DUSKIN by Grace Livingston Hill

last minute before she started from the office at home she had taken from the file all correspondence with regard to the Duskin job, and now she took it out and began to go over it carefully. It would not do to go to Duskin without being thoroughly apprised of the whole situation. She thought she remembered everything pretty well, but she was taking no chance. She must have every little detail at her fingers’ ends. There was no doubt in her mind but that she had slippery men to deal with, and from what those two men, themselves crooked as could be, had said of this Duskin, it would appear that he was the slipperiest of them all.
    She opened to the first letters and began to read. Here were Duskin’s credentials. She had not seen them before. Duskin had undertaken the work before she had been promoted to Mr. Fawcett’s private office. They were almost extravagant in their praise. She curled an unbelieving lip. How people lied sometimes in writing letters of recommendation, or else in some cases, how they were deceived in the person they were recommending!
    Here, for instance, was this Duskin. One of the letters said—it was from his college president—“I know of no more honorable, conscientious, energetic, promising young man in the whole of my acquaintance than Philip Duskin—” and another, this from the great head of an engineering firm with whom it appeared he had been connected for four years following his college experience—“This young man will accomplish any purpose he undertakes if it is humanly possible to accomplish.”
    How could those words be reconciled with the revealing words she had copied down in her office from the conversation of those two crooks? Of course they were
crooks
themselves, but they were not talking for other ears, and naturally what they told each other in privacy must be true. It certainly had sounded as if that young Duskin had joined with them in a scheme to substitute papier-mâché frescoes for the ceilings in place of the carvings which the contract called for. Blintz had even stated the sum they would be able to divide between the three of them. They had implied that Duskin had refused to be a party to the graft unless he shared equally in the booty. They had spoken of other materials where similar propositions had been made to Duskin, and where he had apparently acquiesced. Yet he had succeeded in deceiving his college president and his former employers so that they gave him recommendations like that! Oh, it would be a work of righteousness to expose him to the light of day! A young man ought to suffer for a deceit like that. He deserved to be in jail more than any common thief who stole a few dollars from somebody’s purse.
    And what of the two men who were supposed to be building that structure? What could possibly be their object? It put an entirely new angle on the matter to find that they were the actual owners of the building. She had not had time last night after discovering their identity to think about it. She had been too weary when the evening was over, and the morning had been full of other things. There was something strange about it all which she felt she must ferret out. How could they be the owners of that building and yet be working a con on it? It did not seem reasonable that it was all explainable on the grounds that they wanted to make the Fawcett people lose their big forfeit. Of course, that would be a way to get their building at little cost, but what would they have when they were done? And would men really descend to a thing like that? And then plan to cheat themselves on the ceiling? It was most perplexing and she was satisfied that there was some key to it all that she did not yet understand. She must work it out slowly. She must not make a false move, nor show her hand on any account. Perhaps if she could get rid of this Duskin quietly and put another man in his place things would go through all right, and yet—where was she to get the other