Executive Suite (2 page)

The girl lounging behind the counter of the Western Union office moved a pad of message blanks toward him.

“Telegram,” he said in brusque command. “Miss Erica Martin, Tredway Tower, Millburgh, Pennsylvania. Taking next train. Call executive committee meeting six o'clock. Sign it Bullard.”

The girl looked up, parting her lips for the standard protest that he must write out his own message, but in the same instant she found herself touching pencil to paper. She wrote rapidly, hurried by some unaccountable fear that she might displease him. When she looked up, ready to check the message, he was gone. A crumpled dollar bill lay before her on the counter.

Outside the revolving door there was a blaze of summer sun, suddenly bright against the shadowed lobby, and Avery Bullard glanced down to protect his eyes. He saw the glitter of a small coin and, before he thought, stooped to pick it up. It wasn't a coin, only a bus token, and he felt a moment of self-consciousness as he saw that the street crowd was watching him. He quickly palmed the token into his pocket and, narrowing his eyes protectively, searched the stream of traffic for an empty taxicab. A windshield mirrored the sun and for an instant he was strangely blinded, as if fire had washed over his eyeballs, but it was a sensation that passed almost as quickly as it came.

A cab pulled to the curb, splashing the flood of dirty water that was streaming down the gutter from an open hydrant at the corner. Unflinching at the spatter, Avery Bullard reached out to clamp a possessive hand on the opening door. The woman passenger offered the driver a bill that he rejected with a shrug. Hurriedly, Avery Bullard took out his wallet, made change and, as the woman stepped out, he pushed past her, leaning forward, reaching out with his right hand—

Then it happened. A whiplash of pain exploded behind his eyes. Instantly, a giant force was twisting his head to the right until it seemed that the cords of his neck were being torn from his shoulders, disembodying his brain, washing it through the whirlpool of a crimson flood and then on into the engulfing blackness of a silent cave.

2.32 P.M. EDT

Patrolman Ed Canady, idly watching the two men who were repairing the leaking fire hydrant, saw the quick-gathering crowd around the taxicab in front of the Chippendale Building. He walked toward it, professionally calm, long-arming his way through the rapidly growing semicircle.

The limp figure of a big man sprawled before him, half inside of the cab, face down, legs hanging grotesquely out through the open door.

Canady took a deep breath and leaned in over the body, half expecting the reek of liquor. There was no odor of alcohol.

“For crissake, why's everything gotta happen to me?” a voice whined and Canady looked up. The taxi driver, slack-lipped and morose, was staring myopically over the back of the seat.

Canady froze his face. “What happened, Mac?”

“Nothing, I'm telling you. Crissake, I don't know nothing. I'm counting the change on a fare, see? Then I hears something go bump and a dame on the sidewalk yells and this is it.”

Canady cut him off with a grunt, backing, twisting his shoulders out through the door.

A radio patrol car had stopped across the street and Canady cupped his hand and soft-shouted, “Ambulance.”

The sergeant in the patrol car nodded and Canady turned, making a routine but futile effort to force back the close-pressing crowd. Then he leaned inside the cab again, bending over the body, his fingertips searching for the tell-tale bulge of a wallet that might help him establish identification. There was nothing in any of the pockets that could be reached without moving the body.

Canady looked up at the driver who was still staring sullenly over the back of the seat. “He give you an address?”

“Crissake, didn't I tell you? The guy don't even open his peeper. Before I know nothing he takes a dive.”

The policeman's lips tightened and he reached for his notebook, flipping pages until he found a blank. With a stub pencil he wrote, “2.35
P.M.
Unidentified man collapsed on street front of Chippendale Building.”

His glance slipped past the edge of the notebook. For the first time he noticed that the right foot of the prostrate body was dangling in the swirl of dirty water that was flooding down the gutter. He reached down, cupping his hand under the ankle, starting to lift the leg, but his sense of touch transmitted the feeling of sodden resistance. He loosened his hold and let the foot drop back again. The water flooded and twisted around the shoe, wrapping a streamer of wet paper over the instep, and then another and another until the jam of debris had completely hidden the highly polished leather.

