Executive Suite (41 page)

“You're still thinking of him as a dictator?”

“Wasn't he?” Her faint smile did nothing to weaken the dogged persistence of her attack.

He locked his fingers, gripping so hard that the knuckles showed white. “Mrs. Prince, there always has to be one man at the top. It can't be any other way. That's true whether it's an industrial corporation—an army—a nation—any organization of any kind. No matter how you set things up, there has to be that man at the top. In the end, he has to take total responsibility. There's no other way. In that sense—”

“You speak of responsibility, Mr. Walling. To whom?”

“To the company.”

“Not to the stockholders?”

“Yes—partially.”

“Partially? Don't you believe that the stockholders
own
the company, Mr. Walling—that it's their
property
—that the only purpose of a company is to make a profit for the benefit of its stockholders?”

He had fought hard to fan away the rising vapor of anger but now the hot vapor suffused his brain. In the smoking haze there was no longer any visible demarcation that separated Julia Tredway Prince from Loren Shaw. The words were Shaw's but the voice was hers. She could not escape the responsibility for having said them.

What right did she have to put him through this inquisition … to make him crawl to her on his belly? Because she was a stockholder … because she had a few scraps of paper that let her live like a honey-sucking parasite on the work of other men? Alderson had been right … dividends were all that mattered to Julia Tredway Prince … money … money to support that worthless husband who had never done a useful thing in his life … “she caused Mr. Bullard a great deal of difficulty”… no wonder! Was she so money-depraved that she could feel no human gratitude … so self-blinded that she could not see that she was a rich woman only because of Avery Bullard … that her precious stock wouldn't be worth a cent if it had not been for him? It was Avery Bullard who had given her everything she had … the food she ate, the dress she wore, even that cigarette she was snuffing out in the ashtray … and now she had turned against him, stabbing the corpse that could not fight back.

There was no barrier of caution now. He was beyond the last compromise, the last evasion, the last half-lie. Words came out of nowhere, unpremeditated, fresh-spoken. “You asked for my point of view, Mrs. Prince, and I'll give it to you. Avery Bullard was a great man and he built a great company. Yes,
he
built it! And he did it because he was strong and because he wasn't afraid! He wasn't afraid of weaker men who called him a dictator, or a god-on-a-hill, or anything else. He didn't care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered to Avery Bullard but one thing—the company! I say, thank God he lived, thank God there was an Avery Bullard, and you should say the same thing, Julia Tredway—you above anyone else!”

The force of his words had propelled him to his feet and he wheeled to the door, but she had bolted toward him and her arms fought to hold him.

“No, no,” she cried in a total abandonment of restraint. “You're wrong, wrong, terribly wrong! You don't think I loved him, but I did! As much as you loved him—more! Please believe me—please!”

He stared down at her, unbelieving, the vapor of anger drifting away.

“I can't let you think what you are thinking—don't—please don't,” she pleaded. “You said, ‘you above anyone else!' Yes, that's true! You have no idea how true. Do you know where I'd be today if it weren't for Avery Bullard? I'd be in an asylum for the incurably insane. It's true. He saved me. The doctors will tell you it's true. He brought my mind back—he gave me my life. You think you owe him a lot? I owe him a thousand times more. Can't you see now that I didn't turn against him as you thought I did? I couldn't. I never could. It would be impossible. I was only—”

She had driven her voice to exhaustion and she took quick sobbing breaths, as fast as heartbeats. “You think I'm still insane?”

He shook his head. “But I don't see why you were—”

“Because I knew he was dead! Because Mr. Shaw said there could never be another Avery Bullard—”

He felt her exhaustion become his own, the draining away to emptiness, the weakness of convalescence after anger. “No, there can never be another Avery Bullard.”

“—but there can be a MacDonald Walling,” she whispered, a whisper so intense that it had the timbre of a shout. “I didn't know that before, but I know it now! You'll be the president of the Tredway Corporation—you—MacDonald Walling.”

