Executive Suite

by Cameron Hawley

  “Yes, the Tredway Corporation,” he said, surprised that she had recognized Bullard’s name.

  “Isn’t that one of your companies, George? Aren’t you a director or something?”

  “Yes.”

  “We had Mr. Bullard out to dinner once.”

  “Did we? I can’t recall that.”

  “When we were in New Rochelle. We had that dinner for all of your important clients.”

  “Oh, long time ago—perhaps he was.” He remembered the dinner well enough but he wanted to side-step the necessity of again explaining why he had never repeated the affair.

  “Of course it was Mr. Bullard,” she said triumphantly. “He was fascinated by the Baked Alaska and perfectly charming about it … and we had Chicken Supreme that night, too.”

  He glanced up from his plate, surprised again at Kitty’s astounding ability to recall the guests and menus of almost every dinner party they had ever had, a feat of memory that always seemed strangely mismatched with her equally astounding ability immediately to forget what she paid for anything she bought.

  “He was sort of a shaggy-bear type,” she went on. “Growly but sweet—nice. And he’s dead? How awful. Does it mean something very bad for your business, George?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said uncertainly. “He was a fine man, that’s all—one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”

  “But darling, I’d never realized that he was a friend of yours! Why haven’t we had him out? I’d have loved to—”

  “That was Mr. Lindeman who called,” he said in a pointedly abrupt change of subject, made so quickly that he didn’t realize he was committing himself to going on with the discussion.

  “Oh, are they friends of Mr. Bullard’s too? Goodness, there was no reason why we couldn’t have had the Lindemans with him. They’re awfully good at a party, both of them.”

  “No, Mr. Lindeman was not a friend of Avery Bullard’s,” he explained patiently. “Mr. Lindeman is the head of an investment fund that holds a rather large block of Tredway stock and he was concerned about what effect Bullard’s death might have on its market value.”

  “How horrible,” she said distastefully.

  “What?”

  “He might have waited until the poor man was decently dead. Goodness, don’t you men ever think about anything but what effect something is going to have on the market?”

  “Frequently.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Every time I come home to you, my dear.” He made it a nice thing to say, nicely said.

  She laughed, pleased, and he hoped that the subject had been changed. It hadn’t. “You’re very sweet, darling, but what did you say to him?”

  “To whom?”

  “Mr. Lindeman.”

  “About what?”

  She was not to be diverted by diversion. “About what you said, dear—about what would happen to Mr. Bullard’s company now that he’s dead.”

  “It’s not Mr. Bullard’s company, my dear. It’s the stockholders’ company. Mr. Bullard was an employee. They had hired him to be president, just as they had hired other men to be—well, truck drivers, or bookkeepers.”

  “You don’t want to talk to me, do you?” she asked innocently.

  “Of course I do. I only—”

  “Then what did you say to Mr. Lindeman?”

  “Darling, why this sudden interest in my business affairs?”

  “I just want to know what you said.”

  Her hidden smile had broken through now, making a joke out of it, and he played along. “Well, I told Mr. Lindeman that he had no reason whatsoever to worry—that any modern business organization that had been as successful as the Tredway Corporation couldn’t possibly be a one-man concern—that there were a group of able vice-presidents, any one of whom could succeed Mr. Bullard—that I would be at the board meeting myself next Tuesday and would personally see to it that the very best man was elected—and, as final evidence of my own faith in the Tredway Corporation I had purchased two thousand shares of its common stock this afternoon.”

  She clapped her hands like a delighted child. “George, you’re wonderful! You should tell me things you say more often. It makes you sound so distinguished. Tuesday? Did you say you’d be gone Tuesday?”

  “You have it on your calendar. I put it there myself when—” He stopped. “Oh—the funeral. Hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Must you go? They’re always so gruesome.”

  “Yes. Be on Monday, I suppose.”

  “Down at—wherever it is that he lived?”

  “Millburgh.”

