Chapter 13

A NEWCOMER ENTERS

The next day Mr. Howard Snelling made his appearance at the Spence workshop.

Bob was fitting wire netting to some metal uprights and struggling to focus his mind on what he was doing enough to forget that Delight Hathaway was on the other side of the partition when from the window above the bench he saw Cynthia Galbraith come rolling up to the gate in her runabout, accompanied by a strikingly handsome stranger.

He hurried out to meet them.

Her father and Roger, the girl said, had gone to a yacht race at Hyannis, so she had brought Mr. Snelling over. She introduced the two men but refused somewhat curtly to come in, explaining that she would be back, or some one else would, to fetch the guest home to Belleport for luncheon. Then, without a backward glance, she started the engine and disappeared around the curve of the Harbor Road.

Perhaps it was just as well, Robert Morton reflected, that she had not accepted his invitation to come in, for to bring her and Delight together at this delicate juncture might result in awkwardness; nevertheless, it certainly was something unprecedented for Cynthia to be so brusque and be in such a hurry. The enigma puzzled him, and he found it recurring to his mind persistently. However, he resolutely shook it off and turned his attention instead to his new acquaintance.

He was, he could not but admit, quite unprepared to find Mr. Howard Snelling, his future chief, possessed of so attractive a personality. Mr. Galbraith, when alluding to the expert craftsman, had never mentioned his age, and Bob had gleaned the impression that the man before whose ability the entire Galbraith shipbuilding plant bowed down was middle-aged, possibly even elderly. Therefore to be confronted by some one in the early forties was a distinct shock.

Snelling's hair was, to be sure, sprinkled lightly with gray, but this hint of maturity was given the lie by his ruddy, unlined countenance and the youthfulness with which he wore his clothes. A good tailor had evidently found a model worthy of his skill and had tried to live up to the task set him, for everything in the stranger's attitude and appearance proclaimed smartness and the _savoir faire_ of the man about town. Yet Howard Snelling was something far better than either a fashion plate or a society darling. He was energy personified. It spoke in every motion of his strong, fine hands, in the quick turn of his head, in the alert attention with which he listened. Nothing escaped his well-trained eye. One's very thoughts seemed to be at his mercy. Mingling, however, with these more astute qualities and counterbalancing them was a winning tact and courtesy which instantly put another at his ease. Without these characteristics Mr. Snelling would have been unbearable; but with them he was thoroughly charming.

"Well, Morton, I am glad to have a chance to meet you in the flesh," he said, as they still loitered at the gate. "The Galbraiths have sung your praises until I began to think you a sort of myth. You certainly have something to live up to if you are to reach the reputation they have painted of your virtues. Mr. Galbraith, in particular, thinks there is no obstacle that you cannot conquer."

He swept his eye curiously over the young man before him.

"You mustn't believe a word of what they've told you, Mr. Snelling," laughed Robert Morton. "Our friends are always over-indulgent to our faults. When I begin work under you, a thing I am greatly anticipating, you will find out what a duffer I really am."

The elder man smiled.

"I'm ready to take the chance," said he.

"Besides," Bob went on, "Mr. Galbraith has given you something of a character too. He has frightened me clean out of my life with his tales of your--"

"Pooh! Nonsense!" broke in Mr. Snelling deprecatingly. "I like my job, that's all; and Mr. Galbraith and I happen to hit it off." Nevertheless Bob could see that he was pleased by the flattery.

It was on his tongue's end to voice his thought and add that the man who could not get on with a person of Mr. Snelling's adroitness and diplomacy would be hard to please; but although he did not utter the words he felt them to be true.

"Now," began the New Yorker with a swift change of subject, "let us get down to business. How are we going to work this thing? You must coach me. I gather I am being employed on quite a delicate mission. My instructions are to come in here as a friend of yours and the Galbraiths, and without raising the suspicion that I have much of any knowledge about boats, I am to help get this invention into workable shape. Any parts we lack, any drawings we wish made, any materials we need I have authority to procure from our Long Island plant. There is to be no stint as to expense. The enterprise is to be carried through to the finish properly."

Robert Morton gasped.

"I had no idea Mr. Galbraith meant to go into it to such lengths," he murmured.

"Oh, Mr. Galbraith never does things by halves when once he is interested," was the reply. "Besides, he has a hunter's scent for the commercial. He says there is a live idea here that has money in it, and that's enough for him. Anyway, whether there is or not," Snelling added hurriedly, "we are to humor the old gentleman's whims and get his idea so he can handle it."

"It is tremendously generous of Mr. Galbraith."

Howard Snelling regarded his companion quizzically for a moment, then remarked with gravity:

"Oh, there is a kind heart in Mr. Galbraith, in spite of all his business instincts."

