Cash McCall

by Cameron Hawley

  But it had worked!

  There had been only that one blank instant when Grant had stared at her with an unreadable expression on his face. Then, miracle of miracles, he had said, “I could use a cup of coffee.”

  Trembling, afraid that she might be pushing her luck too far, she had suggested, “Let’s have it upstairs, dear,” and he had answered, “Good idea,” and no words of love that he had ever said, or might have said but had not said, had been so full of meaning and promise.

  And the promise had been fulfilled.

  She could smile now at her bride panic in the kitchen, dropping a pan and spilling coffee, saying over and over again that watched water never boiled, so afraid that he would have fallen asleep before she could reach him that she had not dared turn back when, half up the stairs, she realized that she had forgotten the sugar.

  But Grant had not been asleep. He had been waiting for her in his dressing robe, sitting not on his bed but here on hers, his arms stopping her when she had said she had to go back for sugar, whispering something that brought back the giddy memory of that morning when they had been in New York for the N.A.M. convention and hadn’t answered the door for the room-service waiter returning with the spoons he had forgotten to bring with their breakfast. Grant, afterwards, seemingly famished, had eaten both dishes of strawberries with his fingers.

  But even that morning had been no morning like this morning!

  She lifted her head from the pillow, her senses responding to the wonder of the day. The soft wind that billowed the curtains was already day-warm, fragrant with the earth musk of spring, alive with the sound of birds exulting their happiness. She raised to her elbow and glanced at the clock, astounded to find that it was only a quarter to seven. How could she possibly be so completely awake? It had been two o’clock when they had finally turned out the lights. Even after that he had gone on talking to her … telling her everything … everything … what Mr. Conway had said, and what he had said, and what Mr. Conway had said, and what he had said … “It’s all wrapped up, Miriam. Everything will be settled in the morning.”

  “Then we’re really going to start living, you and I,” she had whispered.

  And he had made it so right for her to have said it. Last night everything she had done had been right. Before, so many times before, everything she had said had been so wrong.

  Life was strange. The years dragged by so unendurably as you lived through them, imagining that everything was so hopelessly lost. Yet all of that had been wiped away in an instant. They were young again … in love … yes, truly in love now.

  The bed was an impossible confinement of spirit and she slipped out of it, discovering that the nightgown she was wearing was not the one that she had expected but the one that Grant had found for her in the wrong drawer, the Alençon lace that she had never worn before. Bought and tried on in privacy, it had seemed too gross a bid for something that could only come unbidden … as it had come last night … and now would come again and again and again.

  Silently, slipping on a robe, rejecting mules because their clatter might make a sound that would awaken him, she found the clothes she would wear and tiptoed barefoot across the hall to the guest bathroom that she sometimes used as a cloistered escape, but never before this morning as the glass-glittering chrysalis out of which a new life would emerge.

  She made the shower cold and needle-sharp, wanting the body shock that would clear her mind, not trusting the bubbling of free emotion to carry her through the day, realizing the necessity of a tight control if she were to avoid committing some foolish little error that might destroy everything. Grant would awaken in a few minutes and then he would talk to her again. He would expect her to remember all the things he had told her last night, as Lory would have remembered if she had been the one he had told … all those things about what he had said and what Mr. Conway had said … the way he had changed things so that …

  The thoughts that were closest to the surface of her mind, like leaves floating on a pool, obscured the depths of memory. Brushed aside, they swirled back, letting her recall only scattered and disconnected words. But, suddenly, from the pool’s deepest depths she felt an uprising chill, colder than the shower, sharper than its needle-prick jets … Grant wasn’t selling Lory’s stock!

  Reacting to panic, she snapped off the shower, whipped a towel from the rack, drying and dressing without conscious guidance, her mind overwhelmed with sudden realization … oh, what a fool she had been not to realize before what Grant had meant. Not selling Lory’s stock was his trick to hold her … not to let her get away! She must not let that happen … Lory must go … leave them alone … alone as they had been alone last night …

  Her dress tangled at her throat, a hand in the wrong armhole, and she struggled impatiently against the frustration, fighting to bring her mind back to the confirming memory of what a changed person Lory had been this last week, so strong and sure of herself. It was Lory’s knowing that she was going to have her own money that made the difference … “Mother, it isn’t that I want to leave you and Dad, it’s just that I want the feeling of being independent. Try to understand that it isn’t because I don’t love you …”

  Miriam Austen nodded to the nodding image of her own face in the mirror. Of course she understood. Who could possibly understand more clearly? Lory was almost twenty-seven, the same age that she had been when she had married Grant. She had been lucky, Grant coming along when he had, but Lory was wise enough to know that you couldn’t count on that kind of luck, not at twenty-seven. Independence … yes, that was what her own father had tried to deny her, holding her money so that she could never break away from him … then almost destroying her marriage by refusing to let her give her money to Grant that time when he had needed it so badly … and now Grant was trying to do the same thing to Lory, bind her with the bondage of begging dependency, ruining her life …

  She had to stop him!

  But how?

