by Emma Lathen
“Come in, come in!” he trumpeted.
His excessive cordiality almost backfired. The boozer, unused to enthusiastic welcomes, first shied nervously, then turned coquettish.
“Don’t want to butt in. I can always go someplace else. You two may want to be private,” he declared, waggling his head solemnly.
By now Sanders had his elbow in a firm clasp and was steering him to the bar.
“Standard Foods is always happy to see any visitor to the genetics meetings,” he said. “Have a drink.”
The drunk recognized power when it was in his hands. “Not that bottle.” He pointed an unsteady finger. “This one.”
Milton was forced to screw his head around and speak over his shoulder. “And what’s being done to solve our problems? Nothing, that’s what! I say it’s time we put some pressure on Wisconsin Seed. And considering that we’re faced with an emergency, I may be forced to take action myself.”
Clink! Clink! Clink! went the ice cubes, drowning him out.
Actually, Milton’s efforts had already begun. Later that morning Jason Ingersoll was telling Howard Pendleton about them.
“Honest to God, I don’t know what Milton thinks he’s doing. First he’s bird-dogging Earl Sanders. Now he’s trying to pump one of the girls from Wisconsin Seed.”
“Are you sure? I didn’t think Wenzel traveled with a lot of flunkies and . . .”
Pendleton broke off. “You don’t mean Barbara Gunn, do you?”
“Her name tag just said Wisconsin Seed.” “Timid-looking girl?” Pendleton pressed. “Very fair and slight?”
“That’s her all right,” Ingersoll confirmed. “Except when I saw her just now she wasn’t looking timid, she looked scared to death. Milton had her backed up against a wall.” “I didn’t think they knew each other. Is Milton running around threatening total strangers?”
Jason’s posture was that he and Howard Pendleton had been fellow sufferers under Milton. “You remember what he’s like. He probably saw the name of the company and went into action. But he wasn’t threatening her. The one phrase I overheard was: There could be a nice little present in this for you. Maybe he was trying to find out how she’s going to testify.”
Having trailed his lure, Jason sat back and waited for the fish to bite.
Pendleton stared at him, transfixed. “That’s even worse than I thought,” he said. “Do you realize he may not just be pumping her? He may be crazy enough to suggest perjury. To Barbara Gunn, of all people! She’d be horrified.” “She looked as if she was going to run to the first person she trusted and burst into tears,” Jason said bluntly.
“This is too much,” declared Pendleton, who was now angrily striding back and forth across the room. “I didn’t like it when I learned about the patent suit. I knew there were going to be plenty of unpleasant consequences. But at least I thought Vandam’s was united with me in a rational defense of our property. Instead, what happens? I get the top man in the country to testify for us, and your uncle Dick messes things up so much that I’m going to have to waste hours soothing Santanelli. And your cousin is running around trying to suborn witnesses who don’t know anything about genetics anyway. What’s more, he’s doing it where any passerby can overhear him. And God only knows what you’ve been up to.”
Jason shifted uneasily.
“I tell you I’m sick of all this,” Pendleton continued in more measured tones. “I’ve a good mind to go to Earl Sanders and tell him that unless Standard Foods takes over the defense, they can count me out.”
This was not the script Jason had planned. Pendleton was supposed to complain about Milton to Dick Vandam. He was not supposed to go haring off to Standard Foods with a denunciation of the entire Vandam family. Doggedly Jason tried to get them back on track.
“I realize you have every right to be upset,” he said earnestly. “Uncle Dick himself would be the first to regret having made things more awkward for you. But, if you’ll just talk this over with him, I’m sure you’ll find him helpful. He may even be able to muzzle Milton before any real damage is done. I’d give it a try myself, except that I’d probably just put Milton’s back up. Now Uncle Dick, he can handle Milton, and hopefully, he can do it before Wenzel’s lawyers start yelling about bribery. Because that’s what we’re all after, isn’t it?”
Howard Pendleton’s eyes narrowed appraisingly during this speech. When it was over he could not keep the contempt from his voice.
