by Emma Lathen
“Impossible!”
“Fraud! What are you talking about?”
“And,” he continued implacably, “I might add, a very strong motive for murder.”
He heard Miss Sullivan draw in her breath sharply but her face reflected thought, not shock.
“Now, General . . .”
“Yes sir,” Cartwright said, instinctively responding to the unmistakable note of command.
“You were saying that you get one year out of the TCR. What happens to it then?”
The General was happy with matters of fact. “Under the terms of our last contract, we ship them in to National and get credited by some amount—usually from five hundred to one thousand dollars—this credit is used against our new purchases.” He stopped, then like a man slowly beginning to realize the extent of damage, said, “My God! We must purchase over a thousand TCR’s a month . . .”
“Where do they go?”
“Go?”
There was a blank silence for a moment. Cartwright looked accusingly about the room as the full possibilities of the situation began to emerge. Richter was playing nervously with a pencil, an unhappy frown on his normally confident face.
“Yes,” persisted Thatcher, “I want to know exactly where—where in National Calculating, that is—these trade-ins go.”
“I could call our Contract Liaison Officer and have him check with traffic control.” Cartwright frowned his dissatisfaction. “But all this will take time. I want to settle this here and now!”
“Allen would know,” Mary Sullivan volunteered. She reddened as everyone turned to her in surprise. “Allen Hammond,” she explained. “He took a management orientation course when he first came to National, and he spent three months over in New Jersey at Government Contracts.”
“Then let’s get him in here,” said the General crisply.
“But quietly,” cautioned Thatcher. “There’s no need to let the whole office know that something is brewing.”
“No, indeed,” agreed Richter with feeling. “After all, we don’t know anything definite yet.” He had the instincts, noted Thatcher dispassionately, of the rising company man.
“I’m sure Miss Sullivan is capable of detaching Mr. Hammond from his companions, whoever they are, with suitable discretion,” Thatcher said blandly.
Mary Sullivan accepted this accolade with a gleam of suspicion, but rose to follow instructions.
“I’ll bring him back right away if he’s in the building,” she assured them.
Richter looked knowingly. “You can see which way the wind is blowing there,” he said significantly.
A gloomy silence was his only answer. Thatcher disapproved of office gossip on general principles, and General Cartwright was exhibiting the single-minded tenacity of purpose which had evoked so much approval from his superiors in Korea. Richter sighed dispiritedly, and abandoned his attempts to lighten the atmosphere.
Mary Sullivan returned almost immediately with Hammond.
“Allen knows,” she said on entering the room, “but he guessed why I asked.”
“Naturally,” said Thatcher dampeningly, “but there’s no point in discussing our suspicions until we have some proof.”
Allen Hammond was not offended. He had seated himself on the arm of Mary Sullivan’s chair and was swinging one foot slowly as he examined the serious faces of the gathering.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “The trade-ins go to the Government Contracts warehouse at 1407-63 Fourth Street in Jersey City. The foreman at the warehouse is Joseph Bianchi. We have a tie line to the warehouse if you want to call.”
Thatcher nodded approvingly. Hammond had imparted all the necessary information in a minimum of words without offering any speculations or protests. He also lacked the compulsive desire to convey irrelevant detail which made conversation with Richter and Cartwright so difficult. Perhaps it was simply a lack of intimate association with the TCR.
“Well, that isn’t going to prove anything,” said Richter. “The point is—”
“Exactly,” interrupted Thatcher smoothly. “The point is where do they go from there?”
“And we’re going to find that out right now,” announced Cartwright decisively. “There’s going to be no cover-up.”
Richter started to disclaim any such intention but Hammond quietly stepped into the picture.
“You can set your mind at rest on that point, General. If what we suspect is a fact, this is much too big to cover up.” He regarded the tip of his brown oxford silently as if seeking inspiration. “Remember this is more than a matter of fraud. It’s a matter of murder!”
“Then we’re all agreed.” Thatcher looked around for the nods of tacit confirmation. “This foreman can probably give us the information. But it occurs to me that it’s time we resorted to some of Clarence Fortinbras’s methods.”
“Fortinbras?” The General’s frown cleared. “Of course. This must be what he discovered. Well,” he said impatiently, “what do you want to do?”
“The Sloan’s accountant, Henry Addison, is here. I want to send him out to raid some files.”
Richter and Hammond exchanged a long look.
“The Records of Government Contracts have already been delivered to the accounting department for Mr. Addison to examine,” said Hammond quietly.
“I know.” Thatcher’s voice was dry. “But I don’t think that those records would be particularly informative. Perhaps Miss Sullivan wouldn’t mind finding Henry Addison for us.”
“No, you wait here, Mary.” Hammond’s hand rested Mary Sullivan’s shoulder for a moment.
“I’ll get him for you, sir. You’re right. It’s time we got this whole thing cleared up.”
“I hope,” said General Cartwright firmly as the door closed behind Hammond, “that young man hasn’t got any foolish notions about going to see anybody else other than Addison.”
“Certainly not,” Mary Sullivan fired up. “Allen would never do such a thing, and you have no right to suggest that he would.”
