Man in the Gray Flannel Suit Page 24

“That’s what they do. For instance, I’ll begin by saying, ‘I think there are some wonderful things about this speech. . . .’ If Hopkins seems pleased, I’ll finish the sentence by saying, ‘and I have only the most minor improvements to suggest.’ But if he seems a little surprised at the word wonderful, I’ll end the sentence with, but as a whole, I don’t think it comes off at all, and I think major revisions are necessary.

  “Is that what you’re going to do?” Betsy asked. She wasn’t even smiling.

  “As I say, it’s standard operating procedure,” Tom replied. “The first thing the young executive must learn.”

  “I think it’s a little sickening,” Betsy said bluntly.

  “Damn it, have a sense of humor. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with me. I’m just interested in knowing the answers to a few questions. What do you really think of that speech?”

  “I think it’s terrible,” Tom said. “My business education, you see, is not complete. In a few years I’ll be able to suspend judgment entirely until I learn what Hopkins thinks, and then I’ll really and truly feel the way he does. That way I won’t have to be dishonest any more.”

  Betsy put the speech neatly back in its envelope, handed it to Tom, and without a word went to the kitchen.

  “Betsy!” he said. “Come back. I want to talk to you.”

  “I’m getting dinner,” she said.

  “What’s the matter? It’s not time for dinner yet.”

  “I’ve got some things that have to be put on the stove.”

  He went to the kitchen and found her filling a kettle with water. “You’re angry with me,” he said. “Can’t you take a joke?”

  “I don’t think you were joking.”

  “Of course I was. I was knocking myself out with humor.”

  “What are you going to tell Hopkins tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. Why’s that so important all of a sudden?”

  She put the kettle on the stove and turned toward him suddenly. “I didn’t like the look of you sitting there in that big chair talking so damn smugly and cynically!” she said. “You looked disgusting! You looked like just the kind of guy you always used to hate. The guy with all the answers. The guy who has no respect for himself or anyone else!”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked quietly. “Do you want me to go in there tomorrow and tell Hopkins I think his speech is a farce?”

  “I don’t care what you tell him, but I don’t like the idea of your becoming a cheap cynical yes-man and being so self-satisfied and analytical about it. You never used to be like that.”

  “All right,” Tom said. “I’ll tell him I think his speech is absurd. And he’ll decide I’m a nice honest guy who just happens to be no use to him at all.”

  “How do you know? Maybe he doesn’t like the speech either.”

  “Sure, it might turn out that way. I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance if I play it straight, but if I feel my way along, I have a ninety per cent chance of giving him what he wants.”

  “Maybe he just wants an honest opinion.”

  “That sounds real nice,” Tom said bitterly. “You don’t know how guys like Hopkins are.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said.

  “You haven’t even met him.”

  “No, I haven’t. What’s he ever done to convince you he’s dishonest?”

  “I didn’t say he is dishonest.”

  “He is if you have to agree with him all the time to keep your job.”

  “That’s not true. A guy who disagreed with him most of the time simply wouldn’t be useful to him.”

  “Not if you were right and he was wrong–if it were that way, you could be damn useful by disagreeing. There’s no two ways about it: either you think that he’d fire you for disagreeing, even if you were right, or you’re not sure you’re right. Either you’ve got no confidence in him, or none in yourself. Which is it?”

  “Don’t be so righteous,” Tom said. “If you really want to know, I’m not too damn sure of either him or myself. I don’t really know whether that speech will do whatever he wants it to do or not–maybe all the slick advertising guys will think it’s wonderful, and maybe that’s what he wants. I don’t know how he’d feel about a guy who disagreed with him. The point is, you’d have to take an awful chance to find out.”

  “And you don’t want to take a chance.”

  “You’re talking like a typical American woman,” Tom said disgustedly. “You want it both ways. ‘Don’t play it safe,’ you say, ‘and can we get a new car tomorrow?’ ”

  “You can’t imagine being honest and getting a raise for it.”

