Executive Suite

by Cameron Hawley

  “I believe I know what you mean, Mrs. Prince,” he said, not certain that she thought the simile as badly chosen as she pretended. “It’s true that you had to know Mr. Bullard to understand him—and a great many people never did, even people who imagined they were close to him. I thought of that a moment ago when you were talking about your grandfather. In some ways they must have been a good deal alike—Avery Bullard and Oliver Tredway.”

  She gave him a startled glance and he thought at first that she, too, must have had the same secret thought, but what she said seemed to deny it. “I don’t think you’re right, Mr. Walling. You said that you could only understand Avery Bullard when you knew him well. I don’t think you could ever understand him. He wouldn’t let you. When you came close to understanding, he did something to throw you off the track—like a magician who was afraid that you might discover how he did his tricks.”

  He had been listening with only half an ear, and a moment passed before he realized how aptly she had characterized Avery Bullard.

  “Still a bad simile?” she had asked.

  “No, a very good one. I was just thinking about it.”

  That wasn’t quite true. What he had actually been thinking about were the implications of that curious tone of faint rancor that had underlaid her voice. Could it be that there had once been something between her and Avery Bullard … a relationship that Bullard had broken when she had tried to draw him too close? Yet she had said that believing Avery Bullard was like believing in God … and the unadorned black dress was obviously mourning.

  She picked a cigarette out of the heavy bronze jar at her elbow and he moved quickly to light it for her. She gestured him back. “Thank you but please don’t bother, Mr. Walling. I chain smoke when I’m nervous.”

  It was the first cigarette that he had seen her smoke but he saw the opening that her remark gave him and his impatience goaded him to take advantage of it. “Why should you be nervous, Mrs. Prince? I hope not about the future of the company?”

  “The company? No, I wasn’t thinking about the company—or perhaps I was, in a roundabout way,” she said, preoccupied. Then suddenly she flicked her eyes toward him, “Mr. Walling, do you mind if I ask you some questions about the company?”

  “Not at all.”

  For a fleeting moment there was a return of her earlier lightness. “It’s my own fault, of course, that I’m forced to ask you these questions. If I hadn’t been such a negligent director I’d know the answers.”

  Matching her lightness, he said, “That’s not so inexcusable, Mrs. Prince. Directors’ meetings haven’t meant too much usually.”

  “That answers my first question,” she said with a faintly victorious smile. “I wanted to ask you if it were true that Avery Bullard was something of a dictator. That was pretty much the way the company was run, wasn’t it, Mr. Walling?”

  Both the phrasing of the question and the tone of its delivery brought back the memory of the hours he had spent on the witness stand in the patent suit on the extrusion process. He had learned then that an honest answer to an apparently innocent question could sometimes be grossly misconstrued, and that apparently innocent questions were often less innocent than they seemed. Julia Tredway Prince was not so guileless as he had first thought.

  “I’m not certain that I know what you mean, Mrs. Prince. If you’re suggesting that Mr. Bullard played a very strong part in the management of the company—yes, that’s true.”

  “Apparently you don’t think that was a bad thing for the company—or do you?”

  “The record pretty much speaks for itself.”

  “Then you think there’s nothing wrong with a dictator management?”

  “I wouldn’t go quite that far, Mrs. Prince. There’s something wrong with everything. I suppose—and I’m still not certain that I know what you mean by dictator management.”

  “Have you resented it, Mr. Walling? Men of your type usually do resent buckling under to a dictator, don’t they? That’s why dictatorships usually fail, isn’t it—when the good men underneath can no longer stand the subjection?”

  He felt the first vapor of resentment rising within him but he fanned it away. “Let’s get one thing clear, Mrs. Prince, I have nothing but admiration for Avery Bullard. He was a great man and I’ll never be out of his debt. Everything I have came from Avery Bullard.”

  “I know how you feel, Mr. Walling,” she said—and for an instant he thought he had scored—but then she went on. “But that isn’t precisely true, is it? What you have came from the Tredway Corporation—not personally from the man who happened to be its president.”

  “He was the company! If it hadn’t been for Avery Bullard there wouldn’t be a Tredway Corporation.”

  “Isn’t that a little like saying that if it hadn’t been for Franklin D. Roosevelt there wouldn’t be a United States of America? Admittedly, the country was in rather bad shape when he became president—but there had been a George Washington before him—and a Jefferson and a Lincoln and—”

  “Yes, of course,” he said hurriedly, trying to escape the consequences of his quick tongue … he’d been an idiot to say what he had, knowing how she felt about her grandfather!

  “That wasn’t an original thought of mine,” she said, smiling almost as if it were an apology. “It was something that Dwight said to me once after I’d made much the same remark about Avery Bullard that you just did. He reminded me that a company is much larger than one man—any man—and that many people contributed to its building. Even my father, whom I’d come to regard as a failure, actually made a great many important contributions to the company. Even building the Tower doesn’t seem so foolish now, does it?”

  He felt a twinge of annoyance at the way she persisted in taking advantage of his too quickly made remark. “You’re quite right, of course, Mrs. Prince—a company is much more than one president.”