Startled by this unexpected attack, the General blinked, then smiled comprehendingly. “So that’s what you meant,” he said to Richter conversationally. “All the same, Miss Sullivan,” he continued in a grim voice, “those records had better be there when this accountant of Mr. Thatcher’s goes for them. I intend to place this whole affair in the hands of the Government Accounting Office, and they’ll want documentary evidence.”
“I don’t think there will be any trouble about evidence now that we know what to look for, General,” said Thatcher, preventing any misguided attempt on the part of the usually intelligent Mary Sullivan to come to grips with Cartwright. “The normal fraud is an attempt to cover up losses, not to explain profits. That’s what has fooled the auditors up till now.”
Cartwright nodded. “As I see it, all we’re trying to do this afternoon is establish our suspicions.”
“Yes,” agreed Thatcher. “After that, a physical inventory will supply all the proof that you or the Government Accounting Office will need.”
“All right.” Richter cleared his throat, and resumed his professional air. “Then we’d better make sure of exactly what we need to know to confirm your case. I don’t want to go any further with this on the basis of vague suspicions.”
Cartwright snorted. “Vague! It’s you and Mrs. Cobb who’ve been so certain of your facts.”
“Now, now. Dr. Richter agrees with us, I’m sure.” Thatcher spoke quickly to prevent any further digressions into the life expectancy of the TCR. “And for his satisfaction, I think we need only two facts.” He held up two fingers.
“We have to know what happens to the TCR when it comes in as a trade-in, and the Photoelectric Circuit is junked. In other words, what happens after the trade-ins get to the warehouse in New Jersey? Right?” He slowly lowered one of his upraised fingers. There was no disagreement.
“And we would like Henry Addison to take a look at the accounts on the cost of the Information Storage Uni
t. Preferably before those records are prepared for examination by an accountant.”
Thatcher looked around the small group. Mary Sullivan eyed his extended forefinger as if it were the raised blade of a guillotine. Suddenly he snapped it down, and she shuddered.
Three hours later General Cartwright and John Thatcher received reports from Henry Addison and from Joseph Bianchi who had been personally summoned from his duties at the warehouse in New Jersey under conditions of great secrecy. Allen Hammond and Morris Richter were both present, but Mary Sullivan had excused herself on the grounds that even Charles Mason might begin to suspect something if deprived of the presence of his secretary for four consecutive hours.
Curiously enough, however, she did not turn her steps to the presidential office upon being released from proceedings which, under the direction of General Cartwright, were assuming the character of a Military Court of Inquiry. Instead she walked down the corridor containing the short row of vice presidential offices. As she walked, she thought of John Thatcher’s raised finger, she thought of the electric chair, she thought of many past kindnesses and four years of comradeship.
She knocked politely on the door.
“Come in,” called the low, easy voice of Jay Rutledge.
Without faltering, Mary Sullivan went in.
Chapter 20
Exeunt Omnes
John Thatcher did not see any of the people from National Calculating until four days after Jay Rutledge’s spectacular suicide from the sixteenth floor of the Southern Bourbon Building had halted traffic on Madison Avenue and sent five passersby scurrying to the phone, fearing that the bottom had dropped out of the market, and the dark days of 1929 had returned. He had, however, followed events in the press.
The New York Times was having a field day. Always eager to instruct its readers, that worthy journal had abandoned both its aversion to crime and its spirited attempt to instill the rudiments of Laotian geography into one million New Yorkers in favor of the intricacies of cost accounting and government procurement practices. Scarcely a day passed without a painstaking definition of “break-even” costs making the front page. Detailed analyses of Rutledge’s accounts, elaborate maps of his double warehouse system in New Jersey, and a biography of the president of the American Society of Certified Public Accountants absorbed substantial portions of the first section.
The Wall Street Journal renounced the pleasures of technical detail, and devoted itself to weighty speculations concerning the future of the TCR, the survival of National Calculating, and the career of General Cartwright. “With the high rate of fall-out in the computer industry, more than one competitor of National Calculating is considering the possibility of offering bids to the U.S. Army for the TCR contract. This contract, at a properly negotiated price, could mean the difference between life and death for many new entrants in the field, bedeviled by rising labor costs and substantial research and development expenditures.”
The Journal went on to reassure its subscribers as to the future of conventional armament. “No doubt about it, feeling on Capitol Hill is running in favor of continuance of the heavy artillery support program in spite of the National Calculating scandal. ‘It still hasn’t cost as much as the development of The Boomerang,’ one Congressman is reported as saying. The Boomerang is the missile that broke loose from its radar control over Florida last year, attacking and destroying a heavy bomber carrying seven men.”
But the Journal did fear that the fraud would be seized on by left-wing sympathizers to undermine the public’s faith in the probity of American business. “It is unfortunate,” they concluded, “that by his actions, a man like Jay Rutledge can subject thousands of upright and honest executives to renewed attacks by labor leaders and publicity-conscious Democratic jobholders. We are confident, however, that public opinion will rally behind the chief victims of this fraud, the management of National Calculating.”
