Austen seemed not to have heard the question and the lawyer repeated it.
“No,” Austen finally said.
“Did you see Mr. McCall again?”
“Not until the settlement.”
“That was—?”
“Wednesday. Day before yesterday.”
“But in the meantime, I believe you said a gang of McCall’s henchmen had moved into your plant?”
“Yes—Conway and this fellow Thompson and a lot of accountants—and Gil Clark, of course.”
“Was all that with your permission?”
“The deal was made on the year-end balance sheet and I was supposed to get an extra payment for anything over that.”
“And did you?”
“It didn’t amount to anything—twenty thousand.”
“Very clever of McCall,” Torrant observed. “If he hadn’t found what he wanted, he could have welched on the deal. Tell me, Mr. Austen, who was your legal counsel on all of this?”
Austen’s embarrassment was plainly evident. “I know now that was a mistake—but the lawyer I’d had was just one of our Suffolk men and—well, to be frank about it, Judge, that day I met you in The Wharf I was wishing I had someone like you to represent me. I’m sorry now that I didn’t talk to you then.”
“Yes, it might have helped,” Torrant said as a side comment. “But that’s water over the dam now.”
“I thought about it again afterwards when all the tax questions started coming,” Austen went on. “But Mr. Conway kept making suggestions—”
Torrant snapped him up. “Conway? Do you mean that Winston Conway was advising you?”
Austen nodded but as if he wasn’t certain what the admission meant. “Sure, I—well, he did have some ideas on how I could cut down the tax I’d have to pay. I guess that wasn’t the right thing to do, was it?”
“Not for Winston Conway,” Torrant said, scribbling a long note. This was a break he had not expected … catching Conway off base on a clear violation of the professional code. But there was no point in explaining that to Austen now … he was jittery enough as it was.
The lawyer finished his note and asked, “What was Mr. Clark doing during this period between the agreement to sell and the final settlement?”
“Didn’t I tell you that?” Austen asked, surprised. “He took over the plant.”
“Took it over?”
“Sure. McCall made him the plant manager right away. The next morning Gil was there ready to take charge.”
Torrant nodded incredulously. McCall was really brazen … one day he had Clark set up as Austen’s supposedly confidential adviser, the next day he pushed him out in the open and admitted that he was one of his gang.
Hurriedly filling the moment of silence, Torrant asked another question. “Now about this man Bronson?”
“Bronson?” Austen asked blankly.
“Perhaps I have the name wrong,” Torrant said, searching out the sheet of notes he had made during his conversation with Maude Kennard. “Didn’t you have a man named Bronson working for you?”
“Yes—Paul Bronson. He was my—I guess you’d call him my first assistant.”
“Which would mean, I presume, that he would have access to confidential information about your business?”
“Sure—everything. Why?”
“Do you know where Mr. Bronson was on—” Torrant hesitated, running his fingers down the Kennard notes—“on this same day you made your deal with Cash McCall?”
“Well I suppose he was—” Austen stopped. “No, I remember now, he’d asked to have the day off.”
“Would it surprise you to know that he spent that day at the Andscott Instrument Corporation?”
Austen seemed to be attempting to hide his reaction. “Well, he handled the Andscott account. He was down there quite a lot.”
“But he wouldn’t be calling on them on his day off, would he? And if he were calling on Andscott as your representative would he have been talking to General Danvers?”
The glassy stare was back in Austen’s eyes and Torrant debated whether or not to follow up General Danvers’ accusation that Bronson had been a McCall spy. He finally decided that the best course would be to first attempt to smoke out Bronson’s status in the Suffolk Moulding organization. “Mr. Austen, let me ask you this question—how good a man was Mr. Bronson from your point of view? Did you feel that he was completely loyal and trustworthy?”
“No, I—” Austen’s eyes dropped and he seemed lost in thought. “I don’t know how to put it, but I never did feel—well, to be honest about it, I never felt that Paul Bronson was a real company man. I mean he always seemed to be out for himself.”