“Do you think I’m a fool? I know exactly what you’re after.”
Pendleton would have liked to warn his wife about the latest vagaries from Vandam’s, but her schedule at the meetings was even busier than his own. He did not see her until a sudden need for notes sent him back to his room at the Blackstone Hotel. As he impatiently waited for the up elevator, Fran emerged from a down car.
“Good,” he muttered, grabbing at her as she marched unseeingly past him. “Fran, we’ve got a real mess on our hands.”
“Not now, Howard,” she said tightly.
He recognized the symptoms. Fran was in the grip of her chronic speaker’s paralysis. She was an indefatigable researcher with a list of papers a mile long, but she dreaded mounting a platform and delivering them viva voce.
“This is important,” her husband insisted. “The Vandams are busy planting a lot of land mines that are going to explode in our faces.”
His urgency penetrated Fran’s fog. She blinked several times as she decompressed from a world of terrifyingly expectant listeners to a world of more variegated vistas and problems.
Unfortunately her emergent vision espied something that did not help.
“Look, there’s Barbara Gunn heading this way. Oh dear, I meant to call her as soon as we hit Chicago.”
Pendleton cursed softly under his breath. The last person he wanted to see at the moment was Barbara. Not without more information about Milton’s doings.
Meanwhile Barbara, forging toward the elevator, and Fran, battling away from it, had come face to face.
“Oh, Barbara,” Fran plunged ahead, “I’ve been hoping we can get together as soon as this wretched paper is out of the way. Of course the banquet is tonight, but tomorrow is an easy day. You could take a couple of hours off at lunchtime, couldn’t you, Howard? . . . Where has he gone? Oh, some people have nabbed him. . . . Well, never mind about Howard, Barbara, let’s make it certain for lunch.”
But Barbara was shrinking nervously away. “Oh, I don’t think so, Fran. I mean, Scott’s so busy, I can’t really make plans.”
Fran’s eyes widened. “He’s always busy at meetings. That’s never stopped you before.”
“Well, this convention isn’t like the others,” Barbara burst out. “It’s just awful the way everyone circles around you the minute they see the name tag, hoping for some inside dirt.”
The scant time that Fran could spare from her own activities had been devoted to sympathizing with Howard.
“Oh, come on, Barbara,” she scoffed. “Are you trying to tell me that Scotty is bothered by the notoriety he’s stirring up? He’s too thick-skinned for that.”
“I’m not talking about Scotty. I’m talking about me!”
Fran had spent too many years as a mother not to recognize a childlike wail of distress when she heard one.
“But, Barbara, this is between the two companies. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Oh, doesn’t it?” Barbara bit down on her underlip to control the perilous trembling of her mouth. It was a moment before she continued. “I have to give a deposition when the meetings are over. Then I’ll have to be a witness at the trial. And no matter what I say, I’m going to make out either Scotty or Howard to be a liar. Oh, Fran, I wish I could get away from it all.”
“Well, you can’t!” Fran had been startled enough by Barbara’s forecast to snap her reply. She was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, but honestly, I think you’re dwelling on this too much. Of course it’s awful for you to be caught in the mid
dle when they’re both your friends. But just forget about the implications and tell the truth. It’s that simple.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you were the one testifying!”
“But, Barbara—”
“I’m sorry, Fran, I can’t stay. I have to go.”
With each phrase Barbara had been edging farther away. Now she turned and bolted for the front doors.
Fran, left standing with her mouth open, looked first at the elevators, then at the doors. Finally she reached a bewildering conclusion.
“Why, she was running away. From me!”
By five o’clock that afternoon many of the chores scheduled for the Chicago meetings had been successfully completed. Both Scott Wenzel and Fran Pendleton had delivered papers. Fran’s had been a major contribution to the lore of floribunda, timed to remind the world that IPR had more than one iron in the fire. Scott’s had been a very small paper on a very small subject, designed to prove that he was not only a brilliant creative scientist, but also the kind of steady reliable man who cleans up loose ends as he goes along. The Vandams knew that the banquet had become a sellout attraction, largely because of interest in Mrs. Larrabee’s Firecracker. The roster of expert witnesses had been finalized without further incident.
