by Stan Mason
When the couple were discovered the next day, the police tried to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. They were forced to draw their own conclusions as they arranged for the the bodies of the dead couple to be taken to the mortuary. It was the honeymoon of a lifetime in their own home. And, as everyone knows... there’s no place like home!
Twice Around The Block
In our present way of life, a large number of people pursue the occupation of their choice, and many become employed by large multinational organisations. Although shop-floor labour is arduous, it is among the white-collar workers in industry and commerce where most elements of human nature are put to the test. Accordingly, executives, managers, administrators and clerks follow a psychology in which they are either for or against the establishment to follow unwritten guidelines in terms of rank, attitude and ambition. It is a hazardous path to be trodden warily, where the underlying fear exists that one may be demoted, disgraced, fall out of favour, or even dismissed. This set of dimensions may be counter-balanced by promotion, improved status, or even a seat on the Board. It is a totally different environment to that experienced in domestic or academic life... which, themselves, are different worlds altogether. Consequently, a greater proportion of the executive set tends to insulate itself against the system by either fair means or foul in its endeavour to concentrate on the work and bring home the bacon. There are numerous permutations on the way executives act and react for a variety of reasons. Some relate to greed, ambition, power, personal development, workaholicism, and so on. Situations are even more diverse because they depend on structure, principles employed, company rules, and echelons within the organisation. Every situation bears an element of typicality, yet there is dissimilarity mainly because the characters involved are different. The patterns in the kaleidoscope change every time it is shaken.
Price emerged from the executive washroom, flipped the key in this air, and then slipped it smoothly into his inside pocket. Today his face glowed with satisfaction. His appointment to the junior executive ranks at Monolith Industries allowed him possession of that most important status symbol... the golden key of the executive washroom! How he had yearned to hold it in his hands for the last three years! Now it belonged to him! It also proved he had established one foot on the bottom rung of the long steep ladder leading to the top of the organisation. Life was looking good for a change! As he returned to his tiny office with its strip of red carpet covering half the parquet flooring... the red carpet representing his elevation from the ranks... the expression on the face of his new secretary warned him that she was very intense.
‘Relax,’ he told her. ‘It may never happen! You’re too tense, that’s your trouble. Too tense. Just think to yourself it may never happen.’
‘B...B...But it already has happened,’ she managed to say, with her usual annoying stutter which surfaced whenever she got excited. ‘M...Mr. B... Bulstrode has tried to con... tact you twice in the last five minutes. He’s getting really m...m...mad. He w...wants you to ring him the m...moment you re... .turn.’
Price’s heart sank at the sound of Bulstrode’s name. He was the great white chief... the big banana... the terrifying tycoon of Monumental Industries whose office was located in the penthouse on the twenty-fifth floor of the massive building which housed the European head office of the international conglomerate. It had been rumoured through the ‘grape-vine’ that the Chief Executive’s office was so high up, visitors taken there often suffered vertigo, but he doubted whether that was actually true. Thaddeus Bulstrode was nick-named throughout the organisation, by those who dared to mention it, as ‘The Bull’ and he lived up to it, bellowing long and loudly to all and sundry. Although no one had ever checked his date of birth, there would be few bets against him having been born under any other star sign than Taurus. It fitted his nature perfectly. But such speculation was of little importance to the junior executive at this particular moment. As soon as he learned The Bull wanted to see him, he asked the same two questions faced by every secretary when panic set in. The answers were inevitably always affirmative and negative respectively.
‘Did he ask for me personally... by my actual name? Did he say what he wanted me for?’
Price analysed the situation quickly. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with promotion. That benefit had been conferred on him only two weeks’ earlier. Therefore it had to be something bad... real bad! But what could it be? He recalled a major problem with one of the computer systems before he left his old department. The exciting new development had ended up a complete disaster but that was often the way with new computer software. Nobody had suggested it was his fault, but who knew what someone might have recorded in a report when a person left the department. After all, they had to find someone on which to hang the blame. Surely The Bull wouldn’t want to see him for that! His face fell as he recalled the incident with the pretty young girl in the typing pool. It was all very innocent really. He had accidentally flicked a cherry off the top of his dessert at the company annual dinner. It fell into the bosom of her low-cut dress. In the heat of the moment, and with no other intention, he tried to recover it with his hand, thrusting his fingers smartly down her cleavage. In hindsight, it was a terrible mistake. The darndest things happened at annual dinners! No... it couldn’t be anything to do with her! Or could it? Surely Bulstrode wouldn’t get involved with the sordid side of the personal life of a new executive! It would be left to Personnel Department to sort out. He racked his brain to find another reason for being called to such a high level but gave up wearily after a while. Subsequently, lost in the welter of his own fear, he hurried to the elevator, pressed the appropriate button, and waited in trepidation. A summons like this could be the end of the line. His future might be shattered before it ever had the chance to blossom! The result was a short period of agony waiting to find out what was in store! The suspense and anguish was short-lived, however, for within two minutes he was standing outside the door of the raging tyrant who controlled the European end of the company. With a sinking heart, he realised this could turn out to be the worst moment of his life! Timorously, he rapped softly on the door hoping to walk away if no one answered but, he knew in his heart of hearts, in real life it never happened that way.