2.36 P.M. EDT

Bruce Pilcher leaned against the ornamentally carved window casing on the Madison Avenue side of Julius Steigel's private office, smoking a cigarette as if he were practicing an art of which he was a confident master.

“It is my professional opinion,” he said slowly, stylizing his voice in an attempt at humor, “that we have just entertained a damned clever horse trader.”

Steigel grinned, puffing his cheeks. He was a round little elf of a man with a pleasantly patriarchal face. “Don't I tell you? With a man like Mr. Avery Bullard it is a pleasure to do business. You make a good deal with Mr. Avery Bullard, you are not taking candy from a baby.”

Pilcher bowed theatrically. “Of course, my dear Mr. Steigel, precisely the same thing could be said of yourself.”

The old man smiled, pleased but modest. He had begun life as an itinerant peddler of tinware along the backroads of eastern Pennsylvania. Now, at seventy, he was a multimillionaire, a financial status that he had achieved with remarkably little change in the exterior manifestations of character. He remained an openly simple man with the same incipient twinkle that had once charmed tight-pursed Pennsylvania Dutch housewives into buying his angel food cake tins at ten cents above the town price.

Pilcher's eyes followed a lazy drift of cigarette smoke. “You're quite sure that Bullard is interested?”

The old man nodded. “Naturally he don't say so. Mr. Avery Bullard is a very smart man. He don't say he's anxious to buy my stores like I don't say I'm anxious to sell. But the napkin tells. You see the napkin? When we are through eating he puts it on the table and it is all twisted like a rope.”

Pilcher bowed again. “My compliments on your powers of observation.”

“Some things, my boy, you learn when you are a peddler. The lady is twisting her apron, pretty soon she is handing you the money—just the way Mr. Avery Bullard is pretty soon handing us five million dollars—maybe six.”

Bruce Pilcher rearranged his long legs, straightening his trouser seams with his thin fingers. “You're not thinking of cash are you, Julius?”

Steigel rolled his head. “Cash? Yes, cash. What else?”

Words waited behind Bruce Pilcher's lips until the split second when he felt the timing was right. “You may have forgotten my mentioning it when I originally suggested the possibility of this deal, but there are ten thousand shares of unissued common stock in the Tredway treasury.”

“The cash is better,” Steigel said uneasily.

“I wonder.” There was an overtone of cunning in Pilcher's voice. “Tredway stock is widely scattered. There are no big holdings. With a solid block of ten thousand shares you'd have representation on the board of directors—not too far from a practical working control of the company. You'd have Avery Bullard right under your thumb.”

Steigel spread his hands, smiling. “Why do I want him under my thumb? My thumb is too old. This year I am seventy.”

“It wouldn't be necessary to carry the load yourself,” Pilcher said, elaborately casual. “I'd be quite willing to take over for you—sit on the board—represent your interests.”

The old man hunched his shoulders and his neck seemed to disappear.

Pilcher, sensing resistance, pressed on. “A lot could be done with Tredway. Excellent production facilities but inadequate management. The real trouble, of course, is that Bullard's running a completely one-man show.”

“That's bad?” the old man asked blandly.

“Of course. All you have to do is look at the ratio of net return to invested capital to realize that—”

A flutter of Steigel's pudgy hand cut him off. “My boy, you are a good lawyer—you know the law. Also you are a good financial man—you know stocks and bonds. I know something, too. I know companies. All my life I watch companies. I want to know why they are a success. Always it is the same answer. You hear, always the same answer—always one man. You remember that, Mr. Pilcher. Always when you find a good company it is what you call a one-man show.”

“Perhaps during the early stages, the period of expansion and development, but when a corporation—”

“You have the right man, you have a good company. You don't have the right man, you have nothing.”

Pilcher hesitated. The size of his salary prompted perpetual diplomacy, yet his ambition forced him on. “Perhaps the point I want to make, Julius, is that a company needs a different management technique during different stages in its development. While it's going through a period of major expansion, breaking into new ground, there's no doubt that it takes a two-fisted dictator with a whip in both hands to make things go—an Avery Bullard. However, when that period is over future success depends upon efficiency of operation and maintenance of position. Then you need a different kind of management.”