  “Much more than any president,” she persisted, “—and particularly so today with the company as large as it is. I had a very interesting discussion of that subject last evening.”

  Shaw! Now it began to make sense … all of the things she had said were tying together … yes, now she was even sounding like Shaw … the same pat phrases.

  Her words faded back into his consciousness. “—that a pronounced change should be made in the whole management concept of the Tredway Corporation. He made the point that the dictator was an outmoded form of industrial government, just as it’s an outmoded form of political government.”

  He choked back the impulse to argue. There was nothing to be gained. He had to get to the point … get it out in the open. “I presume the man you talked to was Mr. Shaw.”

  Surprise lifted her face. “Yes, it was Mr. Shaw.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Why?”

  “I recognized his point of view.”

  “It isn’t yours?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Just what is your point of view, Mr. Walling?”

  He hesitated, momentarily silent. It was plain that those old rumors about her sanity were only malicious gossip. She was a clever woman … damned clever! He had to watch his every word.

  She took advantage of his hesitance and said, “Perhaps you’d prefer not to answer that question.”

  “No, no,” be countered, side-stepping what was clearly a trap. “That’s a big assignment, Mrs. Prince, asking me to give you my point of view. I was trying to think how to state it briefly.”

  “Then let me simplify it. A few minutes ago you said that you felt Avery Bullard was very much like my grandfather. Did you mean that Mr. Bullard has been running the corporation in the same way—in the 1890 concept that the boss was a god-on-a-hill—supreme—unquestioned—the absolute dictator?”

  Anger had risen to become a barrier to his voice, not anger at Julia Tredway Prince but at Loren Shaw. It was Shaw who was to blame … she was repeating Shaw’s words … it was Shaw who had planted the “dictatorship” notion in he
r head. He had to fight back! But how? There were only two courses and there was a deadfall ahead on both paths. If he defended Avery Bullard he would be defending “dictatorship” and all that Shaw had made it mean … everything that was wrong with the company. Yes, there were things wrong … plenty of things … and he’d do something about them as soon as he could! But any admission now would mean walking into the trap that Shaw had set for him.

  “It’s hardly possible to compare your grandfather’s management of the old Tredway Furniture Company with Avery Bullard’s management of the Tredway Corporation. In your grandfather’s day—”

  The flip of her hand signaled an interruption. “That’s the point, Mr. Walling—the phrase you just used—Avery Bullard’s management of the Tredway Corporation.”

  “That was only a figure of speech, Mrs. Prince.”

  “Was it really? Isn’t it true that Avery Bullard has been managing the corporation almost singlehandedly, making all of the decisions himself?”

  “No, that isn’t true—it couldn’t be true. The corporation is much too large for that to be possible. There are literally thousands of decisions made every day. With factories all over the—”

  “I meant the important decisions, the top-level ones, the decisions that really count.”

  “If it’s a decision that involves a major policy then, of course, it becomes a matter for the board of directors to decide.”

  “But, Mr. Walling, I thought you said a minute or two ago that the directors’ meetings never meant very much.”

  He flinched inwardly, feeling himself unfairly trapped, forcing a smile to help him keep from losing his temper. “We seem to be going around in a circle.”

  “Yes, don’t we.”

  “May I turn the tables and ask you a question, Mrs. Prince?”

  “Of course.”

  “You seem concerned about Mr. Bullard’s management of the company. Why? Don’t you feel that it’s been successful?”

  She answered so quickly that she must have anticipated the question. “I’m much more concerned with the future than I am with the past, Mr. Walling—but don’t you agree that it’s reasonable to ask whether or not there should be perpetuation of Mr. Bullard’s kind of a management attitude?”

  “I’m not certain that I know what you mean.”

  “I hesitate to use the word again because I know that you dislike it.”

  “You’re still thinking of him as a dictator?”

  “Wasn’t he?” Her faint smile did nothing to weaken the dogged persistence of her attack.

  He locked his fingers, gripping so hard that the knuckles showed white. “Mrs. Prince, there always has to be one man at the top. It can’t be any other way. That’s true whether it’s an industrial corporation—an army—a nation—any organization of any kind. No matter how you set things up, there has to be that man at the top. In the end, he has to take total responsibility. There’s no other way. In that sense—”

  “You speak of responsibility, Mr. Walling. To whom?”

  “To the company.”

  “Not to the stockholders?”

  “Yes—partially.”

  “Partially? Don’t you believe that the stockholders own the company, Mr. Walling—that it’s their property—that the only purpose of a company is to make a profit for the benefit of its stockholders?”

  He had fought hard to fan away the rising vapor of anger but now the hot vapor suffused his brain. In the smoking haze there was no longer any visible demarcation that separated Julia Tredway Prince from Loren Shaw. The words were Shaw’s but the voice was hers. She could not escape the responsibility for having said them.

