Part 20 (1/2)
”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 fas.h.i.+onable diseases.