“Or someone else?” Torrant cautiously suggested.
“You don’t mean—?” Austen’s lips went slack.
“I don’t know what it means,” Torrant said. “It may mean nothing. On the other hand, I do know that he has been accused by at least one man—and a rather reputable one, I’d say—of being a McCall spy.”
“Good god!” Austen exclaimed. “I knew it was bad, but not this bad! And I’d trusted him all of these years.” His head suddenly jerked up. “You said you didn’t know whether I had a case or not. Can’t you say now that I do?”
Torrant found himself stopped by professional caution. “I’ll have to give all of this some careful study, Mr. Austen. If I were to undertake to represent you in this matter—”
“You’ve got to, Judge! Who else can I trust?”
The lawyer found himself wavering. “Conspiracy is a very difficult thing to prove. If I were to—but tell me, Mr. Austen, what is it that you want? That’s an important consideration.”
Austen seemed not to understand.
“Do you want your company back?” Torrant explained. “Do you want this extra million dollars? What would you expect me to do for you if I should take the case?”
“All I want is to get those crooks,” Austen said, his voice cracking. “I want them to know they can’t get away with it!”
“It might be a long hard fight,” Torrant cautioned.
“I don’t care about that!”
For an instant, Clay Torrant was tempted to say, right then and there, that he’d take the case. But that was never a wise thing to do. “How long will you be in town, Mr. Austen?”
“I don’t know,” Austen said, a peculiar waver in his voice. “I’ve got to see Lory—tell her—but if you want me to stay here in town—”
“You were planning to go back to Suffolk? Well, that isn’t so far away. Suppose I give this some hard study overnight and call you the first thing in the morning.”
“You aren’t thinking of not helping me, are you, Judge?” Austen pleaded. “If it’s a question of money, don’t worry about that. I’ve got plenty.”
“No, it isn’t a question of money,” Torrant said slowly.
“Judge, there’s got to be someone a man can turn to—someone that isn’t in that gang of crooks. There’s no reason why you can’t take the case, is there?”
Clay Torrant’s mind, suddenly reacting to Austen’s strangely accusing stare, remembered that it was Will Atherson who had introduced them that day at The Wharf. Was Austen suggesting that if he didn’t take the case it might prove that he was an Atherson stooge … that he, too, might be a member of the McCall gang?
“No, Mr. Austen, there’s no reason why I can’t represent you,” Clay Torrant said, sternly calm. “I’ll call you in the morning and give you my final decision.”
6
Gil Clark had decided to spend the day at the Suffolk Moulding Company. Still unable to get Cash McCall on the telephone, and finding that there was nothing helpful that he could do at Jamison, Conway & Slythe, he had driven to Suffolk after leaving a note at the Ivanhoe for Cash and telling Winston Conway where he could be reached.
He had felt mildly conscience-stricken for not having called Paul Bronson yesterday to explain his sudden disappearance and, on the way to his Suffolk Mould
ing Company office, he had rehearsed an explanation that would be honest, plausible, and yet not too revealing.
No explanation had been necessary. Bronson immediately exploded, “Thank god, you’re here, Gil,” and confronted him with three situations requiring immediate action: (1) the re-use cartons in which the Y4B Andscott Recorder cabinets were shipped had come through from the boxmaker without the padding strips and production was piling up in Shipping; (2) a knock-out pin had somehow gotten loose and wrecked two of the four cavities in the Iona-Graf mold, making scheduled delivery impossible; (3) a press operator named Furgoltz, who had eighteen years of company service and a wife and six children, had been caught rifling lockers in the plant wash-up room.
The air of crisis with which Bronson endowed each situation was justified—all were important to the company—but as Gil Clark maneuvered his way toward the best handling of each problem, he was haunted by the memory of Winston Conway’s prediction that, after yesterday, running the Suffolk Moulding Company would not seem such an enticing prospect. It was not. And when Andscott’s purchasing department called to register a vehement complaint about a shipment of styrene dials being off-shade, it was difficult to generate an appropriate feeling of serious emergency.