  She dared not argue with him, not after last night. The first thin strand of their new happiness was too fragile to be risked. But the alternative was equally bad. If Lory didn’t get her own money, she wouldn’t leave them alone …

  There had to be some way!

  Crossing the hall, she cracked the door of their bedroom and looked in. Grant was still asleep and she tiptoed down the stairs, remembering that he had brought home the papers that had to be signed today. If she saw them, she might be able to understand what he was planning to do and perhaps, even now, find a way to prevent it.

  The briefcase lay on the library sofa where he had dropped it when she had suggested making coffee. Urged on by last night’s lesson that boldness was rewarded, she opened the case and, with ears alerted to any sound from the floor above, slipped out the thick packet of legal documents. Turning the pages as noiselessly as the crackling paper would permit, she began to read. Her experience in the business management of civic enterprises had given her a good layman’s knowledge of legal phraseology and she read with a confidence of understanding that hurried her on from form to form.

  She reached the last one—AGREEMENT OF SALE—stunned to find that she had been totally wrong. The agreement covered all the stock, every share of it. The amount that Lory was to receive was specified to the last penny—two hundred seven thousand, two hundred eleven dollars and twenty-two cents, doubly confirmed by the parenthetical reiteration ($207,211.22).

  Vertigo spun the whirl of her thoughts into a black storm and the cloud shadow that fell on her heart was more chilling than fear, an ice-edged accusation of disloyalty to her husband. Her mad suspicion had caused a shocking loss of faith and she cowered before the terrifying realization that she had proved herself unworthy of her husband’s love.

  Fighting against the delaying palsy of terror, she managed to get the legal forms back into the briefcase but, before she could close it, she heard Lory’s footsteps on the staircase. The snap of the latch was a crash in the silence of the room. There was th
e impulse to hide but she saw that it was too late. Lory had already made the turn at the bottom of the staircase and had seen her.

  Miriam Austen stepped to the doorway to face her daughter, her thoughts so dominated by self-recrimination that she half expected Lory to lash out with an accusation that she was guilty, not only of disloyalty to her husband but also of having wanted to drive her own daughter from this house.

  Amazingly, Lory seemed to sense nothing wrong, her voice gaily unsuspecting. “What are you doing up so early, Mother?”

  “Well, you’re up too,” she answered lamely.

  “But I’ve work to do and I was in bed early. You weren’t. What did you find out from Dad last night?”

  Miriam Austen felt herself making a too-vigorous attempt at nonchalance, speaking words that were mismatched with the uneasy tone that her lips gave them. “Oh, everything’s all right. Your father has it all worked out with the lawyers. I was sure that he would.”

  Lory nodded. “I could hardly imagine Mr. McCall welching.”

  “Mr. McCall?” she heard herself repeat, a moment needed before she could relax the rigidity of her mind to follow the change of subject. “Oh, he’s the man from the Gammer Corporation isn’t he—the man you met in Philadelphia?”

  “Yes, in Philadelphia,” Lory said casually, opening the wide door at the back of the center hall, letting in the brightness of the day. “I won’t bother with breakfast. If Anna has time, she can bring some coffee out to the studio after you and Dad have finished.”

  “Now, Lory—” she began, the protest stifled by her need to be alone with her guilt, then quickly reinstated by the counterpull of her persistent fear of loneliness. “Lory, you really shouldn’t go without breakfast, not when you’re working as hard as you are.”

  “All right. Call me when Dad gets down.”

  Before she could be stopped, Lory had gone out through the door and started down the flagstone walk to the studio. Miriam Austen stared after her, sick with the realization that her impulsive response had destroyed a chance to be alone with Grant at breakfast.

  “Lory!” she called, the word launched before she realized that it was too late to change anything now.

  Lory turned in silent inquiry, squinting against the sun.

  Forced to say something, Miriam Austen voiced the only thought that could be summoned. “You know, don’t you, that you’ll have to go downtown with your father sometime today? There are papers you’ll have to sign.”

  “Yes, I know,” Lory tossed back, walking on again.

  But there had been a momentary hesitation before she answered and that moment of silence seemed to Miriam Austen as the masking of something unsaid, an unspoken accusation that brought the rise of another fear, the most terrifying of all fears, not new but seldom before exposed to daylight, the nightmare horror that she was losing her sanity.

  2

  Grant Austen was awake when he heard Lory go down the stairs, aware that Miriam’s bed was empty, and since he had not looked at the clock he imagined that it was later than it was. His first impulse was to rise quickly but, recognizing it as only another of the habits to which he was no longer bound, he lay back and attempted to induce a pleasant awareness of his good fortune. Never again, as long as he lived, would he have to get out of bed until he was good and ready to get out of bed … nor do anything else that he didn’t want to do!

  The attempted generation of a sense of luxurious well-being was recognizably unsuccessful and he was forced to fall back upon a reiteration of what he had been telling himself all week … it was going to take a little time to adjust himself to this new life.

