Chapter 12

After yet another heat, Gilbert arrived at the office to resume work. He noticed that some of the newer employees were deep in conversation, but they stopped when he entered the room and looked away guiltily; he had a sneaking suspicion that they were talking about him. He tried to shake off that paranoid feeling as he entered the private drafting room that he shared with Nelson and sometimes Noel during the larger projects. But at different points during the day when he came out to consult with Noel or Charles, he caught the others at it again. Eventually, after a couple of weeks of that sort of pattern, he felt that he had to get to the bottom of it. 

The answer came when he went to enter Nelson’s office and Charles was talking to him through the open doorway.

“The new draftsmen have been talking about Gilbert’s amount of sick leaves,” he said. “They’ve been saying that he’s only working about three weeks a month and they’re questioning the fairness of it.”