Executive Suite (43 page)

It was such a totally ridiculous thought that he dismissed it with a snort, not bothering with words. There were enough serious questions without adding any of Dudley's crazy hunches.

He let Dudley pay the attendant and noticed that he took no change from the dollar bill. No wonder his expense accounts were so high! Dudley was a fool … all right as a sales manager but he'd never do in top management. Thank God, he hadn't lost his head and offered him the executive vice-presidency! He'd need that to get Walling's vote. But he had to hold Dudley, too. There hadn't been time to get a commitment from him at the office … too many other questions to answer … still to answer. Had Dudley told him the truth … the whole truth? Would Alderson have gone so far as he had—holding back that call from Pearson so that he could meet Dudley alone—if he didn't want the presidency? Of course he wanted it! Had he pulled the wool over Dudley's eyes … or was Dudley lying? Could it be that Dudley was a stooge for Alderson and Walling … that they had sent him to …

Once again, like a man fingering a frightening weapon, he thought how easy it would be to guarantee Dudley's vote. All he would have to do would be to speak two words … a name … the name on a Chicago apartment-house mailbox … and Walt Dudley would be in his power. Could he do it? If things got down to the point where everything depended on Dudley's vote, would he be able to admit to anyone, even aloud to himself, that his terrifying curiosity had driven him to the despicable end of following Dudley that night in Chicago … that he had hidden in a dark doorway across the street and watched those shadows on the drawn blinds?

Loren Shaw shuddered, shaking the thought from his brain, knowing now that he could never do it. Facing the temptation had destroyed it. Inexplicably, the thought of George Caswell flashed into his mind and, once there, it became the touchstone of an enormously satisfying victory. George Caswell was a gentleman … the Caswells of Long Island … but no more of a gentleman than Loren Shaw.

1.47 P.M. EDT

George Caswell was finding Erica Martin a pleasantly forthright person and he decided that there was no harm to be done by asking her the question that was in the forefront of his mind. “By the way, Miss Martin, would you happen to know if anyone here had a call this morning from a Mr. Pilcher in New York?”

“I know of no such call,” she said promptly, “but that doesn't mean there might not have been one. If you'd care to have me do so, I could have the switchboard log checked. A record is kept of all long-distance calls.”

“Oh, that isn't necessary—” he started to say, and then suddenly reversed himself. “Would it be a great deal of trouble, Miss Martin?”

“No indeed. All I'd have to do is make a telephone call. Would you like to know immediately?”

He hesitated. “I dislike troubling you, but it would be helpful if I knew before I arrived at Mrs. Prince's.”

“The filling station up at the corner probably has a phone,” she said, working the car across to the right lane for a stop. “You said the name was Pilcher?”

“Yes, Bruce Pilcher.”

He watched her through the window, experiencing an unaccustomed feeling of dramatic suspense as he saw her place the call and then wait for the information.

“There were no calls this morning from a Mr. Pilcher in New York,” she said when she came back to the car. “Nor were there any New York calls that were unidentified as to source, except one to the order department. I'm assuming it wouldn't be that one.”

“No, it would have been a call to one of the officers of the company—possibly Mr. Shaw or perhaps Mr. Alderson.”

“No such call came through the office board.”

“Thank you very much, Miss Martin.”

“You're quite welcome, Mr. Caswell.”

As they drove up the street, he became increasingly aware of a sense of deflation, the growing feeling that he had embarked on a fool's errand. He should have known before he started that Pilcher, as soon as his anger cooled, would realize that he couldn't get away with it. It had been no more than one of the empty threats that so many men make in the heat of a big deal. Afterwards, they forgot them. Pilcher probably had. Still it might not be a bad idea to mention the incident out here this afternoon … not all the details, of course, just enough to be certain that Pilcher would be blocked if he were enough of a fool to try some kind of a move. At least doing that would give some purpose to the trip. It was obvious that he could accomplish no more today. It had been evident at the luncheon table that neither Shaw nor Dudley had gotten around to thinking about a new president yet. Their minds were still too full of Avery Bullard … all those stories about him that Walt Dudley had told.

