Until a minute or two before twelve, Grant Austen sat in a labored pretense of listening, nettled by Brown’s constant references to his retirement, held back from walking out only by the expectation that, at any moment, Atherson would rescue him with an invitation to lunch at The Wharf. That hope was still alive until, finally escaping with the promise that he would give some thought to Brown’s investment suggestions, he came back down the hall to find Atherson’s office empty and his hat and coat gone from the clothestree in the corner.
Spiraling his way down the staircase to the banking floor, Grant Austen was more stunned than angered, attempting to excuse Atherson by trying to make himself believe that the banker might have had a date to go somewhere else today. But acceptance was made difficult by the juxtaposed memory of the strange way that Harrison Glenn had treated him. Never before would the head of Corporation Associates have passed up an opportunity to see him, particularly with such a lame excuse as a staff meeting. And now Will Atherson had treated him the same way, shoving him off on a clerk and then sneaking out. What was wrong? He was a millionaire … he had a deposit slip to prove it … but everyone was treating him as if he were a nobody, as if he didn’t matter any more.
He hailed a taxicab, blinking his disbelief when the driver said, seemingly only a moment later, “Here you are, sir.”
Austen could not recall having asked to be taken to the Hotel Ivanhoe but neither could he remember exactly what he had said, so he got out and paid the fare, tossing back the change.
Inside the lobby, he caught a glimpse of a group of men moving toward the elevator that would take them up to The Wharf. One of them was that big lawyer he had met last week … Torrant? Yes, that was his name … Judge Torrant.
Half consciously, he hoped that Torrant would glance back and see him but, hope denied, he strode resolutely toward the door of the Fontainebleau Room … damn it, he didn’t need any of them … There were clubs in Washington that were a hell of a lot more important than The Wharf ever thought of being!
Suddenly inspired, he turned right and went to the newsstand, buying two Washington newspapers and a copy of United States News … wouldn’t hurt to get a little background before he talked to Harlan Bostwick at Moon Beach tomorrow.
Through the smoke haze, he saw a woman’s beaming smile, bright with recognition. It was that woman who ran the place … Atherson had introduced her … Kennard … Mrs. Kennard.
“Why, Mr. Austen!” she said, extending her hand. “How very, very nice. Don’t tell me you’re deserting The Wharf?”
“Sure, you bet. Just thought I’d have a nice quiet lunch—that is if you’ve got a table for me.”
“For you?” she laughed. “Always!”
She led him to a table, sharing conspiracy with a wink as she lifted a RESERVED sign, signaling the head waiter but holding his chair herself.
“I’ve been hearing things about you,” she said as she bent over him.
“What’s that?”
“A little bird told me that you’ve sold your company—and for just millions and millions of dollars.”
“Oh, not that many millions,” he said modestly, smiling in spite of himself. “But I’ll have to say I didn’t do too badly.”
“I’ll just bet you didn’t—not you! And now I suppose you’ll be into something else?”
“Anyway, I’m not retiring.”
“Well, I should think not!” she exclaimed. “Not a young man like you. But I hope you’re not thinking of getting too far away from Philadelphia. We want to see you once in a while, you know.”
“Sure, I’ll be around. Don’t worry about that.”
She moved away toward the door but her smile stayed with him. At least there was one person with sense enough to realize that he wasn’t retiring. Will Atherson had been right last week when he had said that Mrs. Kennard was one smart woman. If you wanted to get right down to the truth, she was a damned sight smarter than Will was. There was one thing that Will was missing … and a lot of other people, too! A friend in some important spot down in Washington never did anyone any harm.
“You will order, please, sir?”
“Sure, you bet,” he said, wasting a moment as he scanned the enormous menu. “I’ll tell you what—just bring me a nice well-done filet mignon.”
Nine
1
Will Atherson’s love of Starwood, his Main Line estate, was divisible into a hundred smaller loves—the chain-draped gateposts with their festoons of ivy that his grandfather had planted, the path at the back of the house that wound up the hill through the gray rocks that were draped in early spring with the gem-tipped lace of wild columbine, the long-grassed meadow where the spaniels spent endless days in mad pursuit of some never-seen quarry, the deep pool under the catalpas at the turn of the creek where there was a lazy old carp who would occasionally rise to the lure of toast crumbs, the moss-smelling springhouse, the boxwood-hedged hideaway in the garden that Helen teasingly insisted was the scene of their first child’s conception, the clearing in the woods that was always signal-fired with red sumac to herald the coming of autumn, the front hall with its parade of family portraits climbing the stair well, every room of this home that had housed four full generations of Athersons.
But of all those places, if Will Atherson had been put to the task of selecting his favorite spot on Starwood, he would not have hesitated in choosing the breakfast alcove. Here he could sit with the whole estate spread out for his survey, the creek purling pleasantly past the big bay window with its fluffy white curtains, the intimacy of the small table, the quite remarkably recurring phenomenon of Helen always managing to be her most appealing self at breakfast time.
