The Troubled Air (29 page)

N
OBODY SHOULD APPROACH PHILADELPHIA, ARCHER THOUGHT, AS THE
train sped through the outskirts of the city. It is too depressing. It was a gray morning and the clouds hung low over the stucco wastes of the suburbs. All our cities, Archer thought, peering through the necked window, are surrounded by belts of apathy. Low-priced regions for the discouraged, flimsy walls behind which people moved wearily, worrying about the rent. Even the trees looked desolate, thin and without vitality, as though they would never reach a season in which they would put forth leaves or provide a nesting place for birds, never grow large enough for a boy to want to carve his initials in their trunks.

Archer closed his eyes, displeased with the way his thoughts were running. He wanted to be jovial and self-confident for the morning’s work. Hearty, he decided, robustly Rotarian, that’s the way to be when talking on the subject of treason to a man who runs a ten-million-dollar business. Mr. Sandler had been pleasant on the phone when they had spoken on Saturday. Clipped, but pleasant. There had been a moment’s hesitation and then Mr. Sandler had said, “Be at my office at twelve-thirty Monday.” He hadn’t asked what Archer wanted to see him about and hadn’t said a word about Lloyd Hutt or proper channels of communication. Somehow, after the call, Archer had felt encouraged. Mr. Sandler had sounded like a reasonable man.

He took a cab from the station. The factory was on the outskirts of the city. Archer had never seen it before and he was favorably impressed with the large, trim building, set behind lawns, with the name of the company on a white sign along the road. It was a drug company which made a wide variety of patent medicines, skin preparations and pharmaceutical products, and the architect had cleverly made the building and its grounds suggest an austere and well-run hospital. Driving through the gates along a graveled road, Archer had a feeling of being involved in a dignified and public-spirited enterprise. The sponsor’s office was on the ground floor, and from the large anteroom you looked out through curtained windows at the sweeping lawn and the shrub borders. The room itself was comfortably furnished, with low chairs and sofas, and magazines on small tables. At a desk at one end sat a mulatto girl, behind a telephone. The girl was pretty, with golden skin and soft, wavy dark hair. She wore a trim blue dress with a white collar and her voice was shy and soft when she spoke to Archer. She called in immediately when Archer gave her his name.

“Mr. Sandler says for you to go right in, please,” she said, after speaking briefly on the phone. She smiled at him and pressed a buzzer. Not a hospital, really, Archer thought, as he went through the door. More like a sanitarium for rich patients with mild and fashionable diseases.

Mr. Sandler was a short, plump man with thinning hair. He had a rosy complexion and a large pink nose. His face looked soft and pliant and only his eyes, which were cold pale blue and almost opaque gave a hint of strength and stubbornness. Just now there was a polite, welcoming smile on his face as he stood up and came around from behind his desk to shake hands with Archer. There was another man in the room, large, stocky and about fifty, with a leathery and wrinkled face, like an old catcher’s mitt. He stood up, too, and smiled agreeably when Mr. Sandler introduced them. His name was Ferris and when he shook Archer’s hand, his palm was hard and callused, like a farmer’s.

“I’m going, now,” Ferris said. “I’ll take a last swing around the plant and I’ll look in this afternoon, Bob.”

“I hope it rains in Florida for the next two weeks,” Mr. Sandler said. “Hard.”

Ferris laughed. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s generous of you.”

“Ferris is taking a two-week vacation,” Mr. Sandler explained to Archer. “He’s a golfer, when he isn’t busy being a vice-president. I always hate people to go off on vacation when I can’t go. Ever since I was a kid. My mother used to tell me it was a bad character trait. I guess she was right. Still haven’t gotten over it, though.” He grinned at Ferris, who was at the door by now. “Don’t tell me if you break eighty, Mike,” he said. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

Ferris laughed, opening the door. “Good-bye, Mr. Archer,” he said. “Glad to have met you, after all these years.” He had a strange way of looking directly and unblinkingly at you, Archer thought, though he were making a report to himself on your strengths and weaknesses. Big business, Archer realized, as he smiled good-bye to Ferris, I am always uncomfortable in its presence.