Erica Martin's surprised voice broke the silence. “There's Mr. Walling!”

They were stopping behind another parked car and, looking up as she spoke, he saw the Wallings walk through the gate in the white wall.

The oddly exultant note of discovery that he had heard in Erica Martin's voice made him glance back at her. Her eyes seemed to be looking through the wall.

“Miss Martin?”

She was startled out of her preoccupation. “Yes?”

“There's something I'd like to ask you before we go in. It's a question that may seem inappropriate at the moment—so soon after Mr. Bullard's death—but I'm certain you'll understand that my asking it reflects no lack of either grief or respect. It may well be that I won't have another opportunity to talk to you for the next several days.”

“Of course, Mr. Caswell.”

The interest that flashed in her eyes was reassuring and he went on. “As both of us know—I'm sure you were quite as familiar with Mr. Bullard's affairs as my own secretary is with mine—Mr. Bullard was concerned over the selection of the right man to be his executive vice-president.”

“Yes, I know. I'd been hoping that he would make up his mind before the board meeting on Tuesday so that it could be included in the semiannual report.”

He nodded, telling himself that he had been right in imagining that Miss Martin knew the whole story, inside and out. “As you know, Mr. Bullard had been considering a number of men outside the company. However, when he left my office yesterday noon I was convinced that his choice would inevitably be one of his own men. I imagine—knowing him as well as you did—that you'd probably known that from the beginning?”

“I'd never thought that Mr. Bullard would bring in an outside man,” she said slowly.

“Miss Martin, which one of the vice-presidents would he have selected?”

The long pause before she spoke made him realize how difficult it was for her to think of anything beyond Avery Bullard. “I don't know, Mr. Caswell. He had never made a definite decision.”

“But you knew the man that was in his mind.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“I could only guess.”

“Will you tell me your guess, Miss Martin?”

He saw her hand start to tremble but before his sympathy made him withdraw the question her fingers had tightened around the steering wheel.

“It would have been Mr. Walling.”

Walling? Perhaps she was right. He had been thinking of Shaw as his executive vice-president, but it might well be that Walling was the right choice. Yes, Walling's abilities would be a better complement to his own. Walling knew the design and manufacturing side and had a good understanding of sales, too … where he would most need help.

“Thank you, Miss Martin. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your—well, your helpfulness.”

She avoided his eyes but, under the circumstances, there was nothing strange about that. It was thoroughly understandable. She had been Avery Bullard's secretary for many years … close to him … yes, even closer than he had realized before. Miss Martin would be a great help … a very great help … as soon as she could accept the fact that Avery Bullard was dead.

He held the door for her as she got out of the car. It was, beyond an innate gesture of gentlemanly courtesy, an expression of genuine respect.

KENT COUNTY, MARYLAND

1.57 P.M. EDT

“I beg your pardon,” Frederick Alderson called for the second time.

The long legs of the man on the porch of Teel's Store unwound slowly. He opened only one eye, saving the other from the bright sun, and a prodigious yawn created a startling cavern in his gray-stubbled face.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Alderson said, “but I'm afraid that I'm lost. Would you happen to know where Mr. Jesse Grimm lives?”

A slow grin puckered the man's face. “Well, mister, you ain't so lost as some I've seen. Tell you what now—you see this here road right along to the side of the store? You just take that road and you keep on a-going till you can't go no more and that there's Captain Jesse's place. You can't miss it on account it's got a fresh painted house and he's a-building a new shop. No sir, mister, you ain't so lost as you thought you were. Tain't more'n a mile down there to Captain Jesse's.”

“Thank you very much,” Frederick Alderson said.

Only a mile. Then he would be talking to Jesse. That would be his last chance. He had failed once … Dudley had gotten into Shaw's office before he could catch him. He dared not fail again!

