Executive Suite (24 page)

He was aware that Finch had said something that he hadn't heard. “I beg your pardon, Neil, I—”

“I asked if you, by any chance, were thinking of stepping in and taking the presidency yourself? Hell's bells, you wouldn't want that, would you?”

“I—I don't know. Have to think about it,” he said. He had started with a grim expression but finished with something close to a smile, pleased at the way that the taunting grin had vanished from Finch's face.

“Well, George, anything I can do—you know me, fellow, just give me the word.”

“Thanks. Well—have quite a few things to do tonight. See you, Neil.”

He walked back across the lawn and into the house.

“Roses all right, darling?”

“Roses. Oh—yes. Quite all right. Dear, I've just been thinking—Lindeman is really quite concerned about this Tredway business—who's going to be president, you know. Afraid I'll have to go down to Millburgh tomorrow, get the lay of the land.”

“Tomorrow? But, darling, that's impossible. Tomorrow's Nancy Brighton's wedding.”

“Oh.” He was taken aback. “Well—maybe I'll drive down Sunday. Have to be there Monday, anyway.”

He walked on before she could answer, going into the library and closing the door.

He sat on the wide seat-ledge of the bay window, sitting with his torso stiffly erect, as if he were an athlete waiting for a starting signal. He felt that way. This might be the start, the beginning of what he had been waiting for. But it might not be. He had felt this same way before … thinking that he'd found it … and then letting the hope slip through his fingers … never because he couldn't have made any of those dreams come true … only because he had not chosen to do so … because when he had examined them they hadn't been what he wanted either.

It wasn't anything he
had
to do … nine-tenths of Wall Street would think he was crazy if he did do it … give up Caswell & Co. and start over again in something else at fifty-three. It wouldn't be because of money. He had never had to do anything because of money. His father's estate had taken care of that. He could have been a rich man's son, never done a day's work in his life. He hadn't. He had gone into Caswell & Co. and there was no one who could say that he hadn't made a success of it, even more of a success than his father had made. No, it wasn't money. It was something else. What?

Yes, that was the question. That's where he had always bogged down before, trying to find the answer. It wasn't politics … he had thought that through when they had offered him the senatorship, and not with their hands out for a big campaign contribution, either. It wasn't government service … those two months on the monetary commission had convinced him of that. It wasn't the presidency of the Stock Exchange … the more they'd argued with him the more he'd seen that it would be only more of what he didn't want.

Was it industry? Perhaps. If it wasn't anything else that's what it had to be … process of elimination … it had to be something. The old senator hadn't been the man he wanted to be … nor the chairman of the monetary commission … nor the president of the Stock Exchange … nor the head of that charitable foundation they had asked him to manage … nor the president of that college in Ohio … no, none of them had been the man he wanted to be. Avery Bullard? Was he the …

There was a gentle but startling knock at the door.

“Yes?”

“You aren't sulking, are you, dear?” Kitty called with a twinkle in her voice.

He smiled and let the smile carry over into his words. “Want something?”

“Um-huh. You.”

“Be out in a minute. Something I have to think through.”

“Do you know you hurt my feelings?”

“I did?”

“You closed the door.”

“Darling, you know I can't think and see you at the same time.”

He heard her little-girl laugh and then her fading footsteps. Kitty's wonderful, he said to himself—and then having said it he was forced, as he always was, to go on with the linked thought that it was very strange that marrying Kitty had worked out so well. Actually, it had been a very impulsive and unconsidered thing to do … almost the only impulsive and unconsidered thing that he had ever done … but it was a good thing that it had been that way. If there had been time to think about it he probably would never have done it.

That was the end of the thought. He never went on from there.

His mind reached back to bridge the interruption. Was that what he wanted to be … what Avery Bullard had been? Had Avery Bullard found the answer to what made a man's life worthwhile?

The questions battered down a dam and his mind was flooded with a torrent, swirling to the surface the memory of Avery Bullard saying, “A man can't work for money alone, George. Money is just a way of keeping score—the chips in the poker game—and the chip counter never wins.”

George Caswell nodded in belated understanding, knowing now what he should have known before. Yes, that's what he had been all his life … a chip counter … counting his chips … his chips and other people's chips. When the game was over there was nothing left, not even the chips, only numbers on a sheet of paper. A man had to have more … something to show for his life … something tangible. Yes, that's what Avery Bullard had. He was a builder … and the things he built were real … things you could see with your eyes and feel with your hands.

Now he understood … now he knew what he had always wanted. This was no wild dream … this time it made sense. It wasn't as if he were starting something entirely new … he had his start. He knew the business … he'd been a Tredway director for twelve years. He was no outsider … the other directors were his friends … he'd have their support … Alderson and Grimm … Dudley and Shaw and Walling.

The door knock was less startling this time.

“Still thinking, dear?” Kitty called.

He walked over and opened the door. “All through.”

“Tell me what you were thinking about?

He shook his head. “Not now, Kitty.”

“Please, dear,” she demanded. “I want to know what you were thinking and then I can be proud of you.”

“I think you will be,” he said slowly.

“Tell me!”

“Not now, darling. I want it to be a surprise.”

“For me?”

A faint smile warmed his face. “Yes, I think you'll be surprised.”

He almost wished that he could tell her … but, of course, it wasn't the thing to do. He kissed her instead and she seemed as well satisfied.

NEW YORK CITY

8.13 P.M. EDT

Bruce Pilcher, giving his necktie its final minute adjustment, noticed that the face in the mirror seemed rather pleased with itself. He smiled and the image responded instantaneously. There were many ways in which living with a mirror was pleasanter than living with a wife. At least you could be sure of an occasional smile. That was more than he had ever been able to count on from Barbara. The thought amused him. The mirror appreciated it, too.

