The Troubled Air Part 20

"Want a drink?" O'Neill asked, pulling open a drawer in the desk to reveal a bottle. "To celebrate Sat.u.r.day afternoon?"

"No."

O'Neill closed the drawer, sighing. "Always feel sad on Sat.u.r.day afternoon," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Gray weather ... gray weather. ..."

"Waiting," Archer said.

"Clement," O'Neill said gently, looking up, "I'm afraid they've had it. All of them."

"Hutt said he'd give me two weeks," Archer said, trying to keep from speaking too fast. "I've dug up a lot of information. ..."

"Hutt's been digging up information, too, he says," O'Neill said neutrally. "When he called me from Palm Beach, he told me to tell you that as far as he's concerned, his position stands."

"You knew that Thursday," Archer said, standing up. "Why did you keep me on the string?"

"Orders from the man I work for," O'Neill said quietly. "I'm sorry, Clem. He told me not to bring it up until you did. Mine not to reason why, mine but ... oh, h.e.l.l." He stood up, too. "Let's go out and have lunch."

"That was a cheap thing for Hutt to do," Archer said. "Run out at a time like this, leaving you with the dirty work."

"I'll pa.s.s on your feelings in the matter," O'Neill said formally. "I'm sure Mr. Hutt is always open to constructive criticism."

"Exactly what did he mean by saying that his position stands?"

"No one of the five works next week or thereafter, to infinity," O'Neill said. "Exactly."

"I threatened I'd quit," Archer said, "when I talked to him. What's the word on that?"

"Lunch," O'Neill said, "I'm dying for a large, wet lunch."

"Come on, Emmet," Archer said. "Let's have it."

O'Neill walked slowly toward the window, then turned and faced Archer. There was a look of troubled pleading in his eyes. "He said that if you wanted to quit, Clem, I was empowered to accept your resignation."

There was silence for a moment. In the quiet building, Archer could hear the faint sound of an elevator dropping hollowly in its shaft. Archer got off the desk. He rubbed his head thoughtfully. Here it is, he thought, here's the moment again. Once more around the track and in front of the judges' stand still one more time.

"Clem," O'Neill said. "That's all for me. That's as far as I go. My duties to the firm of Hutt and Bookstaver are discharged for the week. I won't say another word. Let's go and have lunch."

Archer hesitated. "Sure," he said, after a pause. "Might as well eat."

He watched as O'Neill put on his hat and coat. "I have to meet my wife for lunch, too," O'Neill said. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Delighted," Archer said absently, feeling blank.

"We've been quarreling," O'Neill said, as they got to the door of his office. "I've discovered a natural truth about marriage. The prettier they are, the more they fight. You can act as a buffer state."

Archer stopped before O'Neill could close the door.

"What's the matter?" O'Neill asked nervously.

"Emmet," Archer said slowly, "I have a call to make. Do you mind if I use your telephone?"

"Of course not." O'Neill waved toward his desk. "I'll wait for you."

"I don't think you'd better hear this call," said Archer.

"Sure," O'Neill said. "I'll wait-for you at the elevator."

"I'm going to call the sponsor," Archer said. "I want to go to him and put the whole thing up to him."

O'Neill blinked. He looked uneasily up and down the empty outer office, at the neat, vacant desks and the covered typewriters. "The rule is, of course," he said flatly, "that n.o.body but Hutt talks to the sponsor."

"I know all about the rule."

"It's Sat.u.r.day afternoon," O'Neill said. "He won't be in his office."

"I'll call him at his home."

"He lives in Paoli," O'Neill said. "He has an unlisted phone. You won't be able to get him."

"You have his number," Archer said. "I know that. You've called Hutt there when Hutt went down for week-ends."

"The last man who went over Hutt's head and talked to a sponsor was fired the next week," O'Neill said.

"I know."

"Just wanted to keep you au courant with the local customs."

"What's the number, Emmet?"

They stood facing each other, very close. O'Neill's face was serious and tight. Then it relaxed. He grinned, his face looking boyish and mischievous. "Sometimes, Clem," O'Neill said, "I wish I was back in the old carefree United States Marines. I'm going down to meet my pretty wife, because I'm late already, and our marriage is tottering as it is. On my desk, there's an address book. In it, it's just barely possible you might find an unlisted number or two. Under S. Don't tell me about it. I'll be waiting for you at the bar, with a Martini in reserve."

He patted Archer's arm with a swift gesture, and swung on his heel and walked st.u.r.dily toward the elevators, a man having trouble hanging on to his eighteen thousand dollars a year.

Archer watched him march past the empty desks, then went into the office. The address book was of heavy green tooled leather and was standing against a leather-framed photograph of O'Neill's wife. O'Neill's wife had long, blond hair and she regarded the transactions on her husband's desk with a pure, delicious, sidelong air. Under S, Archer found the name Robert Sandler, with a Paoli number. Archer sat down at O'Neill's desk and, staring at the pretty, framed face, dialed the operator.

Fifteen minutes later, when he joined O'Neill and his wife at the bar downstairs, he casually dropped the information that he had to get a morning train on Monday for Philadelphia.

15.

n.o.bODY 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 Sat.u.r.day. 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 st.u.r.dily. "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 h.e.l.l, 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 const.i.tution, and a sour man is bound to behave in an undependable manner. Stands to reason."

They were pa.s.sing 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 gla.s.s 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. Gra.s.s 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 compet.i.tion 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 inst.i.tution. 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 d.a.m.n 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 s.p.a.ce of time."

"I know," Mr. Sandler said. "Hutt said an a.s.sistant promised you the two weeks and he had to back the man up. Approve of that. No sense having a.s.sistants 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 att.i.tude 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?"