Executive Suite

by Cameron Hawley

  “Then I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Fortunately, I know Mr. Caswell. As a matter of fact I was talking to him on the telephone yesterday—about someone who was trying to buy some Tredway stock. I think you can safely leave Mr. Caswell in my hands.”

  “Do you think it might be better if I weren’t here?”

  “Perhaps. Where can I call you—at home?”

  He nodded. “I’ll make a stop at Alderson’s—see if he’s there yet—and then I’ll go home.”

  12.19 P.M. EDT

  Until Frederick Alderson glanced at the speedometer, the screaming siren had been only another of the wild sounds that coursed through his mind. He saw then that the needle was wavering just about sixty-five and his quick side glance caught the thumb jerk of a state trooper who was motioning him toward the edge of the road.

  There was a terrifying wait after he had stopped the car. Frederick Alderson had never before been guilty of the violation of a traffic law.

  The trooper’s face finally appeared in the window. His voice had the diabolical pleasantness of calculated doom. “May I see your operator’s license, please?”

  Somehow, thick-fingered, he managed to separate the orange card from the pack in the wallet. “I’m sorry, officer, I have to get down to Maryland in a hurry and—well, I hadn’t realized how fast I was going.”

  “You the Alderson that’s with the company?” the trooper asked, marking him as a Millburgh man. Everyone in Millburgh always referred to the Tredway Corporation as “the company.”

  “Why, yes—yes, officer. I—”

  “My old man’s been with the company all his life. John Sweitzer. Up at Pike Street now.”

  “Well, of course!” Alderson said, able to take his first full breath since the siren had wrapped a steel band about his lungs. “One of Mr. Grimm’s men. That’s where I’m going now—to see Mr. Grimm. It’s—”

  “Too bad about Mr. Bullard, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not so old either—only fifty-six the paper said.”

  “That’s right.”

  The orange card came back through the window. “Take it a little easy from here on down, Mr. Alderson. We don’t want to be burying you, too.”

  12.21 P.M. EDT

  “No, I haven’t any idea what happened to him, Mr. Walling,” Edith Alderson said unhappily. “He went out right after you left and I haven’t heard anything from him since.”

  12.22 P.M. EDT

  It had been something of a shock for George Caswell to discover, as he stepped out of the telephone booth at the Millburgh Airport, that Loren Shaw and J. Walter Dudley were waiting for him.

  They had already gone through the ritual of saying the things that had to be said about Avery Bullard’s death and now Shaw explained, “Something came up rather unexpectedly this morning, George. I wanted your advice so I called your home. Mrs. Caswell said that you were flying down so Walt and I slipped out to pick you up.”

  “Wonderful to have you here at a time like this,” Dudley added in a bishop’s voice. “Glad you could come, George, glad you could make it.”

  “More than I could have hoped for,” Shaw said.

  George Caswell left himself warming to their gratitude. They were good boys, both of them … appreciative and considerate … right attitude.

  “I didn’t know whether there was anything I could do or not—probably not—but the plane was available so I thought I’d come over on the chance that there might be.”

  What was it that Shaw had meant about something coming up unexpectedly this morning … had Pilcher called him? Yes, that was possible … Pilcher knew Shaw … but now was not the time to bring up anything like that.

  “Suppose we slip down to the club and have a bite of lunch,” Dudley said, easing his voice out from under the unctuous mantle of grief.

  “I wish that were possible,” Caswell said uncertainly, “but I’ve already called Miss Martin and she’s on her way out to pick me up. I wasn’t certain who I’d be able to reach so I thought it best to call her first—and there are two or three little things that I want her to check for me.”

  “Well, now, that’s simple enough,” Dudley said. “We’ll just take her along down to the club. Nothing wrong with three men taking a secretary out to lunch.”

  The remark seemed suspiciously like an attempt at levity, which George Caswell found in slightly questionable taste, but it actually wasn’t a bad idea. He had taken his secretary in New York out to lunch once and, as he explained to Kitty, it had proved highly beneficial. A secretary was very important to the head of any business—in many ways almost as important as a vice-president—and it was essential that she be thoroughly conversant with his point of view.

  “All right with you, Loren?” Dudley asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Shaw said, but without enthusiasm.

  “She’ll appreciate it, too,” Dudley said. “Yes sir, you bet she will. This has probably hit her mighty hard—she and Mr. Bullard must have been pretty close—couldn’t help but be after all these years. Be a nice thing to take her out and buy her a good lunch. She’s probably never been in the club before in her life.”

  George Caswell winced inwardly and he noticed with some satisfaction that Shaw apparently shared his own discomfort at Dudley’s garrulousness. Of course that was something you had to accept … went with the sales type … but it was good to know that Shaw was a man of some discrimination.

  They had walked out on the little paved area in front of the airport building and, as they watched, a gray-green Ford coupé turned in from the pike and came up the road, braking to a gravel-spattering stop in front of the steel fence.

  “That’s her,” Dudley said, walking out to greet her as she stepped out of the car. “Well, my dear, it isn’t every day that this happens—three handsome gentlemen waiting to take you out to lunch!”