"Had you ever met the rest of the family before now?" questioned Bob more with a desire to turn the channel of conversation than because he had any interest in the matter.

The inquiry, idly made, produced an unexpected result, visibly throwing the expert out of his imperturbable composure; he flushed, stammered, and bit his lip before he successfully conquered his confusion:

"I--eh--oh, yes," was his reply. "I've been a dinner guest at the New York house several times; been sent for on a pinch to help out. Then Mr. Galbraith summons me there occasionally for consultation on business matters. The Belleport place is attractive, isn't it?"

"It's corking!"

"I suppose you spend a lot of time over there," ventured Snelling, lighting a gold-tipped Egyptian cigarette and offering Bob one.

Something in the question, he could not have told what, caused Robert Morton to dart a quick, furtive glance at the speaker.

Mr. Snelling was smoking and blowing indifferently into the air filmy rings of smoke, but through it the disconcerted young man encountered his penetrating gaze.

"I don't get over there very often," said Bob. "This invention keeps me rather busy."

"Of course, of course!" was the cordial response. "And now as to our policy on this deal. I shall follow your lead, understand. Any assertion you see fit to make you can trust me to swear to. You may introduce me to the old chap as your college pal, even your long-lost brother, if you choose."

"I hardly think that will be necessary," Robert Morton answered, a hint of coldness in his voice. "I shall simply introduce you for what you are, Mr. Galbraith's friend--"

"And yours," smiled Mr. Snelling, graciously placing a hand on the young man's shoulder.

It was unaccountable, absurd, that Bob should have shrunk at the touch; nevertheless he did so.

"Don't you think," he replied abruptly, "that the sooner we go in and get to work the better? How long do you expect to be able to stay here?"

Again the color crept into Snelling's cheek, but this time he was quite master of himself.

"I cannot tell yet. It will depend to some extent on how we get on."

"I suppose you really can't be spared from the Long Island plant a great while."

"As to that, Mr. Galbraith is all-powerful," was his smiling answer. "What he wills must be arranged. Fortunately just now business is running slack, at least my part of it is. Most of our contracts are well on the way to completion and others can carry them out, so I can stay down here as long as is necessary. It can go as my vacation, if worst comes to worst. Hence you see," concluded he, pulling a spray of honeysuckle to pieces, "we don't need to rush things."

They entered the gate, passed the low, silvered house now almost buried in blossoming roses, and following the clam-shell path that led to the workshop found Willie, his spectacles pushed back from his forehead, dragging a pile of new boards down from the shelf.

"We have a visitor, Mr. Spence," Bob said. "Mr. Snelling, a friend of Mr. Galbraith's and--" he paused the fraction of a second, "and of mine. He has come over to spend the morning and wants to see what we're doing."

The little old inventor reached out a horny palm.

"I'm glad to see you, sir," affirmed he simply. "Any friend of Bob's won't want for a welcome here. Set right down an' make yourself to home, or stand up an' poke found, if it suits you better. That's what Mr. Galbraith did. I reckon there warn't a corner of this whole place he didn't fish into. 'Twas amusin' to see him. He said it took him back to the days when he was a boy. I couldn't but smile to watch him fussin' with the plane an' saw an' hammer like as if they was old friends he hadn't clapped eyes on for years."

"It does feel good to handle tools when you haven't done so for a long time," assented Mr. Snelling.

"Likely you yourself, sir, ain't had a hammer nor nothin' in your hands for quite a spell," went on Willie, with a benign smile. "They don't look as if you ever had had."

Howard Snelling glanced down at his slender, well-modelled hands with their carefully manicured nails.

"I haven't done much carpentry of late years," he confessed. "It would be quite a novelty were I to be turned loose in a place like this. I should like nothing better."

"You don't say so!" responded Willie, with pleased surprise. "Well, well! Ain't that queer now? I'd much sooner 'a' put you down as a gentleman who wouldn't want to get into no dirt or clutter."

"You don't know me."

"Evidently not," the old man rejoined. "Well, you can have your wish fur's carpenterin' goes. You can putter round here much as you like."

Mr. Snelling moved toward the long workbench.

"This is a neat thing," remarked he, regarding the unfinished invention quite as if he had never heard of it before. "What are you doing here?"

A glow of satisfaction spread over the little fellow's kindly face.

"Why, me an' Bob," he explained, "are tinkerin' with a notion I got into my head a while ago. The idee kitched me in the night, an' I come downstairs an' commenced tacklin' it right away. But I didn't see my course ahead, an' 'twarn't 'til Bob hove in sight an' lent a helpin' hand that the contraption begun to take shape. But for him 'twould never have amounted to a darn thing, I reckon. I ain't much on the puttin' together, anyhow, an' this was such a whale of a scheme it had me floored. But it didn't seem to strike Bob abeam. He went at it like a dogfish for bait, an' he's beginnin' to tow the thing out of the fog now into clear water."