And of all the interruptions that disturbed Will Atherson’s pleasantly ordered life, nothing annoyed him more than being called away from the breakfast table to answer the telephone. Such calls were irritatingly frequent. His Main Line neighbors knew the exact time of the early commuting train that he always took to Philadelphia and calculated therefrom the best time to inflict upon him such small requests as were deemed unworthy of a call to his office. Most of the breakfast-time calls could be more or less anticipated from the calendar and he had imagined, when he heard the ring, that it would be someone asking him to donate a piece of sterling for the spring horse show.
Returning to the table, he attempted to register the same expression of annoyed dismissal that he would have exhibited if his anticipation had been correct. Rearranging his napkin, he slipped back into the interrupted routine of breakfast, silently preoccupied.
“Will, dear—” Helen said, her voice suspended, anticipatory, as it was when she was awakening him from sleep.
He looked up, startled, saw that her eyes were on his plate, looked down again, and realized that he had been absent-mindedly turning the pepper grinder. His egg was black.
“Oh, darling, I’m sorry,” Helen said, characteristically assuming responsibility. “I’ll ring for another egg.”
“No, no, not at all.” He waved back her hand as she was reaching for the bell. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Worries, dear?”
He picked up his knife and made an ineffectual attempt to scrape away the pepper with the blade’s point. “No, not exactly.”
“Cash McCall?”
He was surprised, having consciously avoided using McCall’s name all through the telephone conversation.
“I thought so,” she said, amused.
“Why?”
“You have a very special tone of voice for him.”
“I do?” he asked blandly, picking up his fork.
“What did he want?”
“Nothing, dear,” he said, not because he had any aversion to discussing business with his wife—her instinctive judgment in financial affairs was frequently more trustworthy than the considered opinion of some of the bank’s directors—but rather because he recognized his disgruntled feeling as being unjustified. After all, there was no reason why Cash McCall had
to confide in him.
But Helen was still waiting for an explanation and to divert her he said, “He’s flying the Austens down to Moon Beach this morning,” belatedly realizing that telling her that much was a mistake; she had always evinced a special interest in anything having to do with Cash McCall and now, instead of dropping the subject, would probably go on talking about it all during breakfast.
“Lory, too?” Helen asked, raising her eyebrows.
“He said the Austens. That’s all I know.”
“But isn’t that a little strange, dear? I’m sure you told me once that he made it a rule never to have any social contact with anyone he did business with.”
“I doubt if you’d call this social. Grant’s attending a plastic molder’s convention. And don’t ask me why he’s going. I don’t know. He’s completely out of the business now—but that’s his affair, not mine.”
“Well, at least you can stop worrying about him from now on,” Helen said, finally agreeing to a partial shift of subject.
“Oh, Grant hasn’t been too bad,” he replied, using tolerance as a shield.
She wrinkled her nose in a taunting smile. “You’ve just loved taking him to The Wharf every Wednesday, haven’t you?”
“Not every Wednesday.”
“Enough Wednesdays.”
“Yes, enough,” he sighed, then admitting, “It was getting to the point where he was starting to be a problem. I was afraid yesterday that I was going to be stuck with him. Fortunately, I managed to turn him over to Brown.”
“What’s he planning to do from now on, Will?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“I imagine he’ll be lost for a while.”
“Probably.”
“I feel a little sorry for men like that,” Helen said. “There’s been nothing in their lives except their companies. When that’s gone, there’s so little left.”
He nodded agreement, looking out over Starwood, seeing the proof of her point. He could retire tomorrow … not that he was thinking of doing it … but he could stay here the rest of his life, never leave, and be perfectly happy.
“Of course, he does have two million dollars,” Helen said as a disclaimer. “So you can hardly say that he has nothing left.”
“Oh, I don’t believe I told you before—things were set up so that his daughter got about two hundred thousand.”
“Lory? How nice for her! But I suppose it was a way to save tax, wasn’t it?”
“I imagine so,” he said, tight-lipped against another rise of annoyance, then forced to cough to clear the pepper tingle from his throat. The least Grant might have done would have been to tell him what the deal had been … made him look like a fool with Cash McCall, not even knowing what had happened.
“What did Cash want this morning?” Helen asked, the question unexpected until he realized that it shouldn’t have been. Sooner or later, Helen always got back around the circle to worm out of him anything that she wanted to know.
“Oh, some information about Andscott Instrument,” he said. “General Danvers.”
“Goodness, Cash isn’t thinking of buying Andscott Instrument, is he?”
“How should I know?” he said, irritation slipping beyond control. “Confound the fellow, anyway. I can’t see why he doesn’t do business like other people—all this secrecy about everything.”
“But the way other people do business is so dull,” she laughed. “And to quote a learned authority—none other than yourself, my dear—the right of privacy is an inalienable privilege of the free man.”
“Excluding always the right of a banker to know what the devil his clients are up to—particularly when there’s some of the bank’s money involved.”
“Now, darling, you’re not worrying about that,” Helen chided him.
“No,” he admitted.
A flash of movement caught his eye and he turned to see a pair of mallards wheel through the air and pitch to the pool at the turn of the creek. It was the mating season and the creek had been full of ducks all this past week, the gaudy drakes preening themselves before the drab little hens in day after day of ardent courtship.
