Grant Austen sat, silent, trying to brush off the prickle of annoyance that had been raised by Bronson’s patronizing patience. He knew what was coming … Bronson would ask him to change his mind … and what else could he do? He didn’t dare lose the Andscott business, even if it meant doing the thing that he had sworn he would never do again. It would cost at least a quarter of a million dollars to buy a 2500-ton press and get set up to produce Andscott’s new console cabinet. An investment of that size couldn’t possibly be financed out of surplus. He’d have to arrange a big loan and that meant going back to the beginning, to all those years when he had lived under the black cloud of mortgages and bank loans. He’d thought he’d won when he’d finally gotten out from under. But you never won. You couldn’t win in a little company. The cards were stacked against you.
“—know how you feel about bringing any new capital into the business,” Bronson was saying, “but I don’t see what the alternative is, sir. If we don’t—”
“How long do we have?” Austen demanded.
“Joe wanted an answer by Friday night but I told him we’d have to have more time than that. I finally got him to give us until the first of the month. That’s a week from tomorrow.”
“I’ll let you know,” the president said, his voice crisp with dismissal.
Bronson rose reluctantly. “Well, if there’s anything I can do—”
“I’ll call you.”
“I have the specifications on this new cabinet,” Bronson said, exhibiting the file folder he carried.
“Leave it on the desk,” Grant Austen said impatiently, rising, driven to the need for physical outlet, walking to the window, waiting out the fading carpet-muffled sound of Bronson’s departing footsteps.
With the click of the door latch he wheeled back to his desk, pressed the buzzer and told Miss Berk to put in a call for Will Atherson, president of the Freeholders Bank & Trust Company in Philadelphia. He was trapped … there was only one thing to do, get it over with … the sooner the better!
Waiting, he tried to concentrate but his brain refused the discipline, short-circuited by the flinch of pain. There was a tearing claw inside the cage of his ribs, an iron fist closing over his heart. He breathed deeply, open-mouthed … relax … relax … “We’ve found nothing organically wrong, Mr. Austen … distress that you experience on certain occasions is probably psychosomatic … induced by nervous tension … have to learn to relax, Mr. Austen … when a man passes fifty …”
Voices cross-faded and he turned to see Miss Berk standing in the open door. “Mr. Atherson is out of his office now. He’ll call back within an hour.”
He nodded and the door closed. Then, tricking him, it reopened. “Shall I send in Mr. Clark now? He’s been waiting a long time.”
“In a few minutes.”
He faced down her look of disapproving inquiry, tight-lipped until the door had closed again.
Relax … relax … relax … try to think. There was some talk about a new Washington ruling on speeding up depreciation … that might give him a chance … maybe something about it in the paper this morning …
The newspaper was on his side table. He scanned the front page, found nothing pertinent and turned to the financial section. The first thing he saw was the headline of a small advertisement.
WHY NOT SELL YOUR COMPANY?
He read the short paragraph … unusual opportunity for owner of business to cash in and avoid problems created by today’s heavy taxes on operating profits. Probably some kind of racket. There were a lot of gyp outfits looking for suckers.
His eyes wandered over the two pages, reading headlines … MULTI-MILLION EXPANSION FOR OIL COMPANY … CHEMICAL FIRM TO BUILD NEW PLANT … CORPORATE FINANCING ON UP GRADE. All big companies. They were the only ones that had a chance these days.
Suddenly, happening so swiftly that there was no consciousness of the moment of transition, the claw grip in his chest was gone. His mind had cleared. A single thought hung suspended, as attention-compelling as the sun in a cloudless sky and, like the sun, it was without support or tie, a thought seemingly virgin-born, spurning the ancestry of association or memory, and so it became an idea miraculously created, totally his own.
He would sell the company.
