Powers of Attorney (6 page)

Jake, weary as he was, walked all the way up to Stuyvesant Town, and it seemed to him that the gleam of sunlight on the sapphire blue of the East River was as cold as the twinkle in the senior partner's eye.

R
UTHERFORD
T
OWER
, although a partner, was not the Tower of Tower, Tilney & Webb. It sometimes seemed to him that the better part of his life went into explaining this fact or at least into anticipating the humiliation of having it explained by others. The Tower had been his late Uncle Reginald, the famous surrogate and leader of the New York bar, and the one substantial hope in Rutherford's legal career. For Rutherford, despite an almost morbid fear of clerks and courts, and a tendency to hide away from the actual clients behind their wills and estates, had even managed to slip into a junior partnership before Uncle Reginald, in his abrupt, downtown fashion, died at his desk. But it was as far as Rutherford seemed likely to go. There was nothing in the least avuncular about Uncle Reginald's successor, Clitus Tilney. A large, violent, self-made man, Tilney had a chip on his shoulder about families like the Towers and a disconcerting habit of checking the firm's books to see if Rutherford's “Social Register practice,” as he slightingly called it, paid off. The junior Tower, he would remark to the cashier after each such inspection, had evidently been made a partner for only three reasons: because of his name, because of his relatives, and because he was there.

And, of course, Tilney was right. He was always right. Rutherford's practice didn't pay off. The Tower cousins, it was true, were in and out of his office all day, as were the Hallecks, the Rutherfords, the Tremaines, and all the other interconnecting links of his widespread family, but they expected, every last grabbing one of them, no more than a nominal bill. Aunt Mildred, Uncle Reginald's widow, was the worst of all, an opinionated and litigious lady who professed to care not for the money but for the principle of things and was forever embroiled with landlords, travel agencies, and shops. However hard her nephew worked for her, he could never feel more than a substitute. It was Clitus Tilney alone whose advice she respected. Rutherford sometimes wondered, running his long nervous fingers over his pale brow and through his prematurely grey hair, if there was any quality more respected by the timid remnants of an older New York society, even by the flattest-heeled and most velvet-gowned old maid, than naked aggression. What use did they really have for anyone whom they had known, like Rutherford, from his childhood? He was “one of us,” wasn't he—too soft for a modern world?

The final blow came when Aunt Margaretta Halleck, the only Tower who had married what Clitus Tilney called “real money,” and for whom Rutherford had drawn some dozen wills without fee, died leaving her affairs, including the management of her estate, in the hands of an uptown practitioner who had persuaded her that Wall Street lawyers were a pack of wolves. The next morning, when Rutherford happened to meet the senior partner in the subway, Tilney clapped a heavy hand on his shrinking shoulder.

“Tell me, Rutherford,” he boomed over the roar of the train. “Have you ever thought of turning yourself into a securities lawyer? We could use another hand on this Smilax deal.”

“Well, it's not a field I know much about,” Rutherford said miserably.

“But, man, you're not forty yet! You can learn. Quite frankly, this Halleck fiasco is the last straw. I'm not saying it's anyone's fault, but the family business isn't carrying its share of the load. Think it over.”

Rutherford sat later in his office, staring out the window at a dark brick wall six feet away, and thought gloomily of working night and day on one of Tilney's securities “teams,” with bright, intolerant younger men who had been on the
Harvard Law Review.
The telephone rang, startling him. He picked it up. “What is it?” he snapped.

It was the receptionist. “There's a Colonel Hubert here,” she said. “He wants to see Mr. Tower. Do you know him, or shall I see if Mr. Tilney can see him?”

It was not unusual for prospective clients to ask for “Mr. Tower,” assuming that they were asking for the senior partner. Rutherford, however, was too jostled to answer with his usual self-depreciation. “If I were the receptionist,” he said with an edge to his voice, “and somebody asked for Mr. Tower, I think I'd send him to Mr. Tower. But then, I suppose, I have a simple mind.”

There was a surprised silence. “I'm sorry, Mr. Tower. I only meant—”

“I know,” he said firmly. “It's quite all right. Tell Colonel Hubert I'll be glad to see him.”