“Will, do they really?”
“Really what?”
“The little girl ducks—are they really under water when it happens?”
“Of course.”
She burlesqued a shiver and he laughed in spite of himself, Cash McCall quickly forgotten.
He rolled his napkin, remembering as he never failed to do that the heavy silver ring had been his grandfather’s.
“And I’ll meet you at the bank at four?” Helen reminded him.
“Yes, four,” he said, rising. “Unless it would be handier for you to—would the Ivanhoe be more convenient, dear? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about the car.”
“It would be better,” she said gratefully.
He kissed her quickly, the barest brush of their lips, but he needed no more to remind him that he was a very fortunate man, and he was anxious to escape before Helen became suspicious that her trip into town this afternoon was not, as he had led her to think, for the purpose of inspecting John Guardine’s plans for the restoration of the springhouse. The white lie that he had told her still rested uneasily in his memory. But surely, in this one instance, the end was worthy of the means.
2
Grant Austen was in the library when he heard the sound, at first only a low-pitched pulsing whine but building swiftly to a thundering crescendo, roaring past, fading as fast as it had come, leaving the nervous rattle of window panes in its wake. He rushed out on the terrace and saw, in the instant before its disappearance behind Orchard Ridge, an airplane making its landing turn for the Suffolk Municipal Airport.
By the time he had reached the center hall, Miriam had come to the head of the stairs. “Grant, do you suppose that’s Mr. McCall?”
“Who else would it be?” he snapped, starting to climb.
“But it’s only twenty after eight.”
“Hurry up now,” he said, short of breath, anticipating the annoyance of waiting for her to finish packing, deflated when he saw the four pieces of their matched luggage ready and waiting in a straight-lined row at the door of their bedroom.
“Where’s Lory?” he demanded.
She answered for herself, calling through the closed door of her room, appearing as he started down with the first two bags, brushing past him, telling him that she would get out the car. She wore a dress that he could not remember having seen before, and he sensed an odd excitement in her voice, strangely unaccountable until he realized that her intonation perfectly matched the expression on his wife’s face. Then, carrying the two bags to the edge of the drive, the strangeness was only within himself. He knew that he, too, should be experiencing that same high-keyed anticipation—and there had been a moment of it when he had first heard the plane. But it had been as fast fading as the sound, leaving him still exposed to the same gnawing apprehension that had kept him awake in the night. It was a sensation not unlike the feeling that he sometimes had on the day when he came down with a head cold and, returning to the house, he asked Miriam if she had put in his sulphathiazine tablets.
“Of course, dear. Aren’t you feeling well?”
Her concern gave him the momentary illusion of relief, but by the time he came down with the other two bags, she had forgotten. “Grant, are you sure they’ll be wearing summer things? Maybe I’d better take my other coat, just in case. Do you think I should?”
“You’re all right,” he said gruffly, his tone urging haste, waiting for her to open the door for him. But Anna had come in from the kitchen and Miriam, of course, had to go over everything with her again … the casserole that Lory could heat up for her dinner … damn it, Miriam shouldn’t have let Anna off for tonight! She’d known all along that they’d be going to the convention … Lory here all alone …
He saw that his daughter had driven up with the car and pushed awkwardly out through the door, grimacing at the st
ing of pain when he banged his knee, then attempting to salve his irritation with the repetitious reasoning that everything would be all right as soon as he got to Moon Beach.
Lory was out of the car, opening the trunk for him.
“You won’t forget about your check?” he asked. “Just endorse it the way I said—for deposit only.”
“I’ll remember,” she said, pulling the keys from the lifted trunk lid, not looking at him, acting almost as if she weren’t listening to him, the same way she had acted last night when he had tried to talk to her about that crazy Italy business. This was no time for her to go running off … but, of course, she didn’t know yet about Washington … and he couldn’t tell her … couldn’t tell anyone until it was settled. But it would be settled by the time he got back … well, maybe not exactly settled, but at least he’d have a pretty good idea of what it was going to be after he’d talked to Harlan Bostwick. Today was Thursday … Friday, Saturday, Sunday … yes, that was the thing to do, have a good old-fashioned talk with Lory on Monday night.
He had gone on piling in the bags, discovering now that they had to be restacked before the lid would close. Annoyed, hurrying, he barked a knuckle.
“Miriam!” he shouted toward the house.
She answered close at hand and he saw that, unnoticed, his wife had come out and was already in the back seat of the car. He had no choice and was forced to join her, leaving Lory alone in the front seat. She looked so tiny, so much a child, only her head showing over the back of the seat, that there was an automatic impulse to say something to ease her bleak prospect of a long weekend alone at home. But before he could speak, Miriam cut in and snatched his words away, saying exactly what he had planned to say, “Lory, you’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“Of course,” she answered, glancing up at the rear-vision mirror with a smile that he saw was wholly for Miriam.
Squirming, he pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at the ooze of blood on his knuckle.
His wife saw him. “Grant, what in the world—!”
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