But the parties to the Numero Uno controversy, instead of being soothed by a sense of achievement, now found themselves with sufficient leisure for internal bickering.
“So what, if everybody likes Firecracker?” Milton complained. “We’re not selling it yet.”
“We will be next year.”
“If you had taken the trouble to visit the flower show, Dick, you would have seen for yourself that the big crowds are around Old Nassau marigold and Aquarius snapdragon,” Milton continued nattering. “And they’re on sale right now by Burpee’s and Parke’s, our competition!”
Milton could maintain a high tide of indignation longer than anyone else he knew, Dick reflected. He sometimes envied Milton’s ex, who had left for the divorce court years ago.
“I’ll get around to the flower show,” he promised. “But it will still be here next week, and the equipment trade show won’t.”
He had simply provided fuel for the fire.
“At this crisis in the company’s history,” Milton said sternly, “I think you should be concentrating more on making money than on spending it.”
When Howard Pendleton finally found an opportunity to relay Jason’s information, Fran was more confused than ever.
“Of course I’m sorry that all this is landing on poor Barbara,” she said. “But that doesn’t explain why she should be frightened of me. I tell you, Howard, she lit out of there as if I were some kind of monster. She could barely bring herself to speak to me.”
“I’m glad.”
A dawning suspicion was confirmed for Fran.
“Why, Howard! You deliberately skipped out on me by the elevators,” she charged.
“I did,” he agreed forthrightly. “For God’s sake, Fran, use your head. If Milton has been bribing opposition witnesses, I don’t want to know about it.”
“Oh dear.” Then, ashamed of this inadequate response, Fran tried for a more helpful approach. “But you said Jason wasn’t sure. Maybe Milton just wanted to know how she would testify.”
Eric Most took up the task of convincing Fran there was no happy solution. “If Barbara Gunn has agreed to lie her head off for Wisconsin Seed, that’s why she doesn’t want to talk to anybody from our side.”
“I can’t believe it,” Fran protested. “In the first place, it’s just too terrible to contemplate. No matter what Scott himself may have done, it would be ten times worse if he involved Barbara in it.”
“That just means you don’t want to believe it,” Most pointed out. “It’s not proof Wenzel didn’t do it.”
Fran looked at her husband’s assistant with dislike. “In the second place,” she grated, “Scott is quite shrewd about people. I admit he could probably get Barbara to agree to anything, but what good would it do him? You’d have to be a fool not to realize she wouldn’t last two minutes under cross-examination.”
“Probably that’s why she’s falling apart,” said Most with every evidence of satisfaction. “The lawyers will have a field day with her.”
Fran glared at him. “That’s what you’d like, isn’t it? To have Scotty and Barbara torn apart in public?”
“They should have thought about that before they stole my research!”
Belligerence was yielding to distress. “There has to be some other explanation,” Fran insisted. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m beginning to think Barbara ran away because in another minute she would have broken down and told me everything.”
“Oh, God,” groaned Pendleton. “Stay away from her, Fran, I beg of you. Regardless of whether it’s Milton or Scott or even that Ackerman who’s bothering her, it’s going to be a professional disaster if she makes us her confidants. Let her tell the lawyers or the judge or some other intermediary.”
“You don’t really think Scott’s asking her to commit perjury, do you?” Fran asked wistfully.
She did not get the reassurance she hoped for.
“I don’t know what to think,” Pendleton said slowly.
As a matter of fact, almost everyone was bothering Barbara Gunn. Her first action on entering the Wisconsin Seed suite was to snatch off her name tag and hurl it into the wastebasket.
“I’m not wearing it anymore,” she announced to her two employers. “All it does is make me a walking target for every creep at this convention.”
