go up every day and have a
look at Rookwood, cast his eye over the poultry and ponies, and see
that the ferns were properly watered; in other words, Mr. Jervis was
left as caretaker in charge—a token of unexampled confidence.
What a long time it seemed since he had come to Shirani! he
thought, as he trotted up the cart-road, after having put his friends
well on their journey. The chances were that his father would never
send for him—still, he would remain at his post until October, and
then go home. He would not be sorry to see Uncle Dan once more,
to tell him yarns, and to unpack his collection of presents, to look
round the clubs, and hear all that had been going on during the
season, and to try his young hunters out cubbing.
Yes; it was all very well to have modest ideas, but the pinch of
poverty was another affair, and he and poverty were gradually
establishing quite a bowing acquaintance. He was dunned for joint
bills—unpleasant joint bills—small accounts, that made him feel
small to think that they had been unpaid; shoeing bills, gram bills,
gymkana subscriptions, wood and charcoal, and even milk bills. He
would find it a tight fit to pay off old scores and leave sufficient
money for their passage. He saw his own private funds shrinking
daily; nevertheless, he was resolved not to apply to his uncle for
money, nor to exceed his draft of six hundred pounds. Why should
his uncle pay for his short-sighted folly? he had told him to keep the
money in his own name, and, nevertheless, he had given Clarence a
free hand. But then, in his wildest moments, he had never supposed
that the purse that supplied Captain Waring’s wants, wishes,
weaknesses, must be practically bottomless. “What a fool I have
been!” he said to himself. “I have lived like an anchorite, and Waring
like a prince; he has squandered every penny of my money, and
turns about and blames me—for—leading him into temptation!”
Mrs. Brande, in her comfortable Mussouri dandy, Mr. Brande and
Honor riding in advance, wound along the steep sides of forests—
over passes and down ravines—travelling all the time through
exquisite scenery in the clear hill air, where everything looks fresh,
and the outlines of the trees and mountains are sharply defined
against a cloudless sky. They halted each night at a different
bungalow, marching about fifteen miles a day, and arriving at their
resting-place early in the afternoon. On the third day, they came to a
small out-of-the-way forest hut, which contained but a verandah, and
three rooms, and two of these were already occupied.
Such a state of affairs was unparalleled. The earlier arrivals were
two engineers on survey, and a lady travelling alone. Mr. Brande
looked excessively blank, he would have to rig up some kind of
shelter in the verandah, for they had not brought tents, and whilst he
was conferring with Nuddoo, Honor strolled away with her violin. She
liked to play in solitary places—where all kinds of musical vagaries,
and occasionally her own compositions, were unheard by mortal
ears.
She climbed the long sloping hill at the back of the bungalow, and
sitting down below a great clump of bamboos and elephant grass,
began to play soft melancholy music, that seemed to have exquisite
words.