Time Out of Mind (86 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
The 1920s were one long sporting event for Tilden Beck
with. Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, the Four Horsemen of
Notre Dame, and his divided loyalties between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants all vied with Margaret for his attention. Whatever time was left, after an additional
deduction to watch young Whitney grow, went to the affairs of Beckwith & Company. When the twenties ended
with Wall Street's collapse, heralding the sad gray years of the Great Depression, Tilden was forced to pay
more at
tention
to his affairs. Though his losses were considerable
in terms of reduced market value, they were not cata
strophic. Cyrus Field's disaster had taught him the folly of
buying on a ten percent margin. Huntington Beckwith,
however, had not had the advantage of that lesson. Many
of his land speculations, especially those made on his own initiative, turned largely to dust. It would take another war
to restore their value to the prices he had paid. It became
a point of honor with Tilden that no employee be laid off
or have to take a reduction in salary or suffer in any way
at all because of the folly of their management. Tilden pun
ished himself for his own neglect by cutting his salary in
half for the first five years of the new decade. Huntington
resisted a similar reduction until Tilden informed him of
the alternative.
had recovered their full vigor. The rest of the world, Tilden
noted ruefully, could not say the same. He smelled war.
Just as armed robbery is an inevitable condition as men tire
of being poor when a neighbor is not, armed conflict is the
same result among nations. He watched newsreel films of
that strutting little Hitler fellow in Germany. Half the men
behind him seemed to look like Huntington. The other half,
discounting the fat one, Goring, looked like Huntington’s
son.
a great relief for Tilden, who wanted as little room for confusion as possible between himself and Huntington’s
son. After Tillie failed out of Yale, Huntington approached
Tilden with a request that he use his influence to get Tillie
accepted by Harvard. Tilden was aghast. The thought of
Tillie Beckwith walking halls once trod by Teddy Roose
velt seemed an insult to Teddy's memory. It was bad
enough that the daughter, Ella, was at Radcliffe and within hissing distance of Harvard. Tilden suggested Boston College. That way, he thought to himself, they could be let out
together at night. Cat people!
Whitney Corbin, meanwhile, set about breaking many of
his father's records at New Trier High School and, in 1938,
announced his intention of attending Notre Dame Univer
sity. It was best, he thought, not to play baseball at North
western under his father. Besides, Notre Dame had a better
boxing program—his grandfather's influence—was more
demanding academically, and had many more advantages
once you overlooked the fact that the place was overrun
with Catholics. Whitney also had a private dream of playing
football under Frank Leahy and passing into that school's
book of legends. Sadly, however, he did not survive the
final cut in either his freshman or sophomore year. But by
his third year he was a baseball star and he'd won his first intercollegiate boxing title. He gave no more thought to
football. Only to baseball, to boxing, to his studies, and to
those wonderful vapor trails made by high-flying airplanes
when the weather is right.
Tilden's friends seemed to die in clusters. In June of
1943, he received a letter postmarked Los Angeles, California, from a legal firm. Under a one-line cover note from
a faceless lawyer, there was a typewritten letter on scented
stationery. It read:
Dearest Tilden:
If you are reading this, I was more ill than I'd hoped.
I am ninety years old. I can scarcely believe it but
I'm afraid you would if you could see what's become
of my fine Spencerian handwriting. Thank God for
typewriters.
I have been out here in Hollywood since 1922, liv
ing quite as respectably as this mad little town per
mits. I was invited here by one of the studio heads
who thought his actresses needed instruction in how
to behave like great ladies or stars or top-flight
whores and was wise enough to know that the three
do not differ in their fundamentals. They have paid
me outrageous amounts of money and I don 't even
have to give half of it to the local constabulary. If
only I'd known.
A friend has told me what you've done with a cer
tain address on 36th Street in New York. I love you
for that, Tilden. I also love you for what you have
been to a certain lady of our mutual acquaintance. I w
ant you both to know that you have always been in
my thoughts. Perhaps, from time to time, you 'll find
room for me in yours. Bon chance ...
Georgiana
known actresses under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Instead of sending flowers, she said, go to the movies and watch one or two of these ladies. You'll see and hear more
than a little bit of Georgiana Hastings.