  “My Boy Scout days are over,” Tom said doggedly.

  “And so you’re going in there tomorrow and lie to the man if you figure that’s what he wants.”

  “You’re damn right I am.”

  “How long will it be before you decide it isn’t necessary to tell the truth to me?”

  The truth, Tom thought. The truth about what? The truth about Maria? Shall we all sit down now and tell each other the truth? Suddenly he felt immensely angry. “You’ve had an easy life, Betsy,” he said in a deadly quiet voice. “You just stay here and take care of the kids and enjoy your moral indignation while I go in town every day to wrestle with guys like Hopkins. But don’t read me lectures. The truth is I’m doing the best I can with the world as I see it.”

  “Go to hell,” Betsy said with passion.

  “Thanks,” Tom replied. “Is that the last of your moral advice?”

  Betsy didn’t answer. She was pale and quiet all through dinner. After she had put the children to bed, Tom said to her, “Haven’t we been making an awful lot out of nothing?”

  “I guess we have,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in. And if you’re going to see Hopkins tomorrow, you better get a good night’s rest yourself.”

  27

  SAUL BERNSTEIN walked into the First National Bank, which was the biggest building in South Bay. As a boy he had thought “the bank” a frightful monster, for he had often heard his parents worrying about whether it would take their store away, as though it were a giant who could reach out and rip the building from its foundations, but for two years now, he had been a member of the bank’s board of directors, and he no longer thought of it as anything but a rather tired group of men trying to meet their responsibilities. He walked to the rear of the bank, opened a gate in a low partition there, and approached the desk of Walter Johnson, the president. “Good morning, Walt,” he said. “I’d like to find out the bank balance of two men: a Mr. Thomas R. Rath and a Mr. Edward F. Schultz.”

  “Just a minute,” Johnson said, and picked up his telephone. Bernstein sat down. That morning he had received in the mail from Edward Schultz a photostat of a document written on the personal stationery of Mrs. Florence Rath. “To Whom It May Concern,” the document said. “In exchange for his services for the rest of my life, and in place of paying him a regular salary for same from this day forward, I hereby bequeath my entire possessions, including my house and land, to Edward F. Schultz, who has served me faithfully for more than thirty years.” This was typewritten, with the date, June 10, 1953. Florence Rath’s signature followed, written by a quavering hand.

  Bernstein had studied this and had carefully reread the long, precisely phrased will which Sims had sent him, a document which was dated January 18, 1948. Edward’s document was not a legal will like the one which left everything to Tom, Bernstein saw, but it might be considered a legal contract, and quite a case might be built on that. And regardless of the legal technicalities, what had old Mrs. Rath intended?

  As he waited for Johnson to get him the figures he had requested, Bernstein reviewed for the hundredth time the possibilities, the different combinations of circumstance, which theoretically could have led to contradictory documents. It was possible that old Mrs. Rath had simply been forgetful, had made her bargain with Schultz and forgotten t
o tell her lawyer or grandson. It was possible she had deliberately refrained from telling them, for fear that their objections might be painful. On the other hand, she might have told her grandson of the change, and young Rath might have decided simply to say nothing about it to anyone, confident that his grandmother’s agreement with Schultz would be thrown out of court because of legal technicalities–because it bore the names of no witnesses to the signature. And theoretically it was just as possible that the document presented by Schultz was in some way a fake, although Bernstein was quite sure that Schultz’s lawyers would have had the signature examined before accepting the case. His real responsibility, Bernstein felt, was to discover which of these circumstances had actually happened. Until he knew that, it would be impossible to tell what paragraphs in the thick law books which lined the walls of his inner office should be chosen to justify a decision in the case. It was, of course, difficult to resurrect the past, but not impossible. In a small town the past clung to the present more permanently than in a big city. People’s footprints lasted longer before they were stamped out.