He waited for the backlash of reflexed resistance that had always before been generated by any suggestion that he might ever sell the Suffolk Moulding Company. Back during the war someone had asked Will Atherson to sound him out on whether or not he was interested in selling. He had answered then with immediate rejection, almost in anger, not even bothering to find out how much the unnamed buyer might be willing to pay. Now nothing happened. His mind remained clear. The situation had changed in these last ten years. Now, obviously, the thing to do was get out—and in a hurry, before the Andscott business was lost! That only gave him a week. Could it possibly be done? It might. He had to see Will Atherson at once. Will had the connections and would know how to go about doing it.
He went to the door and flung it open. “Miss Berk, hasn’t that call from Mr. Atherson come through yet?”
“Not yet, Mr. Austen. Shall I try again?”
He shook his head.
“Are you ready for Mr. Clark?”
He hesitated, abruptly aware of the need to talk. “All right, send him in.”
Gil Clark entered with an easy smile, rejecting apology for having been kept waiting. “That’s all right, sir. Those things happen.” He was opening his portfolio, taking out a thin folder in the gold cover that Corporation Associates used on all of its client reports. “This is on that tax business, sir. I went over it with Patterson. He doesn’t think there’s much hope of it being allowed. He says there are certain situations where you can adjust your base but he doubts if—”
“Let that go for a minute,” Grant Austen said, suppressing his growing excitement. “Something else I want to talk over with you.” He studied the younger man’s face, speculating on what his reaction would be when he told him what he had in mind. “This is confidential.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Nothing definite about it, just an idea that I’d like to get your slant on.”
“I understand.”
The question that dominated Grant Austen’s mind squirmed restlessly behind his lips, demanding to be voiced, yet there was the restraining realization that even the asking would be a partial commitment. “What would you say if I were to tell you that I was thinking of selling the company?”
Nothing registered on Gil Clark’s face except the alertness of interest. For a moment, Grant Austen was surprised, almost disappointed. He had expected an expression of something close to shock. Then, slowly, came the realization that Gil’s matter-of-fact acceptance was a confirmation of the soundness of the whole idea. Encouraged, he pressed the question. “Well, what’s your reaction?”
“I’d say it was a possibility that was very much worth considering.”
“You would?”
“Definitely.”
Grant Austen leaned forward, easing the tension of his stiff-necked pose, amazed now at how easy it was to accept a possibility that, until a few minutes ago, he could never have forced himself to even consider.
“Of course,” Gil Clark went on, “it would depend on the kind of deal you could make—not only the price you could get but the tax situation that would be created.”
“Naturally. That’s what I—well, what I wanted to talk to you about,” Grant Austen said, not entirely truthfully. He had not anticipated that the conversation would go this far. Now, expectation outdistanced, he wasn’t sure of what he did want to talk about. “I wouldn’t sell, of course, if I couldn’t get the right kind of deal. Maybe I couldn’t, I don’t know.”
“If you decide to go ahead, we might be able to help you,” Gil Clark said casually. “Mr. Glenn has been involved in the sale of several of our client companies. I know that he’d be more than willing to step in and do anything he could.”
“Well,
I might call on you folks,” Grant Austen said cautiously. “I don’t know yet how things are going to develop but—”
The buzzer of the intercommunicating system sounded and he depressed the listening key. Miss Berk’s voice said, “Mr. Atherson’s on the line. Do you want to talk to him now or shall I have him call back?”
“I’ll talk to him.”
He felt the necessity of rejecting Gil Clark’s gestured offer to leave the room but, picking up the receiver, he was conscious of the restraint that his presence demanded. Hesitating momentarily, he thought of his original reason for calling the banker and decided that there was no need to tell Atherson the whole story over the phone. All he would do was make an appointment to see him tomorrow.
He leaned back, uptilting the receiver. “Will? Grant Austen. I was wondering what your schedule was like for tomorrow. There’s a new development in the Andscott situation that I’m anxious to talk over with you. How would you be fixed if I were to drive down tomorrow forenoon—get in about noon?”
