Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (10 page)

Never once, however, did the old lady complain of pain or show any fear of death. She made no attempt to solicit pity, and it would have been impossible to feel truly sorry for so imperious a figure. Tom wasn’t much surprised to find that in spite of the demands and insults she hurled at them, the doctors and nurses loved her. Tired and harried as they were, they ran errands for her and sat listening to the endless stories she told of the exploits of “The Senator” and Tom’s father, “The Major.”

She died in her sleep, two hours after Tom had left the hospital to go back to Westport. He had visited her every evening on the way home from work, after having arranged for a taxi to take Mrs. Manter
home. By that time Betsy was able to care for the children a few hours by herself.

When the hospital called him to say the old lady had died, Tom said, “Thank you for calling,” very quietly, and put the telephone receiver carefully back on its hook.

“What is it?” Betsy asked.

“Grandmother’s dead,” he said.

He went into the kitchen and got himself a drink. He was tired–for the last eight nights he hadn’t been getting to bed until after midnight, and even then he hadn’t been able to sleep. Everything seemed uncertain. He hadn’t heard a word from United Broadcasting. He had no idea whether his grandmother would leave even enough money to cover her debts. While she was in the hospital, he had asked her for the name of her lawyer, but she had seemed offended.

“Wait,” she had said. “I’ll tell you when the time comes.”

And she had told him, the afternoon before she died. The lawyer was Alfred J. Sims, a name Tom had never heard before in his life.

Now the thought that there was a large house with an old man in it who had worked for his grandmother half his life and who now presumably expected a pension from him worried Tom. The thought that Hopkins might decide not to hire him worried him, and the fact that Dick Haver seemed to be growing increasingly impatient over the whole situation worried him. Every day Dick asked him whether he had heard anything from United Broadcasting–he seemed to take a wry pleasure from the question. And beyond these worries, Tom faced accumulating small debts. Mrs. Manter’s wages, the down payment on a new washing machine, and the daily taxi bill had wiped out his cash on hand, and he was charging everything he could, from groceries to medicine. Soon there would be his grandmother’s hospital bill and funeral expenses. He wondered how long it would take to settle her estate.

“Isn’t it funny she never told you her lawyer’s name before?” Betsy asked.

“She never talked about business.”

“Don’t you think you should get a complete accounting from the lawyer? I mean an accounting for all the money she lost–it seems awfully funny that she lost so much. For all we know, the lawyer’s been cheating her for years.”

“I’ll get a complete accounting,” he said.

That night he slept hardly at all. In the morning he telephoned Sims, who apparently had only a residence in New York and no office. The lawyer’s voice was high pitched, with a pronounced Boston accent. “I’ve been expecting to hear from you,” he said. “Your grandmother’s death was a great shock to me. Her papers are all in order, and I don’t think you need expect any difficulty.”

Sims’s house was a brownstone structure on Fifty-third Street. After telling Dick Haver he wouldn’t be in all day because of his grandmother’s death, Tom took a taxi there. A uniformed maid opened the door and ushered him into a dimly lit study lined with books. Sims, a gaunt-faced man about sixty years old, was sitting in a wheel chair behind a desk littered with papers.

“I’m glad to see you, Tom,” he said. “Excuse me for not getting up. And excuse me for using your first name–I’ve known your family far too long to use anything else.”

“I’m glad to meet you,” Tom replied.

“Your grandmother was a great woman,” Sims said. “She’s the last of her kind.”

“I know,” Tom replied abstractedly. He was staring at a photograph of a young man, a rather faded photograph which he was quite sure was of his father. The photograph was in a leather frame on Sims’s desk.

“You recognize the picture?”

“My father?”

“Of course. Your father and I were good friends. We were classmates at college, and we were in France together.”

“I never saw that picture before,” Tom said. He picked the frame up and inspected the photograph more closely. It showed a man five or six years younger than himself. The man wore a tweed cap, and he was smiling boyishly. Tom put the photograph down. Somewhere in the back of the house a clock struck the quarter hour.

“Now about your grandmother’s estate,” Sims said, picking up a folder with a blue cover from his desk. “As I presume you know, you are the sole heir.”

“She told me,” Tom said.

“And I presume you also know that there isn’t much in the estate.”

“How much?”

“This may come as something of a shock to you, but when the estate is completely settled, I don’t think you’ll have much except for the house. There are some securities of course, but there’s also a mortgage on the house, and there’ll be an inheritance tax. And I suppose you’ll want to do something about Edward.”

“I’ll have to see,” Tom said. “Just what is the value of the securities?”

“I haven’t checked the current market value recently, but there will be about twenty thousand dollars. Not much more. If your grandmother had lived a few more years, I don’t know what we would have done.”

“And the mortgage? How much is that?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“I don’t understand it!” Tom blurted out. “Do you have any idea how much Grandmother inherited from her father and from Grandfather, and how she managed to lose it?”

“What has she told you?”

“Nothing!”

“But you knew she had lost a great deal.”

“She told me just before she died, and I guess I’ve always assumed it, from the way she had to economize.”

Sims sighed. “What do you know about your father?” he asked.

“What kind of man was he?”

