"Better keep her on for a month or two, anyhow," he said. "They're up to
something, and I miss my guess if it isn't directed against you."
"How about Herman Klein?"
"Nothing doing," stated Mr. Dunbar, flatly. "Our informer is tending bar
at Gus's. Herman listens and drinks their beer, but he's got the German
fear of authority in him. He's a beer socialist. That's all."
But in that Mr. Dunbar left out of account the innate savagery that
lurked under Herman's phlegmatic surface.
"You don't think it would do if she was moved to another office?"
"The point is this." Dunbar moved his chair forward. "The time may come
when we will need the girl as an informer. Rudolph Klein is infatuated
with her. Now I understand that she has a certain feeling of--loyalty
to Mr. Graham. In that case"--he glanced at Clayton--"the welfare of the
many, Mr. Spencer, against the few."
For a long time after he was gone Clayton sat at his desk, thinking.
Every instinct in him revolted against the situation thus forced on him.
There was something wrong with Dunbar's reasoning. Then it flashed on
him that Dunbar probably was right, and that their points of view were
bitterly opposed. Dunbar would have no scruples, because he was not
quite a gentleman. But war was a man's game. It was not the time for
fine distinctions of ethics. And Dunbar was certainly a man.
If only he could talk it over with Natalie! But he knew Natalie too well
to expect any rational judgment from her. She would demand at once that
the girl should go. Yet he needed a woman's mind on it. In any question
of relationship between the sexes men were creatures of impulse, but
women had plotted and planned through the ages. They might lose their
standards, but never their heads. Not that he put such a thought into
words. He merely knew that women were better at such things than men.
That afternoon, as a result of much uncertainty, he took his problem to
Audrey. And Audrey gave him an answer.
"You've got to think of the mill, Clay," she said. "The Dunbar man is
right. And all you or any other father of a boy can do is to pray in
season, and to trust to Graham's early training."
And all the repressed bitterness in Clayton Spencer's heart was in his
answer.
"He never had any early training, Audrey. Oh, he had certain things. His
manners, for instance. But other things? I ought not to say that. It was
my fault, too. I'm not blaming only Natalie. Only now, when it is all we
have to count on--"