  The bank president wrote several figures on a pad. “Mr. Rath has a savings account with approximately nine thousand dollars in it, deposited on September 2, all in one check from a real-estate outfit in Westport,” he said. “Mr. Schultz has a savings account of approximately seventy-eight thousand dollars, deposited here over a period of thirty years, in varying amounts on the third of each month.”

  “Are you sure?” Bernstein asked in astonishment.

  “Those are the figures.”

  “Thank you,” Bernstein said.

  “Not a bit,” Johnson replied. He knew he was not supposed to give out such figures, but in South Bay a man who had demonstrated good intentions and the ability to keep his mouth shut could get any information he wanted.

  Bernstein walked slowly up Main Street. It was surprising how often bank balances helped to point the way toward justice. The figures he had just learned might mean anything or nothing, but they at least rid his mind of the picture of the faithful impoverished old servant being cheated by a young heir. Here the servant was richer than the heir, all of which went to show, Bernstein reflected, that a man must guard himself against his own prejudices. And another thing: how could old Schultz have continued his deposits if he had had no salary for several months? And why were his monthly deposits of “varying amounts”? Wouldn’t an employee with a regular salary tend to deposit the same sum every month? Perhaps he had cashed his checks, spent varying amounts, and deposited the remainder, Bernstein thought, but it would be strange if such a haphazard plan enabled a butler to save so much. How much had Mrs. Rath been paying him? Suddenly Bernstein had an idea. He hadn’t worked in a delicatessen all during his boyhood without learning anything.

  Quickening his pace, Bernstein walked to Hopeland’s Grocery Store, which specialized in luxury items. That is where Mrs. Rath would have been almost sure to order her groceries. He went to the room on the second floor where Julius Marvella, the manager, was busy reckoning his accounts. “Morning, Julius,” he said.

  “What are you doing up here, Judge?” Julius replied, grinning. “Have you come to take me in?”

  “Not today. I wondered if you could tell me something. Did old Mrs. Rath trade here?”

  “Nope–she went to Fritz’s place.”

  “Why?”

  Julius shrugged.

  “Did she ever trade here?”

  “A long time ago, when I was a kid. Then she changed.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Julius shrugged again.

  “Nobody’s going to get into trouble if you tell me,” Bernstein said. “And you won’t have to appear in court. I won’t mention your name.”

  “Okay, Judge,” Julius said. “This guy Schultz did all her buying for her, and he wanted kickbacks. He asked Pop to pad Mrs. Rath’s bill. Not just a little, mind you–Schultz wanted him to add twenty per cent every month and kick back fifteen per cent to him. You know how Pop was on that stuff. He threw the bastard out.”

  “Thanks,” Bernstein said.

  “I don’t know what Fritz did for him,” Julius said. “I’m making no charges–I’m just telling you what happened here. I don’t want to get Fritz into trouble. You know how it is, Judge–Fritz might get a chance to put me in a jam someday. It don’t pay to start things in a town like this. Wouldn’t be long before he found some way to knock me.”

  “I won’t even have to talk to Fritz,” Bernstein said. Six years before he had successfully represented a man bringing suit against Fritz for padding bills. He thanked Julius again and continued on his way down Main Street. That clears up one thing, he thought–Schultz is dishonest. A piece of knowledge like that was a lot more help to Bernstein than the legal reviews that came to his office each month.

  Bernstein strolled around the town, chatting casually with shopkeepers, the manager of the movie theater, the keepers of taverns, the man who sold tickets at the railroad station, and many others. Within two hours he had accumulated a fairly complete dossier on Schultz. Five shopkeepers had reported that Schultz had tried to get them to pad bills. These five all had good reputations, and Schultz had not traded with them regularly. He had done most of his purchasing at stores whose proprietors Bernstein suspected, some because of rumors he had heard, others because of their record. All this was perhaps less strange, Bernstein thought, than the fact that virtually no one could remember ever having seen Schultz spend money on himself, or buy any entertainment. In the thirty years Schultz had lived in the house on the top of the hill, the taxi company had rarely been called to bring him to town. He had never been seen in the movies or taverns and had not taken regular trips on the train. What had he done on his days off? Perhaps he’s a miser, Bernstein thought; perhaps he did nothing but save money. One couldn’t refuse to allow a man to inherit a house simply because he had padded bills and saved money, but Bernstein felt he was beginning to see the tortuous road to justice more clearly.

