Had Mr. Barton been doing the ordering she would have felt quite free to hold up the schedule until she could speak to him about it. But she feared Mayberry might be touchy in any such matter. He was jealous of his rights, and she hesitated to give him a chance to say she was overstepping the borders of her field of employment. She went to the files and spent some time in checking off the grades of supplies called for by the orders the factory already had contracted for. And suddenly--it was quite a startling discovery--she came upon the schedule of the Bogata Company’s order which she had every reason to believe had been declined. She had a clear remembrance of the letter she had written, Mr. Barton’s approval of it, even the reason for the order being refused by the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company. This reason was connected with the very purchase of these special supplies she had noted in the puzzling schedule in her hand. It could not be overlooked. There was something wrong in what she had discovered. Fearing she knew not what--a mistake on her own part, perhaps--she waited until she could find Mayberry disengaged. When she knew he was in the manager’s office and alone, Ethel ventured to knock upon the door. CHAPTER VIII A PUZZLING SITUATION Mayberry glanced up swiftly as she entered the office at his response. He was rolling a cigarette which he finished and lighted, vouchsafing her merely a casual nod. Very different treatment, this, from Frank Barton’s unfailing courtesy. “What’s on the docket, Ethel?” Mayberry asked, eyeing her through the smoke that circled from his lips. “Anything wrong?” “I am not at all sure that there is anything wrong, Mr. Mayberry,” she replied, ignoring the chair he twisted about for her to occupy, and standing at the end of the desk. “I have found something which puzzles me so much that I thought it best to have you ratify the order before it is sent.” “What order?” She placed before him the schedule for supplies which he had given to one of the other girls to copy. “These are the items that puzzle me,” she said, pointing to several which, in summing up, amounted to several thousand dollars. “Well?” he said, his gaze direct and not at all reassuring. But Ethel Clayton was not to be easily put down. “I was not aware,” she said quietly, “that any of our contracts now under way called for goods of that grade.” “Well?” he said again and in the same sneering tone. “So I investigated,” Ethel pursued, apparently unshaken, “and I found this.” She placed before him the papers relating to the Bogata order which she felt so sure Mr. Barton had refused to consider. “Huh? Why shouldn’t you find it?” Mayberry asked in apparent surprise. Yet he flushed slightly, too. “I have every reason to suppose that order refused. You know it, too. You remember that Mr. Barton asked me to write a letter to that end. I did so.”