Ten minutes before he had established the fact that Avery Bullard's body had been identified by the police. He didn't have a care on his mind. His weekend was free. There wasn't a thing to worry about until Monday at ten when the market opened … and nothing to worry about then. His telephone conversations with Scott Lindeman had confirmed his guess that there would undoubtedly be some dumping of Tredway stock. Calling Lindeman had been a very much better idea than calling Caswell.

As he filled his platinum cigarette case, he noticed the slip that had been in his box when he had come into the hotel. It was a request to call Steigel's home number. Poor old Julius was really wetting his pants now … trying to get in on the kill … it was funny how far some people would go to chisel in on a fast buck … and the righteous old coots like Julius were the worst of the lot.

The face in the mirror winked at him, smiling as long as he smiled, turning away only when he turned away to leave the room.

It was eight-fifteen. He had told this Eloise whatever-her-name-was to meet him at Chambord at eight-thirty. Usually, it wasn't a good idea to get there too early … better to make them wait for you … kept them in their place. But this Eloise wouldn't need too much of that, not for a month or so. The unsophisticated ones were fun sometimes … if they were really on the level … but even when they were it never lasted long.

8.17 P.M. EDT

Alex Oldham was not unaccustomed to responsibility—New York was Tredway's largest branch office and he had managed it for nine years—but there had never been anything like this before. Tonight he was the hub of the empire. Shaw's call had been waiting when the police had brought him back after identifying Avery Bullard's body. “Everything is in your hands, Alex, the whole New York end,” Shaw had said. “I'm leaving it all up to you to handle.”

Actually, after he had called the undertaker whose name Shaw had given him, the rest of the assignment had proved to be disappointingly small. “You may rest assured that there is no detail we'll overlook,” the suavely unctuous voice had said. “We're quite accustomed to such situations and there's nothing you need concern yourself about, sir, nothing at all.”

As Alex Oldham checked off the few remaining notes that Shaw had given him, his wife said, “Alex, do you suppose this might mean anything for us?”

She was a Millburgh girl—he had met her one year when he had gone down for a sales meeting—and he knew she had always hoped that someday they would move back there to live.

“It might,” he said sympathetically, thinking that she'd been a good sport about it, not hounding him all the time the way a lot of wives would have done. “All depends on what happens to Walt Dudley. If he should move up, we might get a break.”

“Mr. Shaw will be the new president, won't he?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, didn't you think that he was going to be executive vice-president—before this happened?”

“Probably mean that his inviting us up to Maine is off,” he said as an indirect agreement.

“Then wouldn't Mr. Dudley be moved up to executive vice-president?”

“Don't start counting any chickens,” he said.

“Well, it would be logical, wouldn't it?”

“A lot of logical things never happen. You learn that after you've been with an outfit like this as long as I have.”

“Maybe more of them will happen now that Mr. Bullard is dead. If all of the—” She stopped, bewildered by the shocked censure in the sharp glance he gave her. “But Alex, you always said that Mr. Bullard was—”

A snap of his hand stopped her. “I know, I know,” he said quickly, impelled by some demanding urge for forgiveness. “Bullard could drive a man nuts sometimes. But it didn't mean anything—nothing! I wish to God he were still alive. I do! No matter what it may mean for us. I wish to God it hadn't happened.”

He closed his eyes and saw again, as he knew he would see all the rest of his life, the accusing deathly stillness of the face that had looked up at him when the policeman had turned back the sheet.

8

MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

8.28 P.M. EDT

The Tredway Tower had two lives, one lived by day, the other by night. Its day life was heavily populated, brightly lighted, highly purposeful, and animated by a thousand sounds—men sounds and machine sounds, sighs and shouts, clatter and clack, giggles and groans, door bangs and drawer bumps, whine and whisper, footsteps running, footsteps dragging, the life sounds of business.

The day life ended, except for the final mad rush of outpouring humanity, with the first stroke of the five o'clock carillon, or, if Mr. Bullard was in town and the carillon not rung, with the sweep of the second hand on the master clock that relayed the same moment to repeater clocks on all twenty-four floors.

As the day life flooded out, the night life ebbed in. Gray-faced women shuffled wearily in through the lobby, their eyes down and averted as if they sensed the incongruity of their presence in this great hall of glittering black marble and sculptured bronze. Reaching the back lobby, where marble and bronze gave way to behind-the-scenes gray paint, they clumped into the freight elevator. Finally, after a long and unprotested delay, they would be dispersed to the various floors of the building where, with brush and broom and mop and scrub bucket, they would begin their methodical erasure of the soil that the day life had left.

After the scrubwomen came the men janitors. As befitted their higher level in the social world of the Tower's night life, they claimed the privilege of a momentarily later arrival. After the janitors came the maintenance men who, through such acts of skill as the replacement of light bulbs and the adjustment of flush valves in the washrooms, had raised themselves to the aristocracy of the Tower's night life.

Normally, there was no overlap between the Tredway Tower's day life and its night life. Except for an occasional late-staying day worker—who was called a “hold-up” until eight o'clock and a “sticker” if he remained later—the world of the night life was a world unto itself. It was not as drab as the casual glimpser might suspect. There were coffee percolators bubbling in the slop sink closets, cigarettes and occasionally good cigars in unlocked desks, and the big canvas bags, soft-stuffed with wastepaper, made a pleasantly rustling mattress for an occasional amatory adventure.

Tonight, however, there was neither bubble nor rustle and not a cigar was being smoked. There was at least one “sticker” on every floor of the building. Men had started coming back to their offices just before eight o'clock and now everything was in a turmoil. The head janitors were rushing around from floor to floor trying to reorganize cleaning schedules and placate annoyed scrubwomen. It couldn't have happened on a worse night. Friday was the end of the week, the night when the once-a-week jobs were done.