  What right did she have to put him through this inquisition … to make him crawl to her on his belly? Because she was a stockholder … because she had a few scraps of paper that let her live like a honey-sucking parasite on the work of other men? Alderson had been right … dividends were all that mattered to Julia Tredway Prince … money … money to support that worthless husband who had never done a useful thing in his life … “she caused Mr. Bullard a great deal of difficulty”… no wonder! Was she so money-depraved that she could feel no human gratitude … so self-blinded that she could not see that she was a rich woman only because of Avery Bullard … that her precious stock wouldn’t be worth a cent if it had not been for him? It was Avery Bullard who had given her everything she had … the food she ate, the dress she wore, even that cigarette she was snuffing out in the ashtray … and now she had turned against him, stabbing the corpse that could not fight back.

  There was no barrier of caution now. He was beyond the last compromise, the last evasion, the last half-lie. Words came out of nowhere, unpremeditated, fresh-spoken. “You asked for my point of view, Mrs. Prince, and I’ll give it to you. Avery Bullard was a great man and he built a great company. Yes, he built it! And he did it because he was strong and because he wasn’t afraid! He wasn’t afraid of weaker men who called him a dictator, or a god-on-a-hill, or anything else. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to Avery Bullard but one thing—the company! I say, thank God he lived, thank God there was an Avery Bullard, and you should say the same thing, Julia Tredway—you above anyone else!”

  The force of his words had propelled him to his feet and he wheeled to the door, but she had bolted toward him and her arms fought to hold him.

  “No, no,” she cried in a total abandonment of restraint. “You’re wrong, wrong, terribly wrong! You don’t think I loved him, but I did! As much as you loved him—more! Please believe me—please!”

  He stared down at her, unbelieving, the vapor of anger drifting away.

  “I can’t let you think what you are thinking—don’t—please don’t,” she pleaded. “You said, ‘you above anyone else!’ Yes, that’s true! You have no idea how true. Do you know where I’d be today if it weren’t for Avery Bullard? I’d be in an asylum for the incurably insane. It’s true. He saved me. The doctors will tell you it’s true. He brought my mind back—he gave me my life. You think you owe him a lot? I owe him a thousand times more. Can’t you see now that I didn’t turn against him as you thought I did? I couldn’t. I never could. It would be impossible. I was only—”

  She had driven her voice to exhaustion and she took quick sobbing breaths, as fast as heartbeats. “You think I’m still insane?”

  He shook his head. “But I don’t see why you were—”

  “Because I knew he was dead! Because Mr. Shaw said there could never be another Avery Bullard—”

  He felt her exhaustion become his own, the draining away to emptiness, the weakness of convalescence after anger. “No, there can never be another Avery Bullard.”

  “—but there can be a MacDonald Walling,” she whispered, a whisper so intense that it had the timbre of a shout. “I didn’t know that before, but I know it now! You’ll be the president of the Tredway Corporation—you—MacDonald Walling.”

  It was a strange victory, as victories are often strange after the warrior has forgotten why he fought.

  She was anxiously watching his face. “You will do it?”

  He managed a smile.

  The victory had been no stranger than the cold sense of reality that had now swept through his mind. “It will take more than the two of us, Mrs. Prince. There’ll have to be four.”

  “Four?”

  “It takes four votes to elect a president.”

  “Oh. Will that be hard to manage?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course Mr. Shaw wants it for himself. He made that plain enough when he was here last night.”

  “I know.”

  “And Mr. Alderson, too. I gathered from what Mr. Shaw said that he regarded Mr. Alderson as his principal competitor.” Her eyes twinkled. “Mr. Shaw will be very surprised when he finds out who it’s really going to be.”

  He passed her last remark. “I think I can count on Alderson’s vote. I’m sure I can. There’s a possibility that I might have Wa
lt Dudley’s vote too. Alderson was going out to see him.”

  “When will you know?”

  He thought for a moment. “Could I use your telephone?”

  “Yes, do!” The excitement of impatience was in her voice and her eyes followed him eagerly as he crossed to the desk.

  12.12 P.M. EDT

  Erica Martin dialed 9 for an outside line and even the moment that it took before the dial tone sounded seemed like an eternity. She dialed the number. The busy signal roared back at her ears. Her finger ran down the column: Prince, Dwight R 800 N. Front … 2-4342.

  Yes, the number had been right.

  She dialed again. It was ringing! She stiffened herself against the sound of that woman’s voice.

  It was Don Walling’s voice!

  “Mr. Walling, this is Erica Martin. I’ve just had a call from Mr. Caswell. He’s flown down from New York and is out at the airport now. I have my car and I’m going out to get him. I thought you’d want to see him—so—yes—no, he wanted to talk to me and I told him I’d meet him.”

  She waited as he had asked her to wait, closing her eyes like doubling her fists. Why should she feel this way just because he was talking to that woman … why, why, why?

  There was his voice again. “Yes, Mr. Walling?—yes, I can bring him there if—if that’s what you want me to do.”

  She closed her eyes again … fighting something that shouldn’t need to be fought again … but now it was starting all over. It was her own fault … she should never have let Don Walling take that box out there. But Julia Tredway Prince wouldn’t win … not this time. When Mr. Caswell went in that house she would go with him.

  She started for her hat, forgetting that it was on her head, that she had been ready to leave when the telephone had rung.

  12.15 P.M. EDT

  “If we can get George Caswell’s vote that’s all you’d need?” Julia Tredway Prince asked.

  “Yes, that’s all,” Don Walling said.