Ray Cummings

“ He slipped his arm again about the girl’s shoulders and looked down into her sympathetic, eager little face.
“I love you, Anne,” he said.
“I love you, too, Jimmy,” she answered simply.
He waited a moment. “Yes, but—but this is different, Anne. We’ve always loved each other. But I’m a man now. And you’re a woman. Don’t you see that’s different?”
The girl met his glance squarely, and a little wave of color mounted to her cheeks; but she did not answer.
“I want to marry you, Anne. Some day—maybe soon—when I’ve put this idea over—when I amount to something. ”

“ The president indicated Mr. Merkle and Jimmy.
“Mr. Hope,” he went on, when they were alone, “for some years you have been my secretary. I have had no cause to criticize your work unduly, nor do I think I have treated you unfairly as an employer.
“What has just transpired needs no additional words between us. It is entirely self-evident. Explanations are futile, recriminations idle. As you know, Mr. Hope, integrity of character is one thing this company demands above all else. For a person without it there can be no place in this organization. ”

“ Jimmy’s face was flushed; his eyes sparkled.
“Why—why, just that, Anne! I’m going to build a factory over where the coal is and burn the coal in the ground without bothering to mine it at all, and just pipe the heat up to the boilers. Don’t you see, Anne? Nobody ever thought of that before. They mine the coal now—dig it out and bring it up to the top and take it away on railroads to factories to be burned. And all you’ve got to do is leave it where it is, and put the factory overhead. Look at the work you save, Anne! ”

“ He read a good deal now—books from the public library of Menchon, which he took home to read during the evenings. Books of travel and adventure interested him; but more recently he had been reading of industry, and the wonderful, gigantic projects that other men—no smarter than himself, perhaps—had planned and executed, stirred him profoundly. Some day he, too, would accomplish big things—things of which Anne and his mother and sister would be proud, things that would bring him great fame and wealth.
That morning seemed interminable to Jimmy, but finally it came to an end. ”

“ The private office of Mr. Wentworth’s secretary, into which Jimmy was now ushered, was a smaller and only slightly less magnificent replica of that of the president himself.
Mr. Leffingwell Hope took a seat at his desk, and motioned Jimmy to sit down also.
“Mr. Wentworth is always very busy,” he began, in his soft, unpleasant tones. “What is it you have to say?”
Jimmy, in spite of his continued resentment at the way he had been treated, and his increasing awe of Mr. Leffingwell Hope, was thinking fast. He had decided before that he would not tell his plan to Mr. Hope. ”

“ At lunch that day, which the office manager, Jimmy and Mr. Merkle had together, Cooper planned what they should do that afternoon to settle Mr. Hope.
“Just let him alone,” said Jimmy. “You don’t have to do anything. He’ll settle himself if you let him alone, can’t you see that?” ”

“ Dances, parties, the theater and opera, were all lavished upon her.
For a time they sufficed; and yet, because she was a normal girl, no finer or less fine than thousands of others of her race, inevitably the time came when she found herself desiring something more.
Affairs of the heart, which usually play so large a part in feminine adolescence, had never seriously touched Estelle. That, too, was the inevitable result of her environment. Young men admired her, adored her, and plied her with attentions. But Estelle felt herself in some way above them all. ”

“ The New York offices of the Wentworth Glass Company occupied an entire floor of a large office-building on Broadway near Wall Street. At ten o’clock on the Tuesday morning following his momentous walk with Anne to the burning mines and the birth of his big idea, Jimmy entered the Wentworth Company’s offices. He passed through a door marked “Information,” and found himself in a little enclosure facing a low wooden railing and a girl at a telephone switchboard. ”

“ We can get you producer gas that is just as good as any you’re getting—from the coal we burn in the ground, if we control the air and steam right.”
Although this was clear to Mr. Wentworth, it may perhaps need explanation here. In modern furnaces, for the fusion of glass or other operations where great heat is necessary, the process of combustion of the fuel is carried on, not in one operation, as it is in the simple furnaces with which every one is familiar, but in two distinct, separate, progressive stages.
The first stage takes place in a subsidiary furnace known as a “gas producer.” ”