  From the shocked look on her face, George Caswell was pleased to see that Erica Martin, too, was a person of discrimination. That was a quality that he always insisted on having in his secretary.

  13

  MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

  12.40 P.M. EDT

  Mary Walling was waiting—and conscious, as she was so often conscious, that waiting was so much of her life. It seemed to her that she was always waiting … waiting for Don to call … waiting for him to come … waiting for him to talk to her … to tell her the things she needed to know if she were to share his life.

  The sharing was important … the point, the purpose, the very essence of her love … but was it of his? She could never be sure. There were so many times when he seemed to want to live within himself … when sharing was a favor so reluctantly given that it was hardly sharing at all.

  Why couldn’t Don realize that she could help him if he would let her … help him do what he couldn’t do without her? No, not for his gratitude, not for his thanks … there was something even more satisfying about helping him without his knowing that he had been helped. Then it was a pure gift of love. Yes, that was love … the giving … but the gift had to be wanted.

  I think too much, she thought—and then went on thinking. Her fingers automatically lifted his socks out of the basket, pairing them, rolling them into soft-wound balls that she put across the top drawer of his dresser, placing them in three ruler-straight rows … gray, blue, black … neat, orderly … not like Don at all. But he could be like that if he would only let her help him! She could do so much for him … separate his confused thoughts … put them in straight rows … let him think without that awful turmoil … without the confusion … without the doubts and fears. But that was when he always insisted on shutting her away the most completely … when he needed her the worst … like this morning when they had talked about Avery Bullard and who his successor might be.

  She had gone farther than she had ever gone before to force him to talk to her, yet even then he hadn’t been willing to open his mind and share the fear that she had known was there
. If he had only given her the smallest opening … the barest chance! She could have told him that there was no cause to be afraid … he wasn’t dependent on Avery Bullard … he had his own strength … so much more strength than he ever seemed to realize. He didn’t need Avery Bullard! All that he needed from anyone was what it would be so easy for her to give him.

  Mary Walling was closing the drawer when she heard the squeal of tires on the turn into the drive. It was a sound as characteristic as the sound of his footsteps, and she hurried toward the front door. His arm went around her shoulder. Something had happened this morning! She could feel it in the tingling tenseness of his muscles, in the aura of confidence that surrounded him.

  “Mrs. Prince call yet?” he asked crisply, his voice suddenly denying the intimacy that the moment before had promised.

  “Mrs. Prince?”

  “She’s wrapping it up with Caswell. Going to call me as soon as she does.”

  He had spoken as if she should know what he meant. It was another case where he had forgotten that she couldn’t know what he hadn’t let her know. “Don, what’s happened?”

  “Happened?” he asked, his voice edged with surprise, then suddenly flat. “Oh—I’m taking over the presidency.”

  “The presidency! Don, not really! I—I can’t believe it! I—”

  His eyes seemed to twist the words in her mouth.

  “Why are you so surprised?” he asked, almost as if it were an accusation.

  “Oh, Don, Don, how can I help it. I never imagined that—”

  She cut off her voice, knowing now that she had said the wrong thing again, that somehow he was interpreting her surprise as a lack of faith. She threw up her arms, cupping his head in her doubled palms. “Darling, you must let me be a little excited—just because I’m so proud of you. It is what you want—isn’t it?”

  “It’s what I have to do,” he said, so tonelessly that she couldn’t be sure what he meant. “I’m hungry.”

  While she put on the coffee and made the sandwich that he insisted was all he wanted, she chipped out scraps of information about what had happened during the morning, risking his annoyance by asking questions that had to be answered before she could fit the bits and pieces together into anything like a connected pattern. After she had gone as far as she dared there were still things that she didn’t know, but she had explored deeply enough to be able to ask finally, “Then it all depends on Mr. Caswell?”

  “Julia will take care of him.”

  “Julia?”

  “Mrs. Prince,” he said impatiently.

  “What’s she like, Don?”

  “Like? Clever woman—damned clever—mind like a man’s.”

  She lifted the coffee pot. Mind like a man’s … was that what he wanted?

  “Don’t know when I’ve enjoyed talking to anyone so much,” he went on, the first time that he had said more than she had demanded. “Stepped right into this thing—feet on the ground—never had any idea she was that kind of a woman. I owe her a lot for the way she’s backing me up—watch out!”

  The coffee she was pouring had splashed over the edge of his cup and she snatched at a tea towel, dabbing up the spreading brown stain until there was time enough to tell herself that she was being a fool … that she wasn’t the kind of a silly wife who did silly things. Then she could say, calm and sure, “You don’t owe anything to anyone, Don. You’ll be president because it’s you—because you’re wonderful and brilliant and four times a genius and—” In the moment that her voice hung suspended she felt a clawing urge to tear down the curtain that seemed to hang between them, to re-establish their intimacy. “—and because it’s going to be something very special to go to bed every night with a real live president.”

  She waited—laughter poised on her lips ready to join his—and then came the terrifying realization that he wasn’t even going to smile.

  1.20 P.M. EDT

  The coin that Erica Martin dropped in the telephone had been warming in her palm for the last half-hour. It had not been until the waiter had come to take the dessert orders that she had found a chance to break away from the table.