The door closed behind a final wave of the big, leathery man, and Mr. Sandler indicated an easy-chair near the desk for Archer. “Sit down, Mr. Archer,” he said. His voice was swift, but soft and breathy. He waited for Archer to seat himself, then went around behind his desk and lowered himself neatly into his own high-backed swivel chair. His whitish hair and pink scalp against the brown leather looked like an academic painting of a judge of a minor court. “He deserves this vacation,” Mr. Sandler said. “No matter what I say.
I
keeps this plant going as though it was running in oil. Been with her twenty years. Started in the shipping department.” He looked Archer as though he expected Archer to say something appropriate.

“Oh,” Archer said, baffled by this industrial loyalty. “That’s a lot of time.” There was a flicker of the pale eyes and Archer felt that Mr. Sandler had expected something more original.

“Some day,” Sandler said, “you ought to let us take you around the plant. See where we make the stuff you sell.”

“I’d be delighted,” Archer said formally, not pleased at being included on the sales force of the organization, although technically that was accurate enough. Factories left him confused anyhow. No matter how closely he listened to the explanations, the machinery always seemed hopelessly intricate.

“How’s Hutt?” Mr. Sandler asked.

“Very well, I think. He’s in Florida, too.”

Mr. Sandler smiled. “Everybody gets to Florida but me. I’m in the wrong end of the business, I guess. That Hutt’s a good man, though. A steel-trap intelligence.”

“Yes,” Archer said, feeling that Mr. Sandler perhaps read the business sections of the newspapers too carefully. “A very good man indeed.”

“That program you do,” Mr. Sandler said. “Like it.” He nodded sturdily. “Listen every Thursday. It’s artistic, but it sells drugs, too. I keep my finger on the pulse. I asked Hutt who was responsible—and he said, Clement Archer’s the man.”

“That’s very generous of Mr. Hutt,” Archer said warily.

“Sign of a good executive,” Mr. Sandler said. “Knows when to give other people credit. Always mistrust a man who says he does everything himself. Know he’s lying. Small man in a big job. Finally disastrous. So when you called, I said, come on down.” He peered sharply at Archer. “I understand it isn’t customary,” he said, showing Archer that he knew this was an extraordinary occasion, “but, what the hell, you’re a big grown man, you didn’t travel to Philadelphia just to waste my time.”

“Thank you,” Archer said, trying to wind himself up for what was to follow. “I appreciate it. The reason …”

“Like oysters?” Sandler asked abruptly. “Fried oysters?”

“Why … why, yes.”

“You didn’t have lunch yet, did you?”

“No. I came right from the train.”

“Good.” Sandler jumped up from behind his desk. “We’ll go to my club. Best fried oysters in Philadelphia.” He was rapidly putting his coat on. He moved with bustling youthful movements, his pink hands flashing into sleeves. “Of course,” he said, picking up his hat, “you don’t have to have oysters if you don’t want to. Don’t believe in dictating a man’s diet. You might have ulcers, high blood pressure. Who knows?”

Archer laughed as he put on his coat. “I don’t have an ulcer to my name.”

“Good,” Sandler led him to the door, his hand on Archer’s elbow. “Mistrust people with ulcers. Unreasonable prejudice. My wife gets furious when she hears me say it. Her two brothers have ulcers as big as garden baskets, but I can’t help saying it. Ulcers’re the result of a sour constitution, and a sour man is bound to behave in an undependable manner. Stands to reason.”

They were passing the mulatto girl at the desk by this time. “Back in an hour and a half, Miss Watkins,” Mr. Sandler said. “Have to have my lunch.”

“Yessir,” the mulatto girl said softly, smiling goldenly.

“Prettiest girl north of Washington,” Mr. Sandler said in a hoarse whisper. “Wish I was twenty years younger.” He laughed heartily. “Disadvantage of acquired wealth. It comes when the muscle tone is gone. Got scientists working on hormones this minute in there …” He waved vaguely at doors behind him in the corridor. “Rejuvenate the dying cell. Race against time, I tell them when I talk to them. I’m going to be sixty-one next month.” He roared again, plump, bouncy, pink, dapper in his gray coat and soft brown felt hat.