“He was delightful,” Sims said. “He was possibly the most charming, talented man ever born. That’s why I wish you could have known him–you would be proud of him.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know–it’s pretty hard to explain what happens to people. When we were in college together, Steve could do anything. During the first few weeks we were overseas, he was the best officer I’ve ever seen. He was the last man I’d ever expect to have a nervous breakdown, but that’s what he had. In those days we called it shell shock. They sent him home, and after he had spent a few months in a hospital, he got a job with Irvington and Wells–that used to be just about the best brokerage house on the street. He tried awfully hard there–I guess I’m one of the few people who really knows how hard he tried, and how much he wanted to succeed–but he wasn’t well. He couldn’t concentrate on anything, and sometimes he got so nervous during conferences that he’d have to get up and walk out of
the room. Old Wells loved him like a son–everyone loved your father–but finally he had to ask him to take some time off and try to get himself under control. Your father had just been married a few months, and it was a great blow to him. He and your mother lived with your grandmother, and the idleness didn’t do him any good. He asked your grandmother if he could handle her estate, and your grandmother thought it might give him confidence to let him try. He made some bad mistakes–that can happen to anyone. Your grandmother was patient, but he got panicky–he was determined to get back everything he’d lost. He started taking long shots on the stock market and losing more and more. I tried to reason with him, but getting back all the money he had lost seemed a matter of life and death with him. I talked it over with your grandmother, and she finally decided she had to take what was left of her estate out of his hands. The night she told him that, he started driving off somewhere and was killed.”

“Was it suicide?”

“I don’t know. He left no notes. When we looked into things, we found he had recently taken out some life insurance that had a suicide clause in it. The insurance company paid. We also found that his losses had been worse than we knew. Four fifths of your grandmother’s estate was gone.”

Sims paused. “In 1928, I managed to build up the estate a good deal, and we were lucky enough to get out before the crash,” he continued. “I must admit, though, that I never could get your grandmother to live on a budget–she always felt that she was entitled to a certain standard of living, and that she would maintain it as long as she had a cent. I don’t know what she would have done if she had been forced to sell that house–I’m glad I never had to find out.”

“Thanks for telling me all this,” Tom said. “I don’t know why, but I feel a lot better knowing.”

“Your father’s death was a great shock to your grandmother,” Sims said. “She was determined never to tell you about it. And she never wanted any member of her family to have anything to do with her money after that, either. That’s understandable, of course, but she carried it to extremes. She never wanted you to meet me–she was afraid I’d tell you about your father. I think she’d be angry if she knew I was telling you now.”

“She gave me your name,” Tom said.

“She knew you finally had to know. Anyway, there’s nothing for you to be ashamed of. He was a fine man.”

Sims wheeled his chair to a cupboard near his desk and took out a bottle of sherry. Tom noticed that his hand shook as he poured it into two glasses. Suddenly the older man looked up and smiled.

“You see,” he said, “I understand your father. The war hit me too. Not only my legs–my hands.”

“It almost happened to me,” Tom said.

“You were in the last one?”

“Not Korea. The one before that.”

“But you came out all right.”

“I wasn’t in sustained action,” Tom said. “We didn’t have trench warfare. I don’t think I could have taken that. I was usually thrown in for a few days and then taken out.”

“I remember now,” Sims said. “I know what you were in. It scares hell out of me just to think of it.”

The sherry tasted good. When they had finished it, Sims said, “I’ve prepared a dossier on the whole estate–a complete history of it, in fact. I’ll have it typed up and mailed to you. It may take several months to get the will through the probate court. If you need cash in the meantime, I can arrange for a bank to give you a loan on the securities.”

“I may need cash,” Tom said. “I’m broke. And until the house is sold, things are going to be tough.”

“Don’t sell it too fast,” Sims said. “Your grandmother has twenty-three acres of the best land in South Bay. It ought to be worth something.”

T
HAT NIGHT
when he got home to Westport, Tom found a letter from United Broadcasting. “We’re sorry to have taken so long before getting in touch with you,” it said, “but Mr. Hopkins has been on
an extended trip to the West Coast, and it has not been until now that we have been in a position to discuss final arrangements with you. Mr. Hopkins enjoyed meeting you, and if you would care to drop into my office Friday at 11
A.M.
, I hope we can work something out.” The letter was signed by Ogden.

“It’s good news, isn’t it?” Betsy asked.

“I guess so.”

“You don’t sound very excited.”

“I’m confused,” Tom said. “I don’t see how we can do everything we’re supposed to do.”

He had already told Betsy about his conversation with Sims. They both sat thinking about the necessity to make some sort of decision about old Edward, and how to sell the big house most advantageously, and how to keep it up meanwhile, and how at the same time to start a new job.

“The trouble is,” Tom said, “I have no idea what we’re going to net on the estate, and it may be months before we know. That old house is pretty much a white elephant, I’m sure, but until we sell it we won’t have any idea whether we’re going to end up in the hole, or with quite a lot.”

“You worry about United Broadcasting,” Betsy said. “I’m feeling pretty well now. I don’t need Mrs. Manter any more, and I’ll make all the arrangements about your grandmother’s house. Don’t worry about it for the next month. I’ve already talked to Edward and told him we wanted him to stay on for another month, until we know what arrangements can be made. He’s going to live there as a caretaker.”

“You’re already spoken to him?”

“He telephoned here for instructions.”

Tom sighed. “The funeral’s tomorrow,” he said, “and the next day, I’ll see Ogden and make some kind of decision there. After that I’ll worry about Grandmother’s house.”

The day after the funeral when Tom went into the United0 Broadcasting building, he did not think at all about the familiar-appearing elevator operator until he saw the man standing outside his elevator, smoking a cigarette. Instinctively wishing to avoid him, Tom quickly walked into another elevator. When he got to Ogden’s outer office, a secretary told him he might have to wait quite a long while, because
someone from out of town had come in unexpectedly to see Ogden. Tom sat in a comfortable leather chair. His thoughts kept returning to the elevator operator. It was ridiculous to be preoccupied with such a matter, he told himself; what possible meaning could it have? Still, it was maddening not to be able to place the man’s face and that deep, familiar voice. With an effort Tom forced himself to think about his coming interview with Ogden.