“ Jimmy worked hard that morning. His bunky, who worked at his side in the little gallery, wondered at his unusual silence, although Jimmy was always inclined to be silent. When the first car was loaded, Jimmy fastened to it his metal tag—they took turns in labeling the cars they jointly filled—and then sat down on a lump of coal with his cap in his hands, trimming the wick of his little pit-lamp with a nail from his pocket. ”

“ The chemist considered. “What it saves is only part of the cost of coal,” he said finally. “It ain’t that every factory what you tell it to right away breaks its neck to move to where the coal is.”
“But it’s particularly good for the Wentworth Company, you mean?”
“For them when they use so much fuel, and because, don’t you know about the new plant what they expect to put up next year? For them it would be a good thing.” ”

“ Some three years before, a company in search of new coal measures around Coatesville had made borings; but the seam they located was not considered profitable to work, and the project which for a time had promised to make the Rand family rich had been abandoned.
But now, with his new idea, this coal could be used. There was a railroad spur very near the property, Jimmy remembered. It would be an ideal place for a factory. It was the only thing he needed to hook his plan together. Now he could talk convincingly to any big man. ”

“ This supplies the fire with an insufficient amount of oxygen, and although the fuel—paper, for instance—is entirely volatilized it is not entirely burned; there is smoke, which, if it could be mixed with more air, and at a sufficiently high temperature, would burst into flame.
This was the process Jimmy proposed to carry on in the ground; that is, only partly to consume the coal by supplying it with an insufficient amount of oxygen. And it was the unburned coal gases—the combustible smoke, in other words—that he proposed to pipe up to the furnace at the surface—not the actual heat. ”

“ Luck was with Cooper and Jimmy that morning, although they didn’t realize it then. Isaac Merkle happened to stroll past them at that moment. A sudden thought came to the office manager.
“There’s Isaac Merkle, Jimmy. He’s a chemist. Let’s put him on this. He may be able to advise us on something we’ve overlooked. It can’t hurt anything now. Wait, I’ll call him over.”
In spite of Jimmy’s protest Cooper summoned Merkle. The little chemist sat down at the desk with them, and the office manager started to tell him Jimmy’s idea. Mr. Merkle swallowed hard, with his eyes nearly popping from his head. ”

“ At this point in their investigations they were jubilant, for they realized that the idea was feasible. Mr. Cooper was for an immediate consultation with one of the technical men of the company, but Jimmy absolutely refused. There were too many who knew about it already. Something might happen. And so the office manager had to give up that plan, and they went ahead, studying the thing out alone.
“I’d rather it took longer,” said Jimmy. “When we get it ready ourselves we’ll put it up to Mr. Wentworth. After that, we can talk to everybody all we want.” ”

“ The little girl pressed his hand again and looked shyly up into his face.
“It will, Jimmy,” she said softly. “You’re going to be a wonderful man some day—I just know you will. And we’ll—we’ll all be so proud of you.”
Again they fell silent. The road they were following—they were now some two miles from Menchon—was taking them directly toward the burning mines that were famous throughout all that part of Pennsylvania. These were a system of coalmines that years before had been in active operation. They had caught fire, and eventually had to be abandoned. ”

“ Anne objected. “This is burning underground—”
“It won’t.”
“Why won’t it?”
“Well, it won’t because, you see, Anne”—Jimmy was thinking fast now—“because, don’t you see, a fire can’t burn without air. I won’t give it only just so much air. This one got started and ran away with itself before they could stop it. Mine will be ’way down very deep, where there ain’t any air, only just what I pump down to it.
“If I give it lots of air, it will burn hard, and there’ll be lots of heat come up. Then if I don’t want so much heat, I won’t give it so much air. ”