Tilden resolved to do that, but he sent flowers anyway
after calling the lawyer for the name of the cemetery where
Georgiana rested. On the following Sunday, he was sitting
in his box at the Polo Grounds, not really watching the
game but gazing dreamily out toward the left field bleach
ers, where there was once only an open field and a place
for carriages to park and picnic. An acquaintance, a man
near his own age, stopped to say hello. As he was about to
move on he paused, then said to Tilden that he was sorry
to read about John Flood. “Oh ... I'm sorry, Tilden. I
thought you knew.” It had been a very small item in the
New York Daily Mirror,
which Tilden seldom read,
bare-knuckler dies
was the headline. Like Georgiana, he had
passed away three weeks earlier. In Saratoga, New York.
A heart attack while watching a new young heavyweight
train.
New York Times
to see if he could
arrange a more fitting obituary, Tilden returned to his office
and learned that Andrew Smithberg, who had joined the firm as a very new lawyer and had been active in it for
almost sixty years, the last twenty as executive vice presi
dent and chief counsel, had suffered a fatal stroke the eve
ning before. Late that same morning, Tilden wandered
sadly into Andrew Smithberg’s office and found
Huntington browsing through Andrew's files as another of
the firm's lawyers, Chester Wax, stood uncomfortably by.
What are you doing there?” he asked quietly.
Huntington's head snapped up a bit too quickly. “Just
seeing what's where,” he answered. ‘‘The business must
go on after all.”
The open file drawer began to resemble a coffin and Huntington a graveyard ghoul feeding on its contents. Til
den blinked the image away.
“
The business will go on perfectly well after a decent
interval of mourning. Would you both leave this office,
please, and do not return until invited.”
”
I meant no disrespect, sir.” Wax stepped forward. “On
the contrary, there are personal papers belonging to Mr. Smithberg
that I'll need to help his family make the proper
arrangements.”
“
They would be in the safe, Mr. Wax.” Tilden's tone
softened. ”I will sort them out and deliver what you need
to your desk.”
Left alone in the office, Tilden stood for a while, his eyes drifting over the many mementos of the past six decades.
Eighty-one. It was impossible to believe that he was eighty-
one years old. And that Margaret was what?
Seventy-seven? That's ridiculous. The woman is no more
than thirty-five. Never mind that Jonathan is well into his fifties. An irrelevancy. Perhaps Margaret is thirty-nine.
Whatever she is, she still can turn a head when we're walk
ing together, can't she. There is a proudness to her, a grace,
that no amount of time can wither.
Tilden, at last, stepped to Andrew Smithberg’s safe and, lowering himself to one knee, worked the combination. He
found two folders, both marked Personal, one bearing
Smithberg’s name and the other his own. Margaret's papers. Copies of the originals, rather. We'll hope that she
keeps hers secure, not that she seems to intend ever using them. He took a quick look through the folder to assure himself that all was intact, then slid them into his pocket.
The safe in his own office would probably be a better place
for them now. Next he sorted through Andrew's papers—
birth and baptismal record, his will, that sort of thing. These
he would deliver to Mr. Wax.
door shut. Its sound masked another door that was quietly
closing behind him.
to the office of Chester Wax, who, five years before, had been detected by Huntington diverting relatively minor
amounts of cash from the company accounts. Realizing that
a cooperative attorney in the hand was worth two disbarred
lawyers in prison, Huntington reached an ongoing under
standing with him.
I want to see that will,” he whispered. “The will, and
whatever else is in that folder. It's probably going into his
own safe.”
But I don't have that combination either,” Wax told
him.
”
I want to see that folder.” Cat's eyes.
Does Mr. Beckwith have another attorney?” the lawyer
asked.
“
He's only used Smithberg.”
“
Then why don't we wait just a while? He'll probably
ask me to handle some routine affair before long.”
Huntington nodded. ' ‘Don't wait. Make yourself useful
to him. Win his confidence.” He turned to walk out, then stopped. “There is a way that you look at me, Mr. Wax, whenever I leave a room or my back is turned. Make sure
Tilden Beckwith sees it.”
few days passed before Tilden began to notice a polite but
definite cautiousness on the lawyer's part in virtually any matter that concerned Huntington. Wax seemed neither to
like nor trust him. In that particular at least, he was very
much like Andrew Smithberg. He was taking up several of
Andrew's more urgent duties without needing to be asked,
and he was assisting in the ordering of Andrew's estate with
apparent sensitivity. By the end of the second week, Tilden
was assigning certain of his personal affairs to Chester
Wax. Within the month, Wax had seen Tilden open his safe a half dozen times or more. He was almost sure he had the
combination memorized.
A day came soon after when Chester Wax was called
into the Board Room to sit in on that portion of a directors'
meeting
that concerned the disposition of Smithberg’s
shares in the firm. Huntington offered to buy them at a
figure well
below
