FIVE HUNDRED MILLIONS IN BANK DEAL 3 страница
Dick froze in his chair. He could hear the voice at the other end of the line twanging excitedly. "Ed, don't you worry," J. W. was drawling. "You take a good rest, my boy, and be fresh as a daisy in the morning so that you can pick holes in the final draft that Miss Williams and I were working over all last night. A few changes occurred to me in the night. . . . You know sleep brings council. . . . How about a little handball this afternoon? A sweat's
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a great thing for a man, you know. If it wasn't so wet I'd be putting in eighteen holes of golf myself. All right, see you in the morning, Ed." J. W. put down the receiver. "Do you know, Dick," he said, "I think Ed Griscolm ought to take a couple of weeks off in Nassau or some place like that. He's losing his grip a little. . . . I think I'll sug- gest it to him. He's been a very valuable fellow in the office, you know."
"One of the brightest men in the publicrelations field," said Dick flatly. They went back to work.
Next morning Dick drove in with J. W. but stopped off on Fiftyseventh to run round to his mother's apartment on Fiftysixth to change his shirt. When he got to the office the switchboard operator in the lobby gave him a broad grin. Everything was humming with the Bingham account. In the vestibule he ran into the inevitable Miss Williams. