Executive Suite (15 page)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN DROPS DEAD IN FRONT OF CHIPPENDALE BUILDING

An unidentified man collapsed at about 2:30 this afternoon while getting into a taxi in front of the Chippendale Building. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at Roosevelt Hospital. The man was described by police as being well dressed, six feet three inches tall, weighing about 220 lbs., dark hair, brown eyes, probable age between fifty-five and sixty. The only clue that police have to the man's identity is the initials “A.B.” which appeared on some of his personal effects.

The news struck Bruce Pilcher with stunning effect, creating the sensation of being snatched from the deep black hole of total terror and suddenly elevated to the brilliantly lighted heights of complete self-justification. He'd been right all the time. It had been Avery Bullard and Avery Bullard was dead! The body's not being identified was a freak … accident … not his fault … something that he could not possibly have foreseen.

Self-confidence welled through Bruce Pilcher's mind, as quick-acting as a powerful stimulant. He should never have lost faith in himself … that was the only mistake he had made … losing faith in himself.

Unnoticed, Andrew had entered the library and was standing across the table, waiting for him to look up.

“Yes, Andrew, what is it?”

“Telephone, sir.”

Bruce Pilcher did not hesitate. “I haven't time to answer. Tell her I've already left the club.”

“It isn't a woman, sir. It's a Mr. Steigel.”

“Oh!” So the old man had thought it over and now he wanted his half of the profit on those two thousand shares? To hell with that! Julius Steigel had had his chance and he'd lost his nerve … there was no pay-off when you lost your nerve. “The answer's still the same, Andrew. I've left the club.”

He was not asking Andrew to lie. Before the old man could get to the telephone, Bruce Pilcher had walked out the door and was striding up the street.

Walking was an aid to thinking, his footsteps tamping down the thoughts in his mind, fitting them back together into the solid pattern that he had interrupted with that hour of losing faith in himself. There was only one new fact to add … Avery Bullard's body was unidentified.

Unidentified? Was that good or bad? His thoughts fluttered for a moment like a sensitive scale-arm finding a balance point. He decided that the weight was a shade on the good side. The police would eventually make the identification but it would take time … several hours … maybe longer. That would give him time to do something else. Information was valuable. There were ways to use it. There were people who would pay … at least in gratitude … for an advance tip … people who had a special interest in Tredway stock. Caswell? No, not Caswell … that was too dangerous. Or was it? Caswell had a lot of connections … and Caswell was a gentleman. A gentleman wouldn't forget someone who had done him a favor. The scale arm fluttered again. Yes or no? Yes.

There was a drugstore on the corner and he went inside and found a telephone booth. As the coin dropped, his mind was working like a precision machine, selecting words, arranging and rearranging, polishing and punctuating. He wouldn't say too much over the telephone, only enough to arouse Caswell's curiosity. Caswell might invite him out to his house … that had never happened before … Caswell might even …

A busy signal sounded.

He hung up the receiver and the coin clattered down. He picked it up, surprised that his hand was trembling. He would wait until he got home to repeat the call … yes, that would be better … give him more time to think.

6.37 P.M. EDT

The way in which Anne Finnick happened to find the news item in the Final edition paralleled Bruce Pilcher's discovery. She, too, worked in the Chippendale Building and it was the name in the headline that caught her eye. However, it was not until she read the last line and learned that the dead man's initials were “A.B.” that the news had any personal significance. She had not, until that moment, given any thought to how the wallet had happened to be lying in the gutter where she had found it. Now she knew that it had belonged to the dead man and, because she had found and taken it, the police were unable to identify him.

Her new knowledge complicated the already involved ethical problem with which she was faced. Until her visit to Dr. Marston, the desperate seriousness of her plight had seemed to justify keeping the money. Then the whole situation had changed. During this last hour, knowing now that she was not pregnant, she had been unable to find any argument with which she could convince herself that keeping the money was not a seriously criminal act. She could remember that a boy who had lived next door to her father's luggage store on Third Avenue had been sent to jail for stealing a ten-dollar bill. She had stolen five hundred and thirty-four dollars. The enormity of her crime was beyond the narrow limits of her comprehension, as was also the nature of the punishment that might befall her. Her fear had now become so great that it had completely destroyed the joy that she had found in the discovery that she was not pregnant.

In the same manner that a prisoner sees everything in terms of its potentiality as an instrument of escape, it was in that direction that Anne Finnick's mind had turned when she read the item in the newspaper. She finally concluded, through the transmutation of hope into reason, that since the man who had lost the pocketbook was now dead there was nothing wrong about keeping the money. She was helped in arriving at that conclusion by the memory of her Uncle Rudy who had died and “left” her father five hundred dollars. The similarity of the amounts added validity to the parallel. If her father had taken that five hundred dollars from Uncle Rudy before he had died, it would have been stealing. After his death it was all right. The money had been “left” for her father in the same way that this man whose initials were “A.B.” had “left” the money for her by dropping his pocketbook in the gutter.

The solution of that problem only opened the way to another. Her sentimental affection for Uncle Rudy, regenerated by the recollection of his kindly wax-pink face as it looked up at her from the satin-lined casket, gave rise to an equally sentimental affection for the kindly but unknown gentleman who had bequeathed her so much money. She wished that she could go to his funeral and, as she considered the possibility, the wish became the slow-germinating seed which finally grew into the realization that there would be no flowers at the funeral. People would not know what name to put on the flower boxes. No one would come to the funeral because people did not go to funerals if they did not know whose funeral it was. Everyone who had been at Uncle Rudy's funeral had known that the man in the casket was Rudolph Finnick.