They went out of the severe main doors, Mr. Sandler nodding briskly to the uniformed guard behind a glass grating. Mr. Sandler stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs and surveyed the lawn. Archer had the feeling that each time Mr. Sandler came out of his office, he stopped in the same place and gazed around him with the same expression of affection and criticism. “Ought to see this place in the summertime,” he said. “An ancestral garden. Phlox, peonies, hyacinth, daisy borders. Three men just to take care of the lawn. Restful to the tired eye. Grass and a few trees. Turn back to your work refreshed. Interior entirely air-conditioned, too. Can’t stand weary summertime factory faces all around me. If I had my way we’d close down May first and send everybody fishing until October. Like to do it, but the competition would murder us.” He grinned and trotted down the steps to a shiny green Ford convertible which was parked just in front of the door. “Here it is,” he said. “My car. Hop in.” He opened the door for Archer and bounced around to the other side. Archer got in and Mr. Sandler hurled himself in under the wheel. They started with a spurt, the gravel spinning loudly behind them. “Like little cars,” Sandler said, driving too fast through the gates. “Like to drive myself. Don’t like the big ocean-liner type of automobile. Feel as though you’re driving an institution. In the summertime I keep the top down all weathers. Get as red as an Indian. Hair bleaches out. Gives me a unique appearance.” He grinned at the wheel. “Surprising, the number of girls who wave at me on the road. Very useful at board meetings, too. I look so energetic I discourage all the vice-presidents and representatives of stockholders who think they want to argue with me. If I drive too fast, tell me. Only man I know who drives faster is my son. He’ll kill himself some day. He was in the Air Force during the war and he’s still trying to cruise at three hundred miles an hour. Ever meet him?”

“No,” Archer said, watching the road ahead of him worriedly.

“In New York half the time. Night-club type. Always seems to be going around with singers who don’t get through work till four
A.M.
Not much good for anything else. His mother said he was ruined by the Air Force. Not true.” Mr. Sandler grinned. “He was ruined at the age of eight. Amusing boy. Big feller, always getting into trouble. Not worth a damn any place but in a B-17.” Mr. Sandler paid attention to his driving for a moment, debonairly. “You’ve got some trouble to lay in my lap, haven’t you, Mr. Archer?”

“Yes,” Archer said. “I’m afraid so.”

“Lunch will help us bear it. Lunch has a civilizing influence on trouble,” Mr. Sandler said. “But you can start now. Let’s have it.”

“It’s about those five people connected with the program,” Archer said carefully. “Hutt said you knew about them.”

“Yes.” Mr. Sandler was looking straight ahead through the windshield. “I got that piece from the magazine.”

“Hutt gave me two weeks to investigate them,” Archer said. “Or try to. As much as one man can in that short space of time.”

“I know,” Mr. Sandler said. “Hutt said an assistant promised you the two weeks and he had to back the man up. Approve of that. No sense having assistants unless you give them some responsibilities.”

“The two weeks’re up Thursday,” Archer said.

“I know.” Imperceptibly, Archer noticed, Mr. Sandler was slowing down as they wove through traffic. There was no way of knowing what his attitude was at the moment. His tone was distant, noncommittal, neither friendly nor unfriendly.

“I’ve been talking to the people,” Archer said. “I learned a few things about them. But when I tried to get in touch with Hutt, they told me he was down in Florida. They don’t know when he’s coming back. And he left word that his position had not changed.” Archer consciously tried to keep a tone of injury or complaint out of his voice.

“Very important,” Mr. Sandler said. “Vacations for executives. Believe in it. Keeps the brain fresh for decisions.”

“I understand that,” Archer said, too hastily. “It’s just inconvenient that it came just at this time. That’s why I was forced to come to you.”

“No apologies necessary,” Mr. Sandler said. “That’s what I’m paid for. To deal with the uncomfortable situations. I can hire people to deal with the easy ones.”

Archer didn’t feel that he had made any apologies, but he didn’t go into it. “Hutt left word,” he said, choosing his words with care, “that my resignation would be accepted if I insisted on pushing the matter.”

There was silence in the car as Mr. Sandler slowed down for a red light. “Is that a threat, Mr. Archer?” he asked flatly, staring straight ahead. “Are you trying to push me?”

“No,” Archer said, surprised that Mr. Sandler felt he was important enough to be in a position to threaten anyone. “I just wanted you to have an absolutely clear view of the situation.”

“I have a clear view of the situation,” Mr. Sandler said. The light turned green and he started with a spurt. “I talked to Hutt and I told him that he could let you go if necessary. Clear enough?”

“Clear enough,” Archer said. He hesitated. “Maybe you don’t want me to go on. Maybe I’m just wasting your time.”

“If you were wasting my time you wouldn’t be here,” Mr. Sandler said, without emphasis. “You’ve worked for me a long time. You’ve sold my product. You’ve earned your money. You have a right to state your case.”