14

MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

2.05 P.M. EDT

Mary Walling was acutely conscious of the atmosphere of hair-trigger apprehension that hung over the stiffly seated group in the library of the old Tredway mansion. The conversation that had filled these first few minutes was forced and aimless, without point or purpose. There had been, of course, no open acknowledgment by anyone of what would be decided here this afternoon—and she sensed that there would be no such acknowledgment, even after the decision was made—yet she was sure that all of the others secretly shared her awareness that, before they left his room, the new president of the Tredway Corporation would be selected.

There had been no lessening of Mary Walling's earlier fear that her own happiness would be jeopardized if her husband moved up to the presidency, but that threat had been overbalanced by the later-rising and even more terrifying fear of what the effect on Don might be if he were to lose what he now so clearly regarded as the fulfillment of his own destiny. She knew that he could never be happy now without it—and his happiness was a prerequisite of her own.

The moment she and Don had entered the room, Mary Walling's apprehension had been aroused by the way that Loren Shaw had already pre-empted a seat beside the desk, as close to Julia Tredway Prince as it was possible for anyone to be. When, a moment later, George Caswell had come in with Erica Martin, Shaw had adroitly maneuvered Caswell into a chair between his own and Dudley's. Thus—partly by accident and partly, she was sure, by Shaw's design—Don now sat alone facing the shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity of Shaw, Caswell and Dudley. She knew that the three had lunched together and it was only too clear that the addition of Julia Tredway Prince's vote was all they needed to make Loren Shaw president. Don had said he was sure of Mrs. Prince's support, but Mary Walling found it difficult to share her husband's certainty. There had been nothing beyond simple courtesy in the way that Mrs. Prince had greeted Don when they arrived and, during these past few minutes, Loren Shaw had been making the most of his strategic position at Julia Tredway Prince's side.

Feeling herself an outsider—almost an observer with no right of participation—Mary Walling had slipped back into the corner behind her husband. She realized too late that his face was hidden from her view—by then Erica Martin had already taken the chair in the opposite corner—but there was the compensating advantage of being able to watch the room from his viewpoint and to see every glance that was sent in his direction by any of the others.

Of one thing she was now certain—Loren Shaw wasn't thinking of Don as his competitor in the battle for the presidency. The way that Shaw's eyes stabbed toward her husband when Alderson's name had been mentioned by George Caswell made it clear that Shaw regarded Don as only the lieutenant of his real adversary.

“I, too, am sorry that Mr. Alderson isn't here,” Julia Tredway Prince said. “You weren't able to locate him, were you, Mr. Walling?”

Don shook his head in silence and Mary Walling wished that she could see his eyes, wondering whether he was aware as she was that Julia Tredway Prince's remark had been the first admission, even by indirection, that there was a purpose behind the invitation that had brought them together—and aware, too, of the implications of Shaw's glance.

If Julia Tredway Prince's remark had really been purposeful, the purpose was quickly abandoned. She turned to George Caswell and again asked a question that seemingly had no point except to force conversation. “I understand that you flew over, Mr. Caswell?”

“Yes—and quite luxuriously. A friend of mine was good enough to give me the use of his company's plane for the day.”

“You know that's getting to be quite a thing,” Dudley burst out as if he had withstood the restraint of silence as long as possible, “—all these presidents of big companies having their own private planes. I was on this NAM committee last year—had a meeting down at New Orleans—and three of the big boys came down in their own planes. Man, that would really be the life, having your own plane!”

Shaw cleared his throat. “I should think it might be an extravagance that would be a little difficult to justify to the stockholders.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Caswell said in mild rebuttal. “There has to be some way to compensate a corporation president adequately these days. It's hardly possible to do it with salary alone, income taxes being what they are.”

Julia Tredway Prince looked up at her husband who was lounging against the doorframe. “Dwight and I met a man in Jamaica last winter who had flown down in his own plane. He was the president of some steel company—remember, Dwight?”