They made a luncheon date and he hung up, pleasantly aware of Gil’s courtesy in having gotten up and walked to the window.
He cleared his throat and Gil turned, talking as he came back to the desk. “I’ve been thinking, Mr. Austen—of course, I wouldn’t do this without your permission—but if it’s agreeable to you, I’d like to mention to Mr. Glenn that you’re thinking of selling. Even if you do have a deal of your own brewing, there’d be no harm in bringing another buyer or two into the picture. Selling a company is no different from selling anything else—it takes more than one bidder to get the price up. Mr. Glenn has a lot of contacts with investors—people who want to buy industrial properties and companies that are looking for expansion possibilities—so it’s just possible that he might be able to put you in touch with something interesting. Suppose I have a preliminary talk with him. He may not have anything to suggest. I don’t know that he will, but if he doesn’t, there’s no harm done. If he does, it’s all to the good.”
Grant Austen gripped the arms of his chair, reacting to the feeling of being hurtled toward the edge of a precipice. If he agreed, it was almost a final decision. He hadn’t had time enough to think it through yet. He needed to talk about it, thrash it out …
His eyes, subconsciously guided, turned to the north window and found, across the smoke-plumed gray roofs of the city, the spot on the slope of Orchard Ridge that marked the site of his home. His eyes saw only the blue haze of distance but his mind saw the big studio window in the second floor of the carriage house … tonight he’d talk it over with Lory … Lory would understand … know that it wasn’t weakness … that he wasn’t running away. Lory would understand that he was being smart … that now was the time to get out … before Andscott …
Gil Clark said, “Did you have any price in mind, sir?”
“Price? Well, not exactly.”
“I just thought it might help if I could give Mr. Glenn some rough idea.”
He hesitated, facing another commitment. “You know the business, Gil. What do you think I could get for it?”
“Oh, that’s hard to say, sir. All depends on what someone would be willing to pay for it.” He opened his briefcase and took out a notebook, fanning it until he found what Grant Austen saw was a copy of the company’s last balance sheet. Gil sat for what seemed an eternity, noting figures on the edge of the sheet. “This is only a stab in the dark—but I’d say you might get somewhere between a million six and a million eight—maybe two million, I don’t know. Of course, you’d have income tax to pay, but it would only be capital gain. Even if you only got a million five or six—well, you’d still have a million clear for yourself.”
Grant Austen stared incredulously at the gray blur of figures on the balance sheet. Strangely, he had never thought of them before as representing personal wealth, only as symbols in an equation that had to be kept balanced. It had never occurred to him that he was actually within reach of becoming a millionaire.
“All right, Gil,” he said with as much composure as he could manage. “I’ll call you when I’m in Philadelphia tomorrow.”
Gil Clark rose.
“Sit down a minute,” Grant Austen said. “How much would I have to get—gross—to have a million left after tax?”
2
Lory Austen pushed back the end panel of the folding screen that partitioned the corner where she worked from the rest of the cavernous studio. The light over her drawing board was no longer the coldly bright sun of her little cloistered world. Now it was only a feeble glow in the pervading grayness.
She wrapped her arms across her breasts, her body tight-held, sheltering a small warmth, feeling again the bleak frustration that her father had imposed upon her. She had wanted only a small workshop, intimate and secure, but he had commissioned a Philadelphia architect to plan the remodeling of the old carriage house, ordering the creation of a “studio.” The result had been this enormous barn-like room, more appropriate to a sculptor of monuments than to an illustrator of children’s books.
She had tried to stop him but, as always, there had been no way to do it without making it seem a denial of affection. Defeated, she had tried to make the best of a bad situation and, for a while, the screen around her drawing board had partially achieved the intimacy of atmosphere that her creative mind seemed to demand. But of late the screen had lost its efficacy. Since early morning she had been struggling to find a starting point for the key drawings in the new book that she had been commissioned to illustrate, but every time an idea had seemed about to flow from her fingertips, the gray gloom of the day had filtered in past the screen and congealed her imagination. The wastebasket was piled high with the crumbled tissue of discarded sketches. Nothing that she had drawn was usable. Even worse, there was not even the filmy tendril of a vague idea that might, later, grow into something more substantial.