Sitting back in his chair, Rutherford immediately felt better.
That
was the way to deal with people. And, looking around, he tried to picture his room as it might appear to a client. It was the smallest of the partners' offices, true, but it was not entirely hopeless. If his uncle's best things, including the Sheraton desk, had been taken over by Mr. Tilney, he at least had a couple of relics of that more solid past: the large framed signed photograph of Judge Cardozo in robes, and his uncle's safe, a mammoth green box on wheels with Reginald Tower painted on the door in thick gold letters. The safe, of course, would have been more of an asset if Tilney had not insisted that it be used for keeping real estate papers and if young men from that department were not always bursting into Rutherford's office to bang it open and shut. Sometimes they even left papers unceremoniously on his desk, marked simply “For Safe.” Still, he felt, it gave his room some of the flavor of an old-fashioned office, just a touch of Ephraim Tutt.

An office boy appeared at the doorway, saying “This way, sir,” and a handsome, sporty old gentleman of certainly more than eighty years walked briskly into the office.

“Mr. Tower?”

Rutherford jumped to his feet to get him a chair, and the old man nodded vigorously as he took his seat. “Thank you, sir. Thank you, indeed,” he said.

He was really magnificent, Rutherford decided as he sat down again and looked him over. He had thick white hair and long white mustaches, a straight, large, firm, aristocratic nose, and eyes that at least tried to be piercing. His dark, sharply pressed suit covered a figure whose only fault was a small, neat protruding stomach, and he wore a carnation in his buttonhole and a red tie with a hug knot.

“You are in the business of making wills?” the Colonel asked.

“That is my claim.”

“Good. Then I want you to make me one.”

There was a pause while the Colonel stared at him expectantly. Rutherford wondered if he was supposed to make the will up then and there, like a sandwich.

“Well, I guess I'd better ask a few questions,” he said with a small professional smile. “Do you have a will now, sir?”

“Tore it up,” the Colonel said. “Tore them all up. I'm changing my counsel, young man. That's why I'm here.”

Rutherford decided not to press the point. “We might start with your family, then. Do you have a wife, sir? Or children?”

“My wife is dead, God bless her. No children. She had a couple of nieces, but they're provided for.”

“And you, sir?”

“Oh, I have some grandnephews.” He shrugged. “Nice young chaps. You know the sort—married, live in the suburbs, have two children, television. No point in leaving them any money. Real money, I mean. Scare them to death. Prevent their keeping down to the Joneses. Fifty thousand apiece will be plenty.”

Rutherford's mouth began to feel pleasantly dry as he leaned forward to pick up a pencil. He quite agreed with the Colonel about the suburbs. “And what did you have in mind, sir, as to the main disposition of your estate?”

“I don't care so much as long as it's spent,” the Colonel exclaimed, slapping the desk. “Money should be spent, damn it! When I was a young man, I knew Ward McAllister. I was a friend of Harry Lehr's, too. Newport. It was something then! Mrs. Fish. The Vanderbilts. Oh, I know, people sneer at them now. They say they were vulgar, aping Europe, playing at being dukes and duchesses, but, by God, they had something to show for their money! Why, do you know, I can remember a ball at the Breakers when they had a footman in livery on every step of the grand stairway. Every step!”

“I guess you wouldn't see that today,” Rutherford said, impressed. “Not even in Texas.”

“Today!” The Colonel gave a snort. “Today they eat creamed chicken and peas at charity dinners at the Waldorf and listen to do-gooders. No, no, the color's quite gone, young man. The color's entirely gone.”

At this, the Colonel sank into a reverie so profound that Rutherford began to worry that he had already lost interest in his will. “Perhaps some charity might interest you?” he suggested cautiously. “Or a foundation? I understand they do considerable spending.”

The Colonel shrugged. “Only way to keep the money out of the hands of those rascals in Washington, I suppose. Republicans, Democrats—they're all alike. Grab, grab.” He nodded decisively. “All right, young man. Make me a foundation.”

Rutherford scratched his head. “What sort of a foundation, sir?”

“What sort? Don't they have to be for world peace or some damn-fool thing? Isn't that the tax angle?”

“Well, not altogether,” Rutherford said, repressing a smile. “Your foundation could be a medical one, for example. Research. Grants to hospitals. That sort of thing.”

“Good. Make me a medical foundation. But, mind you, I'm no Rockefeller or Carnegie. We're not talking about more than twelve or fifteen million.”