It was a strange victory, as victories are often strange after the warrior has forgotten why he fought.

She was anxiously watching his face. “You will do it?”

He managed a smile.

The victory had been no stranger than the cold sense of reality that had now swept through his mind. “It will take more than the two of us, Mrs. Prince. There'll have to be four.”

“Four?”

“It takes four votes to elect a president.”

“Oh. Will that be hard to manage?”

“I don't know.”

“Of course Mr. Shaw wants it for himself. He made that plain enough when he was here last night.”

“I know.”

“And Mr. Alderson, too. I gathered from what Mr. Shaw said that he regarded Mr. Alderson as his principal competitor.” Her eyes twinkled. “Mr. Shaw will be very surprised when he finds out who it's really going to be.”

He passed her last remark. “I think I can count on Alderson's vote. I'm sure I can. There's a possibility that I might have Walt Dudley's vote too. Alderson was going out to see him.”

“When will you know?”

He thought for a moment. “Could I use your telephone?”

“Yes, do!” The excitement of impatience was in her voice and her eyes followed him eagerly as he crossed to the desk.

12.12 P.M. EDT

Erica Martin dialed 9 for an outside line and even the moment that it took before the dial tone sounded seemed like an eternity. She dialed the number. The busy signal roared back at her ears. Her finger ran down the column:
Prince, Dwight R 800 N. Front … 2-4342
.

Yes, the number had been right.

She dialed again. It was ringing! She stiffened herself against the sound of that woman's voice.

It was Don Walling's voice!

“Mr. Walling, this is Erica Martin. I've just had a call from Mr. Caswell. He's flown down from New York and is out at the airport now. I have my car and I'm going out to get him. I thought you'd want to see him—so—yes—no, he wanted to talk to me and I told him I'd meet him.”

She waited as he had asked her to wait, closing her eyes like doubling her fists. Why should she feel this way just because he was talking to that woman … why, why, why?

There was his voice again. “Yes, Mr. Walling?—yes, I can bring him there if—if that's what you want me to do.”

She closed her eyes again … fighting something that shouldn't need to be fought again … but now it was starting all over. It was her own fault … she should never have let Don Walling take that box out there. But Julia Tredway Prince wouldn't win … not this time. When Mr. Caswell went in that house she would go with him.

She started for her hat, forgetting that it was on her head, that she had been ready to leave when the telephone had rung.

12.15 P.M. EDT

“If we can get George Caswell's vote that's all you'd need?” Julia Tredway Prince asked.

“Yes, that's all,” Don Walling said.

“Then I don't think we have anything to worry about. Fortunately, I know Mr. Caswell. As a matter of fact I was talking to him on the telephone yesterday—about someone who was trying to buy some Tredway stock. I think you can safely leave Mr. Caswell in my hands.”

“Do you think it might be better if I weren't here?”

“Perhaps. Where can I call you—at home?”

He nodded. “I'll make a stop at Alderson's—see if he's there yet—and then I'll go home.”

12.19 P.M. EDT

Until Frederick Alderson glanced at the speedometer, the screaming siren had been only another of the wild sounds that coursed through his mind. He saw then that the needle was wavering just about sixty-five and his quick side glance caught the thumb jerk of a state trooper who was motioning him toward the edge of the road.

There was a terrifying wait after he had stopped the car. Frederick Alderson had never before been guilty of the violation of a traffic law.

The trooper's face finally appeared in the window. His voice had the diabolical pleasantness of calculated doom. “May I see your operator's license, please?”

Somehow, thick-fingered, he managed to separate the orange card from the pack in the wallet. “I'm sorry, officer, I have to get down to Maryland in a hurry and—well, I hadn't realized how fast I was going.”

“You the Alderson that's with the company?” the trooper asked, marking him as a Millburgh man. Everyone in Millburgh always referred to the Tredway Corporation as “the company.”

“Why, yes—yes, officer. I—”

“My old man's been with the company all his life. John Sweitzer. Up at Pike Street now.”

