Executive Suite (46 page)

There was the interruption of a sound like distant wind chimes.

Nina stood before them, uncertainly, holding a tray filled with glasses and an opened bottle of champagne. “Mr. Prince said to bring eight glasses, but—”

“Thank you, Nina.” Julia took the tray from her hands and put it gently on the desk.

As her hand touched the offered glass, Mary Walling understood, for one fleeting instant, the miracle of her husband's mind. Now it had happened to her! She knew without knowing why she knew … and as if it were something done in a dream she was raising her glass and saying, “To Avery Bullard.”

There was a long moment, a moment that could not be filled with old tears or old wine, but only with the silence of two women who shared a secret that bridged the ending of one world and the beginning of another.

“Thank you,” Julia said.

When Don Walling came back into the room they were standing at the window that looked out on the Tredway Tower. It had been a long time since there had been a word between them. There had been no need for words.

They turned together.

“Sorry it took so long,” he said. “There was some trouble about the connection. The others go?”

Julia nodded. “Is Dwight coming back?”

“I believe he's still talking to Walt Dudley. I heard their voices in the garden. Loren Shaw is driving George Caswell out to the airport.”

“That was Fred Alderson on the phone,” Don Walling said. “You know, he did the darndest thing—drove all the way down to Maryland to see Jesse Grimm. Good thing he did—cleared up a misunderstanding—but I can't imagine why he'd go to all of that trouble for me.”

Julia's eyes twinkled with taunting amusement. “Of course it's possible that he didn't do it for you—he might have done it for the company.”

His face slowly softened into a boyish grin and, even without understanding, Mary Walling's heart raced exultantly when she heard him laugh and say, “All right, I'll learn. Just give me a little time.”

He hadn't changed! He would never change … she must never think that he would. Julia was right … don't try to understand him … yes, that had always been her trouble. It was only when she had tried to understand him that she had been afraid. She would never be afraid again … never!

3.20 P.M. EDT

Slowly, the on-edge platter of the earth fell back to a sensible horizontal and George Caswell eased back into his seat. The plane, he reasoned, had taken a long climbing turn into the southwest wind and now they were passing over Millburgh again, heading east. They were only a few hundred feet above the earth—perhaps as much as a thousand now—but the city had taken on a very different look, dwarfed to inconsequence by the widening rim of the horizon. The Tredway Tower, which his eyes sought out as the center point of orientation, had become startlingly insignificant. In truth, as he now saw, it was not a tower at all.

The brown band of the muddy river slipped past the edge of the porthole and the earth, rising to the high land beyond the cliff edge, lifted the airport into the sharp focus of his eyes. The plane that he had noticed beside the runway before their take-off was now a yellow insect feeding on the green earth … and the black bug that crawled toward the thin gray line of the highway was Loren Shaw's car.

A smile began to form on George Caswell's face, wavering and indeterminate, undecided between amusement and compassion. There was, as always, the temptation to smile at these very earnest young men like Loren Shaw who took life so seriously, yet you couldn't help feeling a little sorry for them, too. There were so many things they didn't understand … why Don was so different … different because of something that you couldn't reason into credibility … something that was beyond explaining with words … as a Beethoven Symphony was beyond explaining with the rules of harmony, or a Cezanne painting with a recital of the theory of composition.

It was discouraging, of course, when you were young and ambitious to be forced to recognize that you were not one of those chosen few … but when you were older and wiser it was a great comfort to know that there were still men like that being born, that the cult of mediocrity had not yet sterilized the womb of the earth … that it never would … that there would always be men like Avery Bullard and Don Walling and all the others who were the builders of great companies and great institutions and great nations. No, all of the men who sat at the tops of all of the towers were not men of that stripe … there weren't enough to go around … so there were the fakirs and the charlatans, too … the hangers-on, the jackals and the vultures … the Bruce Pilchers.

George Caswell's smile hardened with grim satisfaction as he thought of how shocked Shaw had been when he had told him about what Pilcher had done. He had been right to tell him … yes, that was a part of Shaw's education … learning that there were men like that … the money-mad and the greed-crazed … not as many as the public thought there were, but still enough so that a man had to be taught to be on his guard … not, of course, that Shaw needed that kind of teaching but still it was a lesson that it didn't hurt anyone to learn.

Yes, Shaw was a good man … but a little naive, too … worrying that Walling might have gotten the wrong impression because he had pushed so hard for recognition of the importance of financial management. No need to worry … a president expected his vice-presidents to push their specialties … and Shaw had been right … the financial side of the business was important … required a lot of attention. They would never be able to finance those ideas of Walling's out of earnings alone. There would have to be a lot of securities sold … a debenture issue this fall … probably another next year … common as soon as the market looked right for it.

Unconsciously, George Caswell's habit-trained fingers had reached for his notebook and slipped out the little gold pencil that was tucked in its pin-seal cover. He flipped a page and the blank paper suggested a note. He wrote it—a reminder to speak to Kitty about inviting the Wallings to come over for a weekend … sometime soon … but not this next weekend or the one after … wait until the Whaler's Cup races were out of the way.

3.32 P.M. EDT

Stealthily, like an invader in his own home, J. Walter Dudley tiptoed across the dining room and opened the kitchen door, opening it only wide enough at first to make certain that he was alone. Then, assured, he stood and stared into the coldly gleaming room, waiting for its reflected whiteness to burn the black shadows out of his mind.

His heart slowed its beat. He could breathe again. Resolutely, he walked to the far wall and opened the little white-enameled door. His closed hand reached in, the fingers opened and a crumpled wad of yellow paper fell down the black shaft. Almost instantly, there was the quick light of a distant flame as the incinerator consumed the telegram.