‘Come... don’t waste time standing out there... it’s open!’ bellowed the loud voice, and before he could marshal his thoughts he was standing in that enormous office on the blue carpet which covered the whole of the floor... the blue carpet representing the status of senior management level. ‘Sit down, Price!’ The command was loud and clear. The junior executive obeyed without hesitation, sitting gingerly on the edge of a reproduction Louis Quinze chair. Boy, this had to be big! Only Very Important People were ever offered a seat in this office. It had been rumoured that executives summoned here were forced to stand during a meeting with The Bull before he released them to return to their duties. He did this to ensure they delivered their arguments swiftly and without delay. Any long-winded executives intending to take a long time over a report would soon become tired at having to stand for a long period. Consequently, they came straight to the point. If The Bull told you to sit down it had to be big!
‘I’m going to give it to you straight, Price. No frills, no politics, no side-tracking! Straight from the shoulder!’ boomed the Chief Executive. Price quivered in the chair, anticipating the body-blows he expected to be meted out to him. For the first time in the past fortnight, he regretted having accepted the appointment of junior executive. ‘Something very big is happening in this company today. It’s on a ‘need to know’ basis and, I’ll be blunt, you don’t need to know, so I won’t discuss it with you. You’re an executive in this organisation so you’ll understand what I’m saying.’
The junior executive stared at him blankly, trying to wear an expression to show he was totally au fait with the situation. At the same time he dwelt on the fact that he didn’t have the faintest idea what th
e man was talking about. A hard knot of muscle bunched up in his stomach causing him a great deal of discomfort. He realised it was the first stage in developing an executive ulcer. There were a number of adages which floated round company that if you didn’t make it by the time you were forty, you wouldn’t make it at all... that you weren’t allowed to die at your desk... that if you didn’t have heart trouble or an ulcer by the time you were forty you weren’t committed to your job. It looked like he was vying for the latter. Yet beneath his fear he felt very annoyed. Why did these top bananas always seem to talk in riddles when a crisis occurred? It created a situation where everyone else was left in the dark trying to guess what they had in mind. Perhaps that was what they really wanted.
‘All I can tell you, Price, is that it’s a top priority situation... a three-line critical status... and you can take my word for it. Do you understand?’
Price nodded weakly in an attempt not to allow himself to look like the idiot he felt he represented. Something really big in the company he didn’t need to know. Now what was that all about? Well, it didn’t seem to be anything affecting him personally, or his career, so perhaps he could afford to relax a little.
‘The reason I called for you personally is because I’ve an urgent task to be carried out immediately. I want you to go to the office of every executive on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth floors of this building in person... I repeat, every executive in person... informing them to attend a meeting in this office at eleven hundred hours. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir! In this office at eleven hundred hours! I understand perfectly!’
‘That’s the ticket, Price! You’re sharp. I like to see that. Don’t forget to remind them it’s a three-line critical status!’ he bellowed, almost rocking the younger man back in his chair. ‘Well, get going then! You’re wasting valuable executive time!’ The junior executive rose nervously and started for the door. ‘Don’t forget... a three-line critical status!’ The blast nearly carried him to the exit, aided by a surge of adrenalin which helped to speed him on his way.
He glanced at his watch as he travelled down to the next floor in the lift. There were ninety minutes to go before the meeting was scheduled to start. Plenty of time! It was going to be a piece of cake! He knew by dint of his own ambition that only eighteen executives were located on those two floors. Without doubt, a number of them would be absent on vacation, away sick, or attending company business elsewhere. It was going to be a cinch! By now he felt he had grown wings. The Bull had actually spoken to him personally. He was known by the man at the top! Fantastic! He had even spoken his name... twice! There was no telling how high he might rise in the organisation with his name on the lips of the big banana!
The twenty-fourth floor was his first port of call and he hesitated outside the office door of W.R.Y.T. Pomeroy. The initial ‘Y’ had always puzzled him, but no one had ever offered a satisfactory explanation. Then, before he realised it, his campaign had started and he was in the room. Pomeroy was dictating but he didn’t falter for a second as he continued to rant on to his attractive secretary who always managed to sit with her skirt crawling high above her knee to expose the beginning of a beautiful thigh. There were lots of rumours concerning Pomeroy... as there were about everyone else in the organisation. He had acquired the nick-name of ‘The Great Dictator’ because of his superior ability in the field of never-ending dictation. Sometimes, two or three secretaries had to work in shifts in order to clear the work. While one took dictation, the others typed letters, memos, reports and the like, all of which had been emitted from his lips some time earlier. He was the living example of a continuous verbal production line. The flow went on and on, like Tennyson’s brook, and Pomeroy’s eyes darted round the room as he walked about itinerantly. When they rested on Price, a small component part of his mind shifted into position and his index finger directed the junior towards one of the chairs in the room. Price sat there obediently and waited. After Pomeroy had finished the current letter, he waltzed through some general notes, fox-trotted with some trivial correspondence, and finally quick-stepped through various internal memos before the tempo slowed down to a halt.