  “Oh, darling, you can’t possibly!”

  “What?”

  “Monday is the yacht club affair and you’re the vice-commodore.”

  It struck him as a particularly silly remark and his mind, rebounding, swung to the opposite extreme. “I’d go to Avery Bullard’s funeral,” he said solemnly, “if it were halfway around the world and it took the next month to get there.”

  “Of course you would, dear,” she said placatingly. “Would you like to have dinner on the terrace after this?”

  “What?”

  “The terrace. It’s almost July. Don’t you remember how nice it was having dinner on the terrace last summer?”

  “Yes, very nice,” he said, only half hearing, noticing that a subconscious hand had traced “2000” on the tablecloth with the tip of his coffee spoon. He was not surprised. His mind was always full of figures.

  “All right, dear?” It was her way of suggesting that dinner was over.

  He stood. “I think I’ll take a look at the roses, Kitty. Nothing you’d planned for tonight is there?”

  “The men were here about them again today. I don’t know what they did, but they were here.”

  “Good.” He made it a word without meaning, tossed back as he crossed the terrace and walked out on the lawn. Roses weren’t worth what they cost … if it wasn’t cankers it was black spot, if it wasn’t black spot it was beetles … you could buy roses cheaper from a florist.

  Neil Finch was standing near the low yew hedge that separated their gardens and a greeting was unavoidable. Neither was there any way to avoid telling him about Avery Bullard.

  “I knew damned well Pilcher had picked up something!” Finch said triumphantly. “Remember what I told you in the car coming home?”

  “But how could Pilcher have known? The news just—Lindeman’s son has some kind of a job on the Wall Street Journal and he picked the news off the ticker only a few minutes ago.” The conviction drained out of his voice as he heard his own words, for he had already told Finch as much detail as Lindeman had given him and now, suddenly, everything had fallen into place.

  “You say Bullard collapsed this afternoon about two-thirty?” Finch asked. “Well, Pilcher’s selling order came in about two-forty. I remember Wingate saying he’d had only twenty minutes before the bell. Don’t you see what that means? Pilcher must have known at the time that Bullard was dead. Where did you say he collapsed?”

  “On the street in front of the Chippendale Building.”

  “That’s where Pilcher has his office, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Bullard had lunch there with Pilcher?”

  George Caswell felt physically ill, as if his swallowed words had become an emetic. “But why wasn’t the body identified until tonight?” he managed to ask, knowing that there was no point to the question, that the answer was obvious.

  “Because Pilcher didn’t want him identified. I never did have a very high regard for Bruce Pilcher but I hadn’t realized he was quite that bad!” He flashed a sudden taunting smile. “Nice friends you have, Mr. Caswell.”

  “No friend of mine!”

  “I thought you’d suggested him to Bullard as an executive vice-president?”

  “I did no such thing,” Caswell snapped. “He had him on a list of names—possibilities—that’s all.”

  Finch laughed. �
�Don’t take it so hard, George. You aren’t the first person that Pilcher has fooled.”

  “He hasn’t fooled me,” Caswell said, “—and he won’t!”

  “He’ll pick up a fast buck on that short sale. Bullard’s death is sure to break the stock.”

  “That stock won’t break,” Caswell said, grimly determined.

  Finch’s jaw dropped. “Well, I’ll be damned! George, you’re a clever fox—and I never caught on. With the block you already have—the two thousand shares you got today—pick up any more that might be jarred loose on Monday—hell’s bells, boy, I wasn’t giving you credit! You’ll practically have control of that company, won’t you?”

  George Caswell’s thumbnail clipped a green yew branch. The possibilities of the situation had not occurred to him before. His only thought had been to clear his conscience of anything that he might have said to Avery Bullard in Pilcher’s favor but now, rising from an unseen source, as bubbles rise in champagne, the heady vapor of a new ambition rose within his mind.