"It's quite a scheme," observed Snelling, with an assumed nonchalance. "How did you happen on it?"

"Them idees just come to me," was the ingenuous reply. "Some brains, like some gardens, grow one thing, some another. Mine seems to turn out stuff like this."

"It's pretty good stuff."

"It's a lot of bother to me sometimes," said the old man simply. "Still, I enjoy it. I'd be badly off if it warn't for the thinkin' I do. What a marvel thinkin' is, ain't it? You can think all sorts of things; can travel in your mind to 'most every corner of the globe. You can think yourself rich, think yourself poor, think yourself young, think yourself happy. There's nothin' you want you can't think you have, an' dreamin' about it is 'most as good as gettin' it."

Mr. Snelling nodded.

"Sometimes I think myself an artist, sometimes a musician," went on the wistful voice. "Then again I think myself a great man an' doin' somethin' worth while in the world. Then there's times I've thought myself with a family of children an' planned how they should learn mor'n ever I did." He mused, then banishing the seriousness of his tone by an embarrassed laugh added, "I've waked up afterward to think how much less it cost just to imagine 'em."

The heart that would not have been won by the naïvete of the speaker would have been stony indeed!

Howard Snelling flashed a tribute of honest admiration into the gentle old face.

"Dreams are cheap things," rambled on the little inventor. "Sometimes I figger the Lord gave 'em to those who didn't have much else, so'st to make 'em think they are kings. If you can dream there ain't a thing in all the world ain't yours."

The conversation had furnished Snelling with the opportunity to study more minutely the object on the table, and he now said with a motion of his hand toward it:

"Wouldn't it be rather nice if you had some netting of coarser mesh and which wouldn't corrode?"

"Oh, this screenin' ain't what I'd choose," returned Willie, "but 'twas all I had. I ripped it off the front door. Tiny didn't fancy my doin' it very well. 'Tain't often she's ruffled, an' even this time she didn't say much; still, I could see it didn't altogether please her."

"Tiny?" interpolated Mr. Snelling.

"My aunt, Miss Morton, who keeps house for Mr. Spence," explained Bob with proud directness.

"I wasn't aware you had relatives down here," the boat-builder observed, turning toward Robert Morton with interest. "I imagined you came to the Cape because of the Galbraiths."

"Oh, no. I didn't know the Galbraith's were here until the other day."

"Really!"

The single word was weighted with incredulousness.

"'Twas the funniest thing you ever knew how it happened," put in Willie.

Robert Morton tried to cut him short.

"A package for the Galbraiths was sent to me by mistake; that was how I secured their address," he said.

Snelling looked puzzled.

"That warn't it at all, Bob," persisted Willie. "You ain't tellin' it half as queer as 'twas."

It was useless to attempt to check the little old man now. Artlessly he babbled the story, and Howard Snelling, listening, constructed a good part of the romance interwoven with it from the young man's color and irritation.

"So there were two beauties in the case!" commented he, when the tale was finished.

"There were two silver buckles," came sharply from Bob.

"Which amounts to the same thing," smiled the New Yorker.

Robert Morton vouchsafed no reply.

"Have your friends the Galbraiths met this--other lady?" asked Snelling insinuatingly.

"No, not yet."

"I see."

There was something offensive in the observation; something, too, that compelled Robert Morton even against his will to add with dignity:

"I am expecting to take Miss Hathaway over to see them some day soon."

He told himself, as he uttered the words, that he owed Howard Snelling no explanation and that it was ridiculous of him to make one; nevertheless he felt impelled to do so.

Mr. Snelling smiled superciliously.

"That will be very pleasant, won't it?" he remarked.

One could not have quarreled with the sentiment, but its blandness conveyed an exasperating disbelief.

The young man bit his lip angrily.

At the same instant there was a sound at the door.

"Aunt Tiny wants to know--"

The three men glanced up simultaneously, and Mr. Snelling's jaw dropped with amazement.

"I beg your pardon," murmured Delight. "I did not know there was any one here."

"It's only Mr. Snelling, a friend of Bob's," Willie hastened to say.

"Mr. Snelling is also a friend of Mr. Galbraith's," interrupted Robert Morton, enraged that it fell to him to perform the introduction. "This is Miss Hathaway, Mr. Snelling."

"I am charmed to meet you, Miss Hathaway," Howard Snelling declared, bending low over the girl's outstretched hand. "I did not realize you were an inmate of the house." Then with a sidelong glance at Bob he added: "Wilton certainly abounds in beautiful surprises."

As with unveiled wonder he scanned the exquisite face, Robert Morton, looking on, could have strangled him with a relish.