The solution, after she had thought about it for several more minutes, seemed quite simple. She would call the newspaper and tell them that the dead man's name was Mr. Avery Bullard and that he was the president of the Tredway Corporation. That's what it had said on all the little cards that she had flushed down the toilet bowl. Then they could put his name in the paper and everybody would read it and there would be a nice funeral.

Carrying out her intention was not quite as simple as it had seemed at first. The telephone was out in the dark hall, the electric light bulb had burned out, and she had to light matches to find the newspaper's telephone number. After she got the number she had a difficult time trying to make them understand what she was talking about, but the man who talked to her last was very nice. She spelled out the name just the way it had been on the little cards and hung up in a hurry.

After it was all over she felt better than she had felt in a long time. Now she could even think about how wonderful it was not to be pregnant.

6.44 P.M. EDT

As the wife of the manager of the New York office of the Tredway Corporation, Marian Oldham knew that she had certain responsibilities. She accepted them willingly enough but their discharge was not always easy. There were times when she wondered if Alex really appreciated how difficult her position was. He was right, of course, in saying that they had to keep a cook in order to be able to entertain in the way that his position demanded, yet she doubted whether he understood how hard it was to hold a cook these days if you didn't keep your promises about meal hours.

Alex had plopped another ice cube into his glass and was reaching for the bourbon bottle again.

“Alex, dear,” she asked softly. “Will you be ready to eat before long?”

His face, when he turned, had the pallor of extreme fatigue and she wished that she hadn't been forced into asking the question.

“I'm sorry, dear, but I promised Hilda that she could get away early. This is Friday and she has her club meeting.”

“All right,” he said, letting his hand fall away from the bottle.

“Oh, go ahead,” she said, suddenly repentant. “It doesn't matter. I'll let Hilda leave and finish things up myself.”

“No, I've had enough. Guess I drink too much of the stuff as it is.”

“No, you don't.” She stepped to his side, reaching out for his hand. “You need it—when the bad days come along.”

“Getting to be too many bad days lately. They're all bad.”

“At least, dear, you can forget it now until Monday.”

“Yes.” It was agreement in word only. “Get dinner on the table. I'll be there in a minute.”

She watched him cross to the hall and go in the powder room, telling herself again that he was a good husband and rewishing that she might ease his troubles by sharing them. In the beginning, when they had been first married and Alex and been a salesman working out of the St. Louis office, there had been a perfect sharing. When he came home from a trip he would talk far into the night, telling her everything that had happened, every detail of every call. Her interest, sharpened by his enthusiasm, had caused her to memorize the names of all of his customers and the style numbers of every item in the Tredway catalogue. Gradually, as the years had gone by and Alex had risen in the company, her participation in his business life had become less and less. It had not happened, she knew, because of any conscious desire on his part to exclude her, but rather because it had become more and more necessary for him to find hours when he could escape from business.

There were times now when Marian Oldham felt that her husband would have found more escape through talking to her than by sitting in brooding silence, but she did not dare pick those times. Once in a while—though rarely now—he would tell her about something that had happened in the office. Even then there was a danger. If she tried, for his sake, to divert him and change the subject, there was the chance that he might think she wasn't interested. Yet if her interest was too evident there was always the inevitable ending when he would cut her off with the feeling that she had somehow harmed him by allowing his troubles to intrude within the haven of his escape.

Alex was right … there are getting to be too many bad days … too many nights when he came home as he came home tonight … no, not quite as bad as tonight … the days when Mr. Bullard was in New York were always the worst.

He came into the dining room, blinking his eyes as if they were smarting.

“I hope jellied consommé is all right, dear?” she asked.

He nodded, sitting down and starting to eat, staring silently past the rim of his cup.

She wanted to break the silence but it stretched on and on before she finally thought of something to say that had no business connection.

“I had a letter from Margie today.”

“Oh?”

“She and Jeff are going through town the first week in August on their way to Maine. They're taking their vacation up there—Kennebunkport.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I wrote and told her that we'd love to see them but that we'd probably be away on our own vacation about that same time.”

He nodded, silent.

“Have you thought any more about where you'd like to go, Alex?”

“Not much.”

His cup was less than half emptied but she saw that he had stopped eating. “Is there anything wrong with your consommé, dear?”

“No, it's fine. Not hungry, that's all. Too hot, I guess.”

Hilda came in and they sat in silence until after she had served the lamb chops and the vegetables. There were always lamb chops on nights when Mr. Bullard had been in New York but it was one of the many things that she never called to his attention.

Suddenly, as if he were continuing a conversation that she hadn't heard, Alex said, “I've never thought much of the idea of taking a vacation with anyone else from the company, but with somebody like the Shaws it would probably be all right. His wife's folks have this place up on Cape Cod.”

“The Loren Shaws?”

He looked up as if to accuse her of not having listened to what he had said before.

“They've invited us to come up there?”

“Didn't I tell you about it?”

She had no choice except to say, “I don't think you did, dear.”

“Thought I had. He said something about it when he was up here last week. Nothing final—didn't actually invite us—but I think they're going to.”

“Would you enjoy that, Alex?”

“Why not?”

“You aren't doing it because you think it's the thing to do, are you—because he's going to be the new executive vice-president?”

She thought for a moment that she had said the wrong thing, that he might either flare into anger or relapse into silence, but fortunately he did neither. “No, I wouldn't do anything for that reason. Life's too short. Anyway, there's nothing sure about his being the new executive V.P. It's just my guess, that's all.”

She smiled her relief. “You like him, don't you?”

“Oh, I don't know. At least he has some consideration for the way other people think—your ideas mean something—not the way it is with the old man.”