Curiously enough, public opinion was providing some support for the beleaguered forces at National. The elaborate concealment of his fraud by Jay Rutledge coupled with the prompt resignation of Charles Mason had scotched suggestions of collusion by the front office. But while gratifying this public sentiment did not relieve the company of its obligations to the government. Successive invasions had swept through National Calculating. First the police, then the FBI, and finally the examiners from the Government Accounting Office. The latest estimate established the corporation’s liability at approximately one hundred million dollars. The Sloan Guaranty Trust, together with Robichaux and Devane, had issued bracing statements of confidence, and then retired to write off their respective investments. All this was enough to depress the most robust management group in the world. It was with some surprise, therefore, that Thatcher found himself on the following Friday evening at a party in Morris Richter’s apartment which, while certainly subdued, was not radiating that sense of impending doom he had come to associate with the senior echelons of National Calculating.
“Well, I still don’t understand what happened,” complained Tom Robichaux, holding out his glass absently for Morris Richter to refill. “And furthermore,” he continued, mildly indignant, “it doesn’t seem fair that I should miss the grand finale when you consider all that I put up with before.”
A good many of those present agreed with him. The swift and unexpected conclusion of their mystery, and the subsequent mobilization of all forces to salvage whatever possible from the debacle had prevented almost everyone at National Calculating from finding out what really happened. They simply knew that Jay Rutledge had been cooking his books until Clarence Fortinbras caught him at it.
“It’s not surprising that we were all fooled,” mused Thatcher, who looked wildly improbable sitting in a chair made of rope and canvas which was unexpectedly comfortable. “We were all looking for the wrong thing. We expected to find someone who was lining his own pockets. Nobody was. Instead, Rutledge was robbing the Army and putting the money into the company’s till.”
Harry Blaney, who had been invited to the gathering for old times’ sake, nodded his satisfaction. “I never could see how he was making a profit. It didn’t seem possible.”
“It wasn’t,” agreed Thatcher. “But he knew nothing you said would be taken very seriously. Everybody expects an unsuccessful division manager to make excuses. That was the real strength of his position. Nobody examines the successful part of a business to find out what’s wrong. You look to the unsuccessful parts. The only thing he had to fear was Blaney’s insistence on a division comparison to improve his own performance, and Rutledge got out of that by wrapping himself in a cloak of government security and refusing flatly to divulge his division statistics.”
“Why?”
Everybody turned to look. Josie Richter, their hostess, was sitting cross-legged on the floor atop a large purple cushion, and up to now had been a silent spectator. She repeated her question.
“Why did he bother? What good did it do him to rob the Army?”
“It did him a great deal of good,” said Blaney kindly. “It got him a salary of forty thousand dollars a year, a healthy bunch of stock options, and a pension of twenty thousand a year socked away for the future. Rutledge would have been nothing if it hadn’t been for that contract.”
“Poor Jay,” said Margaret Cobb to the group at large. She smiled at their surprise. “He was always afraid of being just nothing. You know, we came to National together. The TCR was developed when we were both still in the research laboratories. Then the Korean War came, and he got a chance to go into the production end as assistant division manager in charge of TCR production. He grabbed it. And, of course, he did so well he just took over the division. All along he was determined not to end up as a permanent assistant in R & D.” There was no sting in her words. Everybody knew that Margaret Cobb had accepted the job of division manager for R & D which a harassed Board of Directors had been only too happy to offer her.
“He must have started his swindle way back t
hen. After all, he was the one who worked out the original specifications,” reflected Morris Richter thoughtfully. He was standing by the fireplace, leaning against the mantel. “It wouldn’t be hard. In fact, it’s what I said all along. Either Harry was paying too much on costs or Jay was paying too little. But I was too blind to see which was happening. That Jay was really selling second-hand goods at first-hand prices.”
Blaney smiled broad-mindedly. He was very pleased with himself for having left National Calculating before the sentimental claims of crisis could impede his departure. “Everybody was blind,” he said good-humoredly. “That is, everybody except Fortinbras maybe.” He looked a question at Margaret Cobb.
“Yes, Clarence was finding out—piecing things together bit by bit. There’s no doubt about it,” she agreed. “I had a long talk with Emily yesterday. She says that he was very enthusiastic toward the end. He kept telling her that, if the books at Commercial Sales were all right, then that left only one possibility. It didn’t mean anything to her, of course. But he must have stated the same two possibilities that Morris has.
Clarence, you see, really would have been enthusiastic if he had come across a fraud like this. He would have been delighted to realize that everybody else had been misled by the success of Jay’s division. Clarence was one of those rare men who bring to their profession all the zeal the rest of us keep for private pleasures. He was a passionate accountant—that’s really the only word for it.” She paused reminiscently for a moment. “I began to see a faint glimmer on that last day, when Jay quarreled with me about talking to General Cartwright. For the first time I remembered Clarence had really finished with Harry’s books when he began to talk about fraud and a physical inventory in New Jersey. But I didn’t understand what it all meant. You did,” she concluded, looking at Thatcher with approval.
“There’s no doubt that what Fortinbras meant to do was to go over to the plant and check the inventory of parts for the TCR’s” said Thatcher. “And Rutledge was quite right in his assessment of the situation. Once Fortinbras had gotten that far, nothing but his death could keep Rutledge out of jail.”