A twinkle played around Julius Steigel's watery eyes. “Nice speech, Mr. Pilcher.”

“It's true. Take any of the big corporations. The promoters who put them together weren't the men who stayed on to make them operate.”

“Mr. Bullard don't do so bad. Last year, four million net after taxes.”

“It should have been twice that on the volume of business they did.”

The twinkle broadened to a grin. “Mr. Pilcher, if Tredway is such a bad company why do you say I should take stock instead of the cash? A bad company, it is a bad stock.”

Pilcher shook his head. “It's an excellent company—potentially. All they need down there is some modern management—sound organization. Do you realize that Bullard doesn't even have a second in command? Fitzgerald, who was executive vice-president, died last March and Bullard still hasn't appointed anyone else to take his place. There are five vice-presidents, all with equal authority. Imagine!”

Steigel's grin broke again. “They have Mr. Bullard. Maybe that is enough.”

Bruce Pilcher chose to disregard the obvious fact that Julius Steigel was having a bit of fun at his expense. “Suppose something would happen to Avery Bullard?”

“He is a young man.”

“Fifty-six on the nineteenth of September,” Pilcher flashed back, hoping to impress the old man with the meticulous accuracy of his information.

Steigel shrugged. “Fifty-six is a young man. When I am only fifty-six I am just getting started. You know how old I am, Mr. Pilcher? My next birthday, seventy-one.”

Dutifully, Bruce Pilcher picked up the cue. “Not really, Mr. Steigel! No one would ever suspect it.”

“Seventy-one,” the old man repeated, his eyes glinting guardedly with the satisfaction of again having bested his new president in an argument. He disliked Pilcher but it was very necessary to keep from showing it. He needed him. Business had gotten so complicated these last few years that you had to have someone like Pilcher. It wasn't enough any more to know how to run stores and buy and sell furniture. Last year alone, Pilcher had saved almost two hundred thousand dollars in taxes.

A siren moaned to a stop on the avenue below the window and Pilcher turned, looking down, accepting the chance to avert his eyes. He was keenly disappointed at his failure to maneuver himself into a Tredway directorship. Odessa was only a rung on the way up. Tredway was the top of the ladder. If he could get on the Tredway board there was no telling where he might go. Avery Bullard would be no harder to handle than old Julius Steigel had been.

The ambulance had stopped and the thick crescent of the crowd opened and closed like gaping pincers, swallowing up the hurrying man in white. Pilcher sharpened his interest only enough to block the aggravating drone of old Julius' voice. The man in white was signaling and the driver was pulling out a stretcher, swinging it to force back the crowd, straightening it, bending down to lift the body.

Pilcher began to speak but his voice froze in his throat. The man they were putting on the stretcher was unmistakably Avery Bullard.

The old man was at his side now, puffing a little as he strained over the sill. “It looks maybe like—”

“It's Avery Bullard,” Pilcher said, sharply grim.

A low moan escaped from Julius Steigel's lips.

A blanket blotted out the figure on the stretcher and Pilcher swung around, standing stiffly, his eyes narrowed. “He's dead.”

Julius Steigel was an old man, at the moment a very old man, mystified and staring. “Only a minute ago you are saying, what if something should happen.”

Pilcher brushed past him, snatching at the telephone on the desk. “This is Mr. Pilcher. Get me Caswell & Co.,” he barked at the receiver. Then a warning flashed in his mind … George Caswell would be too inquisitive … he was a Tredway director.

“Wait!” he commanded. “Get me Slade & Finch. Mr. Wingate.”

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Might as well salvage what we can out of this.”

He was talking to the old man's slumped shoulders, black against the light of the window. The sound of the siren faded away and finally lost itself in the overtone of street noises.

The call came through. “Wingate? This is Bruce Pilcher. Now make this fast!” He flicked a glance at his wrist watch. “There's only twenty-one minutes before the bell. Start selling Tredway common short. Feed out everything you can before the close. What? I said everything you can get rid of. Call me back at my office.”