  Everything would have been different, he reasoned, if it all hadn’t happened so quickly. The sale of the company for two million dollars had been such an astounding accomplishment, so quickly realized, that there had been no chance for planning or preparation. He had never, until it was too late, actually faced the prospect of a life divorced from the Suffolk Moulding Company.

  Last Thursday, the morning after, driving to the office, he had even gone so far as to consider reneging on the deal, a possibility immediately discarded when he had thought of the necessity of facing Cash McCall, so obviously a gentleman, with the admission that he, Grant Austen, was any less a man of honor. The only thing that had sustained him had been the knowledge that Lory was pleased, and that even Miriam had been enthusiastic after she had finally realized what a good deal he had made. That support, however, had been challenged as he turned in at the factory gate, suddenly aware that he faced the necessity of offering some kind of explanation to his employees. The complete truth was plainly prohibited. It would never do to tell them that he had simply gotten out from under by snatching at a chance to grab a lot of money for himself. The ideal explanation, as he then realized, would have been an assurance that the Suffolk Moulding Company would now, under its new ownership, become an even better place to work than it had ever been before. That, too, was prohibited. In the first place, it couldn’t be true. In the second place—and this realization had come to him as something of a shock—he had no idea whatsoever of Cash McCall’s plans for the company.

  Crossing the areaway, walking toward the back door of the Administration Building, he had decided that the best solution was to say nothing at all. There was still a week before McCall took over. In the meantime, there was no need to say anything. By the end of the week he would know what McCall planned to do. Then he could make his announcement.

  Unfortunately, his decision to conceal what he had done had been almost immediately nullified by the crowd of men jammed into the little lobby outside his office, Gil Clark’s the only familiar face. There he had met Winston Conway, partner in the big Philadelphia law firm of Jamison, Conway & Slythe; and Vincent Thompson of Thompson & Slater, certified public accountants. Conway and Thompson had, in turn, introduced their assistants, nine men in all, a group so large that neither their presence nor purpose could be kept secret.

  The gossip had spread to the far ends of the plant with amazing speed, and then from the plant to the town. Within an hour, the Suffolk Tribune had called for the story. Coached by Conway, he had replied that there was nothing to be said at the moment but that a statement would be issued in due course. Conway had reminded him, after he hung up, that such a statement, when it was finally made, was not to include Cash McCall’s name but only that of the Gammer Corporation, the company to which the control of Suffolk Moulding was to be transferred. That, like so many of the things that came up afterwards, had made Grant Austen uncomfortably aware that the shock of Cash McCall’s unexpected snapping up of his first offer had so stunned him that he had not clearly heard everything that had been said.

  He had, for example, been only vaguely aware of some mention of lawyers and accountants, never anticipating any such searching investigation as Conway and Thompson proposed to direct. He had protested at first, only to be embarrassed by the lawyer’s explanation that it was all for his own benefit. The Gammer Corporation, Conway had explained, was buying the Suffolk stock at a price based upon the year-end balance sheet, and that the payment would be increased to reflect any gain in assets since the first of the year. There had been no choice except to direct that the accounting section be opened to Thompson and his men, that the display room be cleared as a working area for the lawyers, and that two adjoining offices be emptied to provide private headquarters for Winston Conway and Gil Clark.

  That first hour of frenzied activity had fully occupied Grant Austen’s mind but by eleven o’clock he was alone in his office. The pile of mail on his desk had lost all point and purpose. No one came in to see him. There were no telephone calls. For the first time in twenty years, he sat at his desk for a completely undisturbed hour. It was, up to that point, the longest hour in his life.

  When the noon whistle sounded, he had called Miss Berk and asked her to invite Winston Conway, Vincent Thompson and Gil Clark to lunch with him at the Suffolk Country Club. She came back with
the message that they had already sent out for sandwiches and coffee, her tone of voice giving him the impression—perhaps without justification—that she now regarded him as an interfering old man who had been guilty of an unwarranted intrusion upon the lives of actively important men. She did not, as had been unvarying custom, ask him if there was anything he wanted before she went out to lunch.

  Since lunching at the Country Club was in his mind, he had been tempted to follow through with the plan but, on second thought, had decided against it. It was one thing to take guests to the Country Club but something quite different to lunch there alone on a weekday. The only men who ever did that were old has-beens like Colonel Emil Graatz, Fred Crosby whose sons had eased him out of the feed business, and Arch Livermore who had been retired by the Pennsylvania Railroad.

  The alternative had been to follow his usual practice of lunching at the big round table at the Hotel Conomissing that was always reserved—except on Tuesdays when the Rotary Club met—for an informal gathering of the town’s upper-level male citizens. That, on second thought, had seemed more than ever the thing to do, promising a pleasant reassurance that selling Suffolk Moulding would not too greatly affect the normality of his life.

  He had failed, however, to anticipate that the news would be there ahead of him and, unnaturally, all conversation stopped as he approached the table, evidencing that he had been the subject of discussion. The embarrassing silence was finally broken by Don Mitchum blurting out, “Grant, anybody can say what they want to, but I think you’re just being smart as hell. I always have said that a man’s a plain damn fool not to retire while he’s still on his feet.”