  Dialing, she hoped that it would again be Mr. Walling’s voice that answered, It wasn’t … but at least it wasn’t hers!

  “May I speak to Mr. Walling?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry but Mr. Walling is not here. Mr. Walling left—oh, one moment please.”

  And now it was her voice. “Miss Martin?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Mrs. Prince. Have you had trouble?”

  “No, I—”

  “I’d understood that you were bringing Mr. Caswell here. I’ve been imagining that you must have had some difficulty with your car.”

  There was no way to avoid telling her what had happened. “Mr. Shaw and Mr. Dudley were at the airport when I got there. We’re at the Federal Club now, having lunch. I wanted to get in touch with Mr. Walling to tell him—” She felt her voice suddenly blocked by an unanswerable question … why should she be telling Don Walling … what was her reason … her excuse?

  “Thank you, Miss Martin, I’ll get word to Mr. Walling immediately. By the way, Miss Martin, I do want to see Mr. Caswell myself. How long do you suppose he’ll be there at the club?”

  The receiver felt heavy in her hand … heavy and hard … like a weapon to be hurled. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Prince, but they’ll be leaving for the office almost immediately.”

  1.22 P.M. EDT

  Mary Walling saw her husband glance at his watch again, squinting to make certain that it was still running.

  “Don’t know why the devil she hasn’t called,” he mumbled impatiently, gulping the last swallow of coffee. “Been an hour—over an hour.”

  She waited. There was nothing that needed to be said … he hadn’t been talking to her … only to himself … not expecting her to answer … only to wait … to wait and to wait and to wait. For what? Was this what the rest of her life would be … waiting … silently waiting while she watched him turn, irretrievably, into the man that these last few minutes had hinted that he might become … not the man that he really was, not the man that she had married, but only another Avery Bullard?

  Her terror fanned the belief that it was possible. There was something alike about them … yes, she had recognized that for a long time … but she had always thought that it was only the unconscious imitation that grew out of his admiration for Avery Bullard … something that he would lose in the end … a tie that would break … that she had been hoping would be broken by death. Now she saw the mind-stunning possibility that it could be something more … that there might be, within those unfathomable depths of Don’s mind, that same capacity for fanatical devotion to the company … that same blind zealot’s drive that had made Avery Bullard forget everything else in life … destroyed his marriage … turned him into a bloodless effigy of a man … cold … driven by an insane urge to build and build and build … bigger and bigger and bigger … as if he had been afflicted with some aberration that had made him believe his soul would be measured on a balance sheet where there was no credit for love.

  The telephone rang and the way her husband’s arm shot out was a frightening confirmation of everything that Mary Walling was struggling so hard not to believe.

  She turned away, not wanting to see his face. The sound of his voice made her turn back.

  “Yes—yes, I understand—yes—yes, of course.”

  The words themselves were meaningless but every shade and intonation of his voice was a language that the years of marriage had taught her to understand. She knew that something highly disappointing had happened. Unexpectedly, he glanced up at her and then said to the telephone, “All right—yes, right away, Mrs. Prince.”

  The telephone receiver dropped from his hand. She waited again, determined not to speak until he did, trying not to feel the sympathy that his eyes asked for, afraid that anything she might say or do would let him know that she was hoping that whatever
had happened would keep him from becoming the president of the Tredway Corporation.

  “Shaw and Dudley got hold of Caswell first,” he said, the words coming hard, forced against reluctance. “Met him at the airport—took him to the club. They’ve been down there having lunch—Miss Martin, too.”

  Did she dare speak … even to ask him what it meant? No. Wait … wait … wait.

  “Mrs. Prince has managed some way to get them out to her place. She wants us to come, too.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes—and I wish you would,” he said slowly.

  He was looking at her strangely, his eyes telling her that he saw something that he hadn’t seen before, but she was afraid to ask him what it was. It was enough to know that she would be with him … that there would be a sharing … that she would be a party to whatever happened.

  “I’ll change,” she said quickly, starting down the hall to their bedroom, conscious of the excited anticipation that was growing within her.

  1.40 P.M. EDT

  “Suppose I ride out with Miss Martin,” George Caswell said. “That is if—”

  “No point to that,” Shaw broke in quickly. “No need to take two cars. I’ll drop you here on the way back, Miss Martin.” The torture of curiosity had driven him to the point where the thought of anything being said out of hearing was almost unendurable.

  “I really would like to have my car with me,” Erica Martin countered.

  “Then I’ll go with you,” Caswell said. “Where are you parked, Miss Martin?”

  “In the lot. Mind walking?”

  “Not at all,” Caswell said, calling back over his shoulder as they walked off together, “see you in a few minutes.”

  Shaw’s eyes followed them, their every footstep adding another question to the thousands that already writhed tortuously through every furrow of his brain. Why did Caswell want to talk to her … why was she so anxious to talk to him … what would they say?

  “Well, I’ll run along, too,” Dwight Prince’s voice said.

  Shaw had forgotten that Prince and Dudley were still standing beside him.