She walked toward the huge studio window, facing the up-rising slope of Orchard Ridge, her eyes subconsciously skipping what they did not want to see—the parallel gashes of the new streets and the low-roofed houses that lined them—lifting to the gray-violet of the distant woods, blued by the cold mist that even the rising wind had failed to clear. Searching, she found not the faintest hint of a green overcast on the leafless trees, no sure promise of the coming spring that would, she hoped, break the clutch of depression that the winter had fastened upon her. She had thought that a new book might do it. It hadn’t.
She watched the ragged clouds that the March wind was driving in over the comb-edged crest of Orchard Ridge. They were the colorless color of the dirty brush washings of India ink, the cold smoke of a flameless fire, dropping burnt embers that were crows searching the dead earth, loose-winged and graceless, awkwardly fighting the cold wind. When spring came, the crows would be gone. They were still here in uncountable thousands.
Her gaze moved slowly across the high face of the hill, finding the ravine where the virgin white oaks still stood, the great trees that she had sketched for the forest scene in The Knight of the Hawk, the first book she had illustrated. The big oaks were lost in the smudge of distance, as lost as the heart-pounding drive of creative urgency that she had felt on that day when she had climbed the hill to make her sketches. That was a long time ago now … four years … four years and more … four years last fall …
She had come home from Maine that summer after she had graduated from art school, blindly running away from terror, needing escape as she had never needed it before, and the commission to illustrate her first book had been a saving miracle. There had been nothing in all of her life as consciously needed, no story so desirable as one of Marybelle Hudson’s romantic fairy tales, no publisher so much wanted as Clark-Dudley.
There had been an unmatched thrill in that first letter from Jefferson Clark, asking her to come to Philadelphia to discuss the possibility of illustrating Marybelle Hudson’s new book, The Knight of the Hawk. Somehow she had lived through those six days of waiting until the
appointed forenoon, and then through the hours and minutes and seconds until, at the stroke of ten, she had opened the door of the Clark-Dudley reception lobby. The frumpy old lady behind the bronze wicket had told her that Mr. Clark was busy, he would see her when he could, and Lory had sat for over an hour in the torture chamber of that musty little hall, tying and retying the black strings of her portfolio.
She had been called in at last, standing because she had not been invited to sit, watching Jefferson Clark’s aristocratically noncommittal face as he leafed hastily through her portfolio, seeming to miss all of the samples that she most wanted him to see. She had met him twice before, once when he had lectured at art school and again at his cocktail party in Maine, but he offered no sign of recognition and she, quaking, had said nothing to recall the occasions.
Finally sitting at his gruff command, she had been subjected to a half-hour dissertation on the impending demise of the whole book publishing industry, a situation that he seemed to charge to negligent booksellers, the nefarious plotting of eccentric writers, and upstart young females who imagined themselves to be artists. She gained the impression that Jefferson Clark strangely envisioned the idyllic state of a publishing house as one in which books would be unwritten, unillustrated, and unsold.
He had, in the end, commissioned her to illustrate The Knight of the Hawk, but the joy that it should have given her was dimmed by his making it seem an act of paternalistic charity taken against his judgment. But even that had not mattered then. All she wanted was a chance to prove herself and he had given her that. No Prather graduate had done better—a major commission in her first year out of school—and from Clark-Dudley!
There may have been purpose in Jefferson Clark’s method. Later, she thought perhaps there had been. Calculated or not, his manner had incited a desperate fear of failure and it was that fear that had driven her to superlative effort during the three short weeks that he had given her to complete the twelve drawings he had told her to make.
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