  He was aware that Finch had said something that he hadn’t heard. “I beg your pardon, Neil, I—”

  “I asked if you, by any chance, were thinking of stepping in and taking the presidency yourself? Hell’s bells, you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  “I—I don’t know. Have to think about it,” he said. He had started with a grim expression but finished with something close to a smile, pleased at the way that the taunting grin had vanished from Finch’s face.

  “Well, George, anything I can do—you know me, fellow, just give me the word.”

  “Thanks. Well—have quite a few things to do tonight. See you, Neil.”

  He walked back across the lawn and into the house.

  “Roses all right, darling?”

  “Roses. Oh—yes. Quite all right. Dear, I’ve just been thinking—Lindeman is really quite concerned about this Tredway business—who’s going to be president, you know. Afraid I’ll have to go down to Millburgh tomorrow, get the lay of the land.”

  “Tomorrow? But, darling, that’s impossible. Tomorrow’s Nancy Brighton’s wedding.”

  “Oh.” He was taken aback. “Well—maybe I’ll drive down Sunday. Have to be there Monday, anyway.”

  He walked on before she could answer, going into the library and closing the door.

  He sat on the wide seat-ledge of the bay window, sitting with his torso stiffly erect, as if he were an athlete waiting for a starting signal. He felt that way. This might be the start, the beginning of what he had been waiting for. But it might not be. He had felt this same way before … thinking that he’d found it … and then letting the hope slip through his fingers … never because he couldn’t have made any of those dreams come true … only because he had not chosen to do so … because when he had examined them they hadn’t been what he wanted either.

  It wasn’t anything he had to do … nine-tenths of Wall Street would think he was crazy if he did do it … give up Caswell & Co. and start over again in something else at fifty-three. It wouldn’t be because of money. He had never had to do anything because of money. His father’s estate had taken care of that. He could have been a rich man’s son, never done a day’s work in his life. He hadn’t. He had gone into Caswell & Co. and there was no one who could say that he hadn’t made a success of it, even more of a success than his father had made. No, it wasn’t money. It was something else. What?

  Yes, that was the question. That’s where he had always bogged down before, trying to find the answer. It wasn’t politics … he had thought that through when they had offered him the senatorship, and not with their hands out for a big campaign contribution, either. It wasn’t government service … those two months on the monetary commission had convinced him of that. It wasn’t the presidency of the Stock Exchange … the more they’d argued with him the more he’d seen that it would be only more of what he didn’t want.

  Was it industry? Perhaps. If it wasn’t anything else that’s what it had to be … process of elimination … it had to be something. The old senator hadn’t been the man he wanted to be … nor the chairman of the monetary commission … nor the president of the Stock Exchange … nor the head of that charitable foundation they had asked him to manage … nor the president of that college in Ohio … no, none of them had been the man he wanted to be. Avery Bullard? Was he the …

  There was a gentle but startling knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “You aren’t sulking, are you, dear?” Kitty called with a twinkle in her voice.

  He smiled and let the smile carry over into his words. “Want something?”

  “Um-huh. You.”

  “Be out in a minute. Something I have to think through.”

  “Do you know you hurt my feelings?”

  “I did?”

  “You closed the door.”

  “Darling, you know I can’t think and see you at the same time.”

  He heard her little-girl laugh and then her fading footsteps. Kitty’s wonderful, he said to himself—and then having said it he was forced, as he always was, to go on with the linked thought that it was very strange that marrying Kitty had worked out so well. Actually, it had been a very impulsive and unconsidered thing to do … almost the only impulsive and unconsidered thing that he had ever done … but it was a good thing that it had been that way. If there had been time to think about it he probably would never have done it.

  That was the end of the thought. He never went on from there.

  His mind reached back to bridge the interruption. Was that what he wanted to be … what Avery Bullard had been? Had Avery Bullard found the answer to what made a man’s life worthwhile?