Rutherford's head swam. “What—what about your board?” he stammered. “The board of this foundation. Who would you want on that?”

The Colonel looked down at the floor a moment, his lips pursed. When he looked up, he smiled charmingly. “Well, what about you, young man? You seem like a competent fellow. I'd be glad to have you as chairman.”

“Me?”

“Why not? And pick your own board. If I want a man to do a job, I believe in letting him do it his own way.”

Rutherford's heart gradually sank. One simply didn't walk in off the street and give one's fortune to a total stranger—not if one was sane. It was like the day, as a child at his grandmother's table, when she suddenly gave him a gold saltcellar in the form of a naked mermaid with a rounded, smooth figure that he had loved to stroke, only to be told by his mother that it was all in fun, that “Granny didn't mean it.” It had been his introduction to senility. Projects like the Colonel's, he had heard, were common in Wall Street. It was a natural place for the demented to live out their fantasies. Nevertheless, as the old Colonel's imagined gold dissolved like Valhalla, he felt cheated and bitter. Abruptly, he stood up. “It's a most interesting scheme, Colonel,” he said dryly. “I'd like a few days to think it over, if you don't mind. Why don't you leave me your name and address, and I can call you?”

The Colonel seemed surprised. “You mean that's all? For now?”

“If you please, sir, I'm afraid I have an appointment.”

After the old man had placed his card on the desk, Rutherford relentlessly ushered him out to the foyer, where he waited until the elevator doors had safely closed between them. Returning, he told the receptionist that he would not be “in” again to Colonel Hubert.

That night, Rutherford tried to salvage what he could out of his disappointment by making a good story of it to his wife as she sat knitting in the living room of their apartment. Phyllis Tower was one of those plain, tall, angular women who are apt to be tense and sharp before marriage and almost stonily contented thereafter. It never seemed to occur to her that she didn't have everything in the world that a well-brought-up girl could possibly want. Limited, unrapturous, but of an even disposition, she made of New York a respectable small town and believed completely that her husband had inherited an excellent law practice.

She followed his story without any particular show of interest. “Hubert,” she repeated when he had finished. “You don't suppose it was old Colonel Bill Hubert, do you? He's not really mad, you know. Eccentric, but not mad.”

Rutherford felt his heart sink for the second time as he thought of the card left on his desk—“William Lyon Hubert.” He watched her placid knitting with a sudden stab of resentment, but closed his lips tightly. After all, to be made ridiculous was worse than
anything.
Then he said guardedly: “This man's name was Frank. Who is Colonel Bill?”

“Oh, you know, dear. He's that old diner-out who married Grandma's friend Mrs. Jack Tyson. Everyone said she was mad for him right up to the day she died.”

Again his mouth was dry. It was too much, in one day. “And did she leave him that—that
fortune?”

“Well, I don't suppose she left him all of it,” she said, breaking a strand of yarn. “There were the Tysons, you know. But he still keeps up the house on Fifth Avenue. And
that
takes something.”

“Yes,” he murmured, a vast impression of masonry clouding his mind. “Yes, I suppose it must.”

“What's the matter, dear?” she asked. “You look funny. You don't suppose you could have been wrong about the name, do you? Are you sure it was Frank?”

“Quite sure.”

Buried in the evening newspaper, he pondered his discovery. And then, in a flash, he remembered. Of course! Mrs. Jack Tyson had become Mrs. W. L. Hubert! What devil was it that made him forget these things, which Phyllis remembered so effortlessly? And fifteen million—wasn't that just the slice that a grateful widow
might
have left him?

The next morning, after a restless night, Rutherford looked up Colonel Hubert's number and tried to reach him on the telephone, but this, it turned out, was far from easy. The atmosphere of the great house, as conveyed to him over the line, was, to say the least, confused. Three times he called, and three times a mild, patient, uncooperative voice, surely that of an ancient butler, discreetly answered. Rutherford was obliged to spell and respell his name. He was then switched to an extension and to a maid who evidently regarded the ring of the telephone as a personal affront. While they argued, a third voice, far away and faintly querulous, was intermittently heard, and finally, on the third attempt, an old man called into the telephone “What? What?” very loudly. Then, abruptly, someone hung up, and Rutherford heard again the baffling dial tone. He decided to go up to the house.