Ned Ackerman was not surprised. “Look, Barbie, you’ve got to understand this is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened at these meetings. It’s only natural for some of them to want whatever tidbits they can pick up.”
“I’m not interested in understanding them,” she stormed. “I’m not going to put up with them.”
Wenzel took a different tack. “Why should you? Just tell them to buzz off,” he advised. “That’s what I do.”
“Oh, Scott!” she cried, suspended between rage at him and pity for herself. “It’s different for you. At least you know who’s who. I can’t run around insulting people and then discover they’re committee chairmen or corporation bigwigs.”
“And which bigwig would that be?” Ackerman asked.
Barbara looked as if she regretted her outburst. “It was one of the Vandams,” she said sullenly. “This one is called Milton. He came oiling up to me at the ticket table, and he was so filled with insinuations I couldn’t make out what he meant half the time.”
“Isn’t that wonderful!” marveled Ackerman. “And Dick Vandam just happened to bump into me at the equipment show. Went out of his way to be very, very polite.”
Wenzel had lost interest in Barbara’s plight. “Well, well,” he said softly. “All we need is for the preppy one to offer me a drink and we’ve got three of a kind. It’s plain enough what’s happening. The high and mighty Vandams are disassociating themselves from the mess. You know their latest amendment claims that all basic laboratory work was done in Puerto Rico, and there never was any research at Vandamia. I wonder how much they’re paying IPR to carry the can.”
“I thought our theory was that Jason gave the data to IPR, claiming it was a Vandam work product,” Ackerman reminded him.
“That’s probably the way it really happened. But once they found themselves in a real fight with real dirt flying, Vandam’s was willing to pay to get off the hook.”
Barbara sounded stony. “People don’t do everything just for money, Scott.”
“I’m not saying they do,” he replied. “And it wouldn’t be that crass. I can see Jason giving Pendleton a pitch about doing a small favor for an old friend, one that wouldn’t change the realities but would help the publicity. That’s the kind of talk Howard understands, he goes in for it himself all the time, the old windbag.”
“Maybe,” Ackerman said dubiously. “But if there was hanky-panky f
our or five years back, it wasn’t Jason. I’ve just remembered who Milton is. They eased him out of the company a while back, but he used to be in charge of R&D.” This was proof positive to Wenzel. “That’s why he’s chasing Barbara. Trying to find out how much we’ve got on him.”
Ackerman rubbed his grizzled head thoughtfully. “I’ll buy that one. But wouldn’t it be easier to fake data in a labyrinth like Vandamia?”
“Oh, no. Too many people running around. IPR would be ideal.”
They had come to the nub of Ackerman’s resistance. “I don’t know. That Mrs. Pendleton seemed like a nice lady to me.”
Wenzel stared at him, then smiled broadly. “For God’s sake, Fran is a sweetheart. But you could rob the U.S. Mint in front of her, in perfect safety.”
This was too much for Barbara. “Oh, come on, Scott. You’ve said yourself she’s a first-rate researcher. And God knows you don’t say that often.”
“That’s the whole point. Basically Fran is interested in floribunda and her grandchildren and nothing else.” He grinned challengingly at her. “Remember the housebreak?” Barbara produced a wan smile. “Oh, well,” she conceded.
Wenzel turned to Ackerman. “Howard and Fran were seeing some tulip growers in Holland, then Fran came back early because the grandson was sick. When Howard walked into the house, the first thing he did was ask when the burglary had happened. For three whole days Fran hadn’t noticed somebody had walked off with the television, the hi-fi, the microwave oven, and all the dining room silver.”
“Okay. You’ve proved your point. She’s not the noticing kind,” Ackerman acknowledged.
“Howard could fake up anything the way Vandam’s wanted it. For those purposes, Ned, he’s running a one- man show.” Wenzel was complacent. “Just the way I do at Wisconsin.”
Ackerman opened his mouth, then thought better of what he was about to say. Instead he turned the subject. “Well, this should be a wonderful banquet. I assume we’ll all be there, outdoing each other in friendliness.”