  The questions battered down a dam and his mind was flooded with a torrent, swirling to the surface the memory of Avery Bullard saying, “A man can’t work for money alone, George. Money is just a way of keeping score—the chips in the poker game—and the chip counter never wins.”

  George Caswell nodded in belated understanding, knowing now what he should have known before. Yes, that’s what he had been all his life … a chip counter … counting his chips … his chips and other people’s chips. When the game was over there was nothing left, not even the chips, only numbers on a sheet of paper. A man had to have more … something to show for his life … something tangible. Yes, that’s what Avery Bullard had. He was a builder … and the things he built were real … things you could see with your eyes and feel with your hands.

  Now he understood … now he knew what he had always wanted. This was no wild dream … this time it made sense. It wasn’t as if he were starting something entirely new … he had his start. He knew the business … he’d been a Tredway director for twelve years. He was no outsider … the other directors were his friends … he’d have their support … Alderson and Grimm … Dudley and Shaw and Walling.

  The door knock was less startling this time.

  “Still thinking, dear?” Kitty called.

  He walked over and opened the door. “All through.”

  “Tell me what you were thinking about?

  He shook his head. “Not now, Kitty.”

  “Please, dear,” she demanded. “I want to know what you were thinking and then I can be proud of you.”

  “I think you will be,” he said slowly.

  “Tell me!”

  “Not now, darling. I want it to be a surprise.”

  “For me?”

  A faint smile warmed his face. “Yes, I think you’ll be surprised.”

  He almost wished that he could tell her … but, of course, it wasn’t the thing to do. He kissed her instead and she seemed as well satisfied.

  NEW YORK CITY

  8.13 P.M. EDT

  Bruce Pilcher, giving his necktie its final minute adjustment, noticed that the face in the mirror seemed rather pleased with itself. He smiled and the image responded instantaneously. There were many ways in which living with a mirror was pleasanter than living with a wife. At least you coul
d be sure of an occasional smile. That was more than he had ever been able to count on from Barbara. The thought amused him. The mirror appreciated it, too.

  Ten minutes before he had established the fact that Avery Bullard’s body had been identified by the police. He didn’t have a care on his mind. His weekend was free. There wasn’t a thing to worry about until Monday at ten when the market opened … and nothing to worry about then. His telephone conversations with Scott Lindeman had confirmed his guess that there would undoubtedly be some dumping of Tredway stock. Calling Lindeman had been a very much better idea than calling Caswell.

  As he filled his platinum cigarette case, he noticed the slip that had been in his box when he had come into the hotel. It was a request to call Steigel’s home number. Poor old Julius was really wetting his pants now … trying to get in on the kill … it was funny how far some people would go to chisel in on a fast buck … and the righteous old coots like Julius were the worst of the lot.

  The face in the mirror winked at him, smiling as long as he smiled, turning away only when he turned away to leave the room.

  It was eight-fifteen. He had told this Eloise whatever-her-name-was to meet him at Chambord at eight-thirty. Usually, it wasn’t a good idea to get there too early … better to make them wait for you … kept them in their place. But this Eloise wouldn’t need too much of that, not for a month or so. The unsophisticated ones were fun sometimes … if they were really on the level … but even when they were it never lasted long.

  8.17 P.M. EDT

  Alex Oldham was not unaccustomed to responsibility—New York was Tredway’s largest branch office and he had managed it for nine years—but there had never been anything like this before. Tonight he was the hub of the empire. Shaw’s call had been waiting when the police had brought him back after identifying Avery Bullard’s body. “Everything is in your hands, Alex, the whole New York end,” Shaw had said. “I’m leaving it all up to you to handle.”

  Actually, after he had called the undertaker whose name Shaw had given him, the rest of the assignment had proved to be disappointingly small. “You may rest assured that there is no detail we’ll overlook,” the suavely unctuous voice had said. “We’re quite accustomed to such situations and there’s nothing you need concern yourself about, sir, nothing at all.”