  28

  IT WAS a little after ten o’clock in the morning. “Mrs. Hopkins is on the wire, Mr. Hopkins,” Miss MacDonald said. “Will you take the call now?”

  “Of course!” Hopkins said. “Put her through.”

  “Ralph?” Helen’s voice broke in.

  “Hello, dear,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Ralph, can you come out here? I want to talk to you.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Sure! I have some appointments, but I can break them. What time do you want me to be there?”

  “Try to get here for lunch. This is important, Ralph. It’s about Susan.”

  “Susan? What’s the matter with her?”

  “She just told me she refuses to go to college. I’m worried about her, Ralph. I’ll talk to you about it when I see you.”

  “I’ll come right out,” he said.

  After telephoning Tom to postpone their luncheon date, Hopkins had his chauffeur drive him to South Bay. As the car turned into his driveway, he tried not to look at the enormous low house, with one wing extending over the edge of the artificial harbor. His wife had had it built, had directed the architect herself, and Hopkins did not like the place–he detested anything which seemed to be made mostly for show. He had never complained about the house, however, and did not intend to.

  A butler let Hopkins in, and a maid took his hat–that was another thing which bothered him about the house: there were always too many servants hanging around. He walked through the enormous living room, the entire east side of which was made of glass, to the library. Helen was sitting there alone. She was a short woman who had grown rather stout, but her face retained its delicate shape. Her graying brown hair was carefully arranged in a style a little too youthful for her, and she wore a severe black cocktail dress which had been designed for a much slimmer figure. She got up a little nervously when Hopkins came into the room. She hadn’t seen him for more than a month.

  “Hello, dear,” he said.
“You’re looking grand!” He kissed her lightly.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I’ve been terribly worried.”

  “Sit down,” he said. “Let’s have a drink. Do you have any liquor in here?”

  “Just pull the bell cord.”

  He pulled it, and a moment later a maid who had never seen Hopkins before came in. She was extremely nervous. “You rang, sir?” she asked. “Did you ring?”

  “Yes,” Hopkins replied. “Scotch on the rocks, please.”

  “I’ll have a Manhattan,” Helen said.

  The maid withdrew.

  “Is Susan here?” Hopkins asked.

  “No–she’s at some party out on Long Island. That’s what I want to talk to you about, Ralph. She’s at parties all the time.”

  “That’s natural,” Hopkins said easily. “She’s young. I don’t see anything to worry about.”

  “Well, I do!” Helen paused as the maid came in to set up a stand for a tray of drinks.

  “After this, please try to have a closet or something in here with some liquor in it,” Hopkins said to her. “I like to mix my own drinks.”

  “All right,” Helen said. “Anna, please see about that in the morning.”

  “Yes, Madam,” the maid said, passed the drinks, and withdrew.

  “I don’t think you understand the situation,” Helen said. “Have you ever thought about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About Susan! About the problems she’s going to have.”

  “It doesn’t seem to me that she’s in very difficult circumstances,” Hopkins said dryly. “When I was her age . . .”

  “You haven’t thought about it, then,” Helen interrupted. “It’s time you did. What do you think is going to happen to her?”

  “Happen to her?” Hopkins said. “Nothing, I hope. I hope she marries and has a nice family.”

  “What chance do you think she has for that?”

  “Not bad, I’d say. She’s pretty, and she won’t be exactly a pauper.”

  “No, she won’t be a pauper,” Helen said. “I’m glad you’ve thought about it at least that much!”