‘Sorry about that, old man!’ he apologised eventually. ‘But if I don’t get through the mail early on, it becomes one hell of a day. Now what can I do for you?’
‘It’s a three-line critical status,’ whispered Price, shifting his glance from Pomeroy to his dolly-bird secretary furtively, as though it were a secret.
‘Pardon?’ enquired the senior executive, reducing his tones to the same decibel level.
‘Three-line critical status,’ repeated Price, waving a finger at chest height as if to produce some sort of mystic sign. ‘It’s a secret!’
Pomeroy glanced down at his tie believing the other man was trying to indicate that the answer lay there. ‘What is?’
‘I don’t know. Mr. Bulstrode said it was important that all executives should know... .’
The Great Dictator jerked upright as though a metal shaft had been thrust through him and he paled considerably. ‘The Bull? What’s he got to do with it?’ He bellowed so loudly that his secretary jumped nervously and her skirt came back unfamiliarly over her knee. ‘Did he ask for me personally... by my actual name? Did he say what he wanted me for?’
The younger man watched horrified as the face of his colleague contorted with fear. ‘He asked me to inform you there’s a meeting at eleven hundred hours in Mr. Bulstrode’s office,’ explained Price. ‘And it’s a three-line critical status.’
‘Oh, that kind of meeting!’ returned Pomeroy, heaving a sigh of relief. ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’ He turned to his secretary and indicated a new note was on its way. ‘Just a quickie, Miss Phipps,’ he told her, as she prepared herself for the onslaught, pulling her skirt back above her knee again. ‘Note to R.G. Bulstrode, from me. Further to the message received concerning the meeting in your office at eleven hundred hours today, I would like to confirm to you personally that it’s my intention to attend at the appropriate... ... ’
By this time, Price had left his chair, reached the door and, with one swift movement, leapt into the corridor as though escaping from some awful fate. There was little doubt in his mind that Pomeroy’s roving eyes would hardly recognise his absence in the overflow of rhetoric. The man would never notice! He moved on to the next executive whose name-plate bore the simple name of Mr. D. Jones. It never sounded quite right. After all, every executive was entitled to a middle name which need never be divulged to anyone else, even it it merely existed as a mysterious initial on the door of his office. President Truman did it to embellish his name. Why not? To compensate for the deficiency, most of the staff called his office ‘The Locker Room’, a humorous reference to the sea legend of Davy Jones’ locker.
‘Come in, young man!’ he beamed, as Price put his head round the door. ‘You’re just in time to help out.’ He was playing with a model of an industrial complex which covered the whole of his desk. Blotting paper, filing-trays, and other artefacts had been removed to a corner of the room to make way for his playthings. ‘Glad you can help me,’ he went on, beckoning the junior nearer to his desk as he tried to hold two ends of his model together against the middle. ‘If you can place that bit marked ‘A’ along that line over there, and this piece marked ‘B’ across this part... where the tip of my tie is touching the table... I think we can link it all up.’
Price made his first mistake with Jones by getting himself involved. It was like the Sirens calling out to the Argonauts to lure them onto the rocks to destruction. Within a few minutes, he was holding bits of plastic and wood half-way over the table, across the chair, and along the skirting board, and for some considerable time was forced to stand... voluntarily, of course... in front of the window with a long slender strip of plasticine between his hands that was supposed to represent a seaside pier. Every time he mentio
ned the term ‘three-line critical status’ Jones merely grunted to himself, his eyes hunting fervently for some missing piece of the incomprehensible puzzle. It was like talking to a brick wall!
In due course, Price extracted himself from the model and managed to reach the corridor again, where he stood fuming with rage. This assignment was turning out to be a fiasco! A complete waste of time! These executives were so committed to their own problems they were blind to everything else! Well, he would have to take the initiative himself! That’s what every executive would do in such a case. Audacity would be his key-word from now on and J.D. Hawkins, which was the name on the next office door, would receive the full brunt of it. Pushing the door open widely, he thrust himself into the room and delivered his message, stressing every word loudly at the top of his voice.
‘Mr. Hawkins! Mr. Bulstrode is holding a meeting in his office at eleven hundred hours and it’s a three-line...’ His voice tailed off quickly as eight pairs of eyes stared at him from company clients who sat around a highly-polished table at which a top-level meeting was being held. Although Price was able to see them all from the start, the momentum of his onslaught was too fierce for him to stop. He quickly learned that fury was contagious. All the rage that faded from him as he tailed off appeared to have become absorbed by Hawkins. It was obviously a very important meeting.