“ The chemist swallowed hard. This was an outcome he had not expected at all. He looked at Mr. Wentworth, wondering whether he should go all over what he had already said just that morning, or whether he should make a clean breast of the whole matter. Before he could reach a conclusion the president took the decision entirely out of his hands.
“Mr. Merkle, how long have you been working on this?” Mr. Wentworth had not changed his easy position at his desk; but his voice now was very alert—low-toned, almost soft, but tense and vibrant. It was the real Mr. Wentworth talking now: the man of action ”

“ Why?”
“He’s a dandy chap. Not a city boy at all—used to be a coal miner. We’ve been out together a good deal—Marion likes him tremendously.” (Marion was George Cooper’s sister.)
“Oh,” said Estelle. Then, after a moment—“He was going to tell father about some plan he had. Father told me it was some foolish idea. What ever happened to it?”
The office manager hesitated. He rather liked Estelle. She was a silly, vain little thing, but he liked her—perhaps partly became his sister seemed to be her only real girl friend. ”

“ There was no use going to any other company—the Wentworth was as good as he could find. And all this time, while he was learning all these things, he would have to live.
The idea occurred to him then that perhaps he could get a job right here in this very organization. Then he could learn the glass business, and work out his idea at night. And when he was all ready and had all his facts down pat he could tackle Mr. Hope and Mr. Wentworth again. He could never find anybody better than Mr. Wentworth, he was sure of that.
All this flashed through Jimmy’s mind in an instant. Mr. ”

“ She felt a little ashamed of herself at the sudden realization that she was interested in one of her father’s office boys, and decided to forget all about him. Soon after that she went to the seashore with her mother for the summer. ”

“ But the heat you don’t pipe up—that’s bunk. You pipe up the gases from the coal—the products of combustion that are only part used, and you burn them in the regenerator furnace. Maybe you could get very good producer gas. ”

“ To this laboratory, by appointment, came Mr. Leffingwell Hope that very same evening. Mr. Merkle, as agreed, was quite alone when the secretary arrived. The chemist was a fat, middle-aged little man, with a round, very red, smooth-shaven face, an over-large nose, and mouse-colored hair with a bald spot on top.
Mr. Leffingwell Hope, seating himself uncomfortably on one of the little wooden chairs, was at some trouble just how to begin the business that had brought him.
“Ike,” he said finally, “I’ve got an idea that might, if it is any good, make us a lot of money.” He hesitated ”

“ The burning mine, hundreds of feet down in the ground, was in effect to be his subsidiary furnace—his gas-producer.
These unburned gases, from the producer, pass, hot, into the furnace proper; either directly or sometimes after being conveyed a considerable distance—as they would have to be according to Jimmy’s plan. In this latter event they cool off, but are heated up again by the waste heat of the furnace. ”

“ The pathos of which was entirely lost to Jimmy.
In the office the following Monday morning George Cooper came to Jimmy in great excitement.
“You were right to be afraid of this guy, Hope,” he announced without preface. “I just found out—quite by accident—he’s bought himself a coal property up near Scranton.”
“What—”
“Yes. I don’t know what it means, either. Maybe nothing. He’s got a right to buy himself anything he pleases, I suppose. But it looks suspicious. What does he want with it? From what I could learn, it’s just the sort of place for your plan, too. Not a going coal mine ”

“ He would go to New York to live for a time while he was putting the idea over. All the big business men that he would have to see and convince were there. Jimmy had saved several hundred dollars from his earnings in the Fallon Brothers Mine during the last few years, so that lack of money offered no obstacle. ”

“ A fortune in his grasp at last! A fortune that would give him Estelle! And no one to divide the money with except Merkle, and probably he could think of some way of getting rid of him at the last. A fortune for himself! Riches—the greatest thing in the world!
CHAPTER V.
JIMMY FINDS A FRIEND.
Jimmy got his job. He wouldn’t have, probably, except for the fact that his message from Mr. Hope enabled him to get an interview with Mr. Cooper, during the course of which Jimmy convinced the office manager that he was an extremely intelligent and likable young man. ”