With the flash of the flame there was the flash of regret that he had not read it once more. But there was no need of that. He could remember. He would always remember. He could read it any time he wanted to read it. It would always be in his mind.

MR J WALTER DUDLEY

TREDWAY CORPORATION MILLBURGH PA

MY DEEPEST SYMPATHY FOR THE LOSS THAT THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY HAS SUSTAINED IN THE DEATH OF A GREAT MAN

EVA HARDING

MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

3.43 P.M. EDT

Erica Martin's hand burrowed into the drawer, her ringless fingers sliding smoothly down through the slickness of crepe and satin and the woolly warmth of cashmere until, at last, her fingertips found the hard coolness of the glass and the yielding softness of the leather frame.

Gently, she lifted it from hiding. Avery Bullard had never known that she had kept this picture. It was a print that he had rejected from several that a New York photographer had made. He had studied it the longest of all but in the end he had tossed it across the desk and said, “Better get rid of that one, Miss Martin. Makes me look too damned human. Don't dare give people the wrong idea, you know.” Then he had laughed and she had laughed and there had been so few times when they had ever laughed together that she remembered all of them, but this time more than the others … remembering it too often and too vividly when the picture had been on the mantel. That was why she had hidden it away months ago.

Her arms lifted the picture and her inner voice, clearer than her lips could have spoken said, “Don't be angry with me, Avery, because I guessed that it would be Don Walling. I knew you never wanted me to guess what was in your mind—I don't know why you wanted it that way but I know you did—but this time I
had
to admit that I knew. There was no other way. Don't you see that? And I was right, wasn't I?”

He understood. He was human. Why had he been so afraid to admit it? Why had they both been so afraid?

NEW YORK CITY

3.50 P.M. EDT

The crotchety old man in the florist shop looked at the twenty-dollar bill doubtfully, rubbing the water stain with the ball of his thumb, finally deciding that he would take a chance. “That'll be twelve-sixty all together for everything—the flowers and sending them to this place in Pennsylvania. You want to put in a card, miss, you'll find one over there at the desk.”

Anne Finnick looked at all the cards. There was an awful pretty one that was just right … a picture of one of those big boats and seagulls flying and everybody waving like they were saying goodbye … and the printing said
BON VOYAGE TO A WONDERFUL FRIEND
.
Bon Voyage
was French. It meant like when somebody was going away. That's what he was doing, wasn't it? He'd like it being French. All of those rich people were crazy about French.

3.55 P.M. EDT

Luigi Cassoni knew that he was a fortunate man. Not only was he blessed by having most of his prayers answered, but also he was lucky. When a man was not very bright it was a great comfort to know that he was lucky. There seemed to be a connection. If he had been bright it would not have taken him so long to count the money that he had collected for Mr. Bullard's flowers and to write all of the names on a piece of paper. But if he had been able to do it quickly, he would not have been there to take Mr. Walling and his wife to the twenty-fourth floor. That had been a very important thing to do. When the old Duke had died without a son to take his place, the men who sat by the fountain in the Via Torrenzo had shaken their heads and said that it would be bad. They had been right. That spring the olives had been only half as heavy on the trees as they had been when there was a Duke in the castle—and that was the year when not one of Pietro's ewes had twin lambs—and when Angelino ran away to marry a Sicilian, and Maria's burro fell from the cliff and was killed on the rocks at the sea. There was not a man in the village who had lived long enough to remember when there had been so many misfortunes in a single spring.

Yes, Luigi decided, he was a very lucky man to live in a country where there was always a new duke for the castle.

A shadow crossed Luigi's mind, fast-moving like the earth shadow of a sea cloud crossing the Via Torrenzo, when the wind was from the Mediterranean. It was too bad that the carillon could not ring but that was one of the things that was not understood in America … that the bells could sound both grief and joy at the same time.

3.56 P.M. EDT

In those first few moments after they had entered the office that had been Avery Bullard's, Mary Walling felt that there was something almost improper in their presence, that they were guilty of irreverence in thus entering the precincts of death. She knew that Don had felt it, too, because he had said obliquely, “I don't actually move up until Tuesday, of course.”

“I'm glad you brought me,” she said. “Now I'll be able to imagine you here.”

“Probably take a lot of imagining,” he said in a tone that asked for denial. “You never thought that anything like this would happen, did you?”

She said, “No”—because she thought it was what he wanted her to say—and then, “You were wonderful out at Julia's. I'll always remember every word that you said.”

“Will you?” His arm found the curve of her waist and, looking up at him, she saw his boyish grin of confession. “You know, all the way down here I've been trying to remember what the devil I did say. I didn't make any crazy promises, did I?”

“Only a whole new world,” she laughed, breathless with the hope that this moment would last, this wonderful sharing, this moment when his mind was hers, when she could completely understand.

But the door was closing. His face sobered. “God, but there's a lot to do! I suppose I should have talked to him out there at Julia's—gotten him started on some things for Monday morning.”

“Who, dear?”

“Loren Shaw. He'll be executive vice-president, of course.”

“He'll be——?” She stopped in astonishment.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing. I—well, I never thought you liked him, that's all.”

The door was tight-closed now. “Where did you ever get that idea? Damned capable man—Shaw. Not too much imagination, perhaps—but sometimes that's an asset. It's possible to have too much imagination around the place. I'll need somebody to help me keep my feet on the ground.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“Well, let's get out of here,” he said, tensely impatient. “Oh—better leave a note for Miss Martin.”

He found a piece of paper and a black pencil and she watched as he wrote:

Call executive committee meeting nine o'clock Monday morning
.

MacDonald Walling

She heard Julia's voice … you'll never understand him completely … don't try … you'll be happier if you don't … he'll be happier, too.