“Well, of course!” Alderson said, able to take his first full breath since the siren had wrapped a steel band about his lungs. “One of Mr. Grimm's men. That's where I'm going now—to see Mr. Grimm. It's—”

“Too bad about Mr. Bullard, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Not so old either—only fifty-six the paper said.”

“That's right.”

The orange card came back through the window. “Take it a little easy from here on down, Mr. Alderson. We don't want to be burying you, too.”

12.21 P.M. EDT

“No, I haven't any idea what happened to him, Mr. Walling,” Edith Alderson said unhappily. “He went out right after you left and I haven't heard anything from him since.”

12.22 P.M. EDT

It had been something of a shock for George Caswell to discover, as he stepped out of the telephone booth at the Millburgh Airport, that Loren Shaw and J. Walter Dudley were waiting for him.

They had already gone through the ritual of saying the things that had to be said about Avery Bullard's death and now Shaw explained, “Something came up rather unexpectedly this morning, George. I wanted your advice so I called your home. Mrs. Caswell said that you were flying down so Walt and I slipped out to pick you up.”

“Wonderful to have you here at a time like this,” Dudley added in a bishop's voice. “Glad you could come, George, glad you could make it.”

“More than I could have hoped for,” Shaw said.

George Caswell left himself warming to their gratitude. They were good boys, both of them … appreciative and considerate … right attitude.

“I didn't know whether there was anything I could do or not—probably not—but the plane was available so I thought I'd come over on the chance that there might be.”

What was it that Shaw had meant about something coming up unexpectedly this morning … had Pilcher called him? Yes, that was possible … Pilcher knew Shaw … but now was not the time to bring up anything like that.

“Suppose we slip down to the club and have a bite of lunch,” Dudley said, easing his voice out from under the unctuous mantle of grief.

“I wish that were possible,” Caswell said uncertainly, “but I've already called Miss Martin and she's on her way out to pick me up. I wasn't certain who I'd be able to reach so I thought it best to call her first—and there are two or three little things that I want her to check for me.”

“Well, now, that's simple enough,” Dudley said. “We'll just take her along down to the club. Nothing wrong with three men taking a secretary out to lunch.”

The remark seemed suspiciously like an attempt at levity, which George Caswell found in slightly questionable taste, but it actually wasn't a bad idea. He had taken his secretary in New York out to lunch once and, as he explained to Kitty, it had proved highly beneficial. A secretary was very important to the head of any business—in many ways almost as important as a vice-president—and it was essential that she be thoroughly conversant with his point of view.

“All right with you, Loren?” Dudley asked.

“Yes, of course,” Shaw said, but without enthusiasm.

“She'll appreciate it, too,” Dudley said. “Yes sir, you bet she will. This has probably hit her mighty hard—she and Mr. Bullard must have been pretty close—couldn't help but be after all these years. Be a nice thing to take her out and buy her a good lunch. She's probably never been in the club before in her life.”

George Caswell winced inwardly and he noticed with some satisfaction that Shaw apparently shared his own discomfort at Dudley's garrulousness. Of course that was something you had to accept … went with the sales type … but it was good to know that Shaw was a man of some discrimination.

They had walked out on the little paved area in front of the airport building and, as they watched, a gray-green Ford coupé turned in from the pike and came up the road, braking to a gravel-spattering stop in front of the steel fence.

“That's her,” Dudley said, walking out to greet her as she stepped out of the car. “Well, my dear, it isn't every day that this happens—three handsome gentlemen waiting to take you out to lunch!”

From the shocked look on her face, George Caswell was pleased to see that Erica Martin, too, was a person of discrimination. That was a quality that he always insisted on having in his secretary.

13

MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

12.40 P.M. EDT

Mary Walling was waiting—and conscious, as she was so often conscious, that waiting was so much of her life. It seemed to her that she was always waiting … waiting for Don to call … waiting for him to come … waiting for him to talk to her … to tell her the things she needed to know if she were to share his life.