By good fortune, Paul Bronson was forced to leave at twelve o’clock to attend a Chamber of Commerce committee meeting, giving Gil a free noon hour to devote to an attempt to draft an organization chart for the operation of the Suffolk Moulding Company as a division of the Andscott Instrument Corporation. His prime difficulty was that he found himself an odd piece that he didn’t know how to fit into the puzzle. Cash had indicated that he wouldn’t be coming back to Suffolk, but there had been nothing definite about it.
At one o’clock he left for lunch, driving downtown to eat at the hotel and then, afterwards, went up to his room to change from the rumpled suit that he had worn since yesterday morning. He was pulling out of the hotel parking lot, turning west, when he heard the roar of a plane overhead, the unmistakable pulsing whine of a B-26. With his vision blocked by the car top, he didn’t actually see the plane itself but there was no question that it was Cash McCall’s.
Decisively, he made a right turn to avoid the slow-moving traffic on King, crossed Jefferson and State, swung left and picked up Boulevard Drive and then Airport Road. He assumed that Cash McCall wanted to see him and hoped that he could reach the airport before Cash could get a cab for the trip into town.
No taxicabs passed him on Airport Road and he felt the satisfaction of success until, turning into the lane that led to the hangar, he was aware that the B-26 was not on the apron. For a moment he feared that the plane had not landed, or had already taken off, but then he saw it far out at the end of the runway, standing where it had rolled to a stop after its landing, a whole field’s length away from the hangar.
Gil parked against the fence and, noticing that the watchman’s eyes were also on the plane, called out, “Anything wrong out there?”
“Don’t know,” the old man speculated. “Trying to figure it out myself. He’s been sitting out there for quite a while now.”
But the words were no more than spoken when the airplane turned and the roar of its speeded motors was heard as it taxied toward them.
Waiting with the car door open, watching the windshield of the airplane’s cockpit for the first glimpse of Cash McCall, Gil was startled to see a girl’s face. The motors cut off as the plane lumbered to a stop, broadside to the gate, porthole matched to porthole so that Gil could see through the cabin. As he watched, he saw the passage of two figures down the aisle, but so close together that they seemed almost one, and there was a long wait before the cabin door opened. The girl who came down the steps was Lory Austen.
Gil felt the subconscious accusation of being a Peeping Tom and shrank back into his car.
Lory’s voice drifted toward him, calling up to Cash who still stood at the head of the steps, “I’ll be waiting.” Then she turned and came toward the gate, half running, and for an instant Gil was sure that she would see him. But she ran to the right and he saw then, as he had not noticed before, that the Austen’s blue Cadillac was parked on the other side of the gate.
The big car backed and turned and Gil struggled with the decision of whether or not to reveal his presence to Cash. The weight of his own desire finally forced him to jump out and call.
Cash saw him as the steps were coming up and, as the door opened again, his smile of greeting erased any doubt as to the warmth of his welcome.
“I was just thinking about you,” Cash said as Gil came to the bottom of the steps. “Wondered if you might be here in Suffolk.”
“I heard you landing,” Gil explained. “Thought I might give you a lift if you were coming out to the plant.”
Cash shook his head. “No, but come aboard. I want to talk to you.”
“I thought I’d better get out here to Suffolk and square things away,” Gil felt it necessary to explain as he reached the cabin. “I don’t know what you’ll want to do as far as organization is concerned, but—”
“Look, Gil,” Cash interrupted. “Ride along down to Philly with me. Give us a chance to talk.” He saw Gil’s glance toward the gate and quickly added, “You can pick up your car this afternoon. I’m coming back at six for Lory. How did everything go last night?”
Standing in the middle of the cabin, Gil offered a quick report on his successful meeting with General Danvers, then a summary of what had happened at Jamison, Conway & Slythe.
“No foul-ups anywhere?” Cash asked.
“Not a one,” Gil said. “Conway says he’s never seen a deal knit together so beautifully, no loose ends anywhere.”
“That’s the way I want it to be,” Cash said. “Don’t want to go off and leave you with any headaches.”
“Go off?”
“I’m getting away for a month or so,” Cash said, attempting a flat statement, but there was a hint of excited anticipation in his voice, more than a hint in the crinkling smile that he was only half successful in hiding. He turned up the aisle, “Come on, let’s get this ship in the air. John Allenby is meeting us at the hotel. I want to get you two together.”
No clairvoyance was required to know that Cash McCall’s mind was on Lory Austen and, for a moment or two, Gil Clark shared his preoccupation, but his interest in someone else’s love affair was quickly submerged by the exciting experience of being back in the cockpit of an airplane again. The roar of the motors uncovered a thousand memories, all closer to the surface than he had ever suspected they were, the muscles of his body still responding to the old reflexes as the plane hurtled down the runway. Seemingly, it was the pull of his own hands that lifted them into the air.
Cash motioned to the headset and Gil slipped it over his ears, hearing the code beat of a range beacon as the plane leveled off on its easterly course, then Cash’s voice saying, “It’s all yours, Gil.”
He hesitated for only a startled instant and then his hands reached out, tentative until he rediscovered that oneness of man and machine that he had first miraculously experienced on that day at flight school when old “Pappy” White, his instructor, had said, “You either get it or you don’t get it—and once you got it, you got it for good.”
For a long time, Gil Clark’s mind was closed by the demanded concentration of holding the airplane in level flight, a shell of abstraction finally broken by the strangely incongruous thought that he had been right about that drawing of Lory Austen’s that he had seen on the wall of Cash McCall’s suite.
The plane yawed off course and he said, apologetically, “I’m a little rusty.”
There was no answer and he glanced left. Apparently Cash had not noticed.
7
Clay Torrant had gone to his library immediately after finishing the dictation of his notes on the interview with Grant Austen. Miss Fitch had twice tried to dislodge him, but he had successfully resisted both attempts, even ignoring the sandwich and bottle of milk that she
had finally brought to him.
Driven by an energy that was like a resurgence of youth, he roamed the room and snatched books from the shelves as leading topics popped into his mind from pigeonholes so long unused that, if he had stopped to think about it, he would have been astounded at the suddenly restored efficacy of his memory. He compiled a page-long list of cited cases and heaped the table with volumes of law reports. Most of the references proved barren but that did not, as it had in the work he had done before Austen’s arrival, cause discouragement. He found nothing that promised to ease the burden of proving conspiracy, but his reverent respect for the Law gave him the courage to drive on, sure in his belief that sooner or later his faith would be rewarded by a revelation of the path to Justice.
And then it happened, the sudden flash of light, … he didn’t have to prove conspiracy! There was an easier way than that … forget conspiracy and shift the charge to fraud … deceit … breach of confidential relationship!
Suddenly, it was simple. One tight case was all he needed. But who should he move against? Obviously, one of the two conspirators with whom Austen had been in direct contact. But which one … Atherson or Clark?
Reluctantly, he let Atherson slip through his fingers. Clark was the ideal defendant, no doubt about it. Clark was wide open. He was the one who had perpetrated the fraud … appraising Suffolk Moulding at two million when it was worth three … talking Austen into selling … then leading him to McCall … deceiving him into the belief that there were competing prospects for the purchase of the company. It was all there … fraudulent utterance … inducement to act … justifiable reliance by the recipient. There was even a provable compensation … Clark had gotten his high-salaried job as the head of Suffolk Moulding as his cut in the pay-off!
Flipping back the uncounted sheets of yellow notepaper that had piled up behind his tablet, he found the reference that he was looking for: POMEROY CITED—FRASEK FUND v. FRASER 350 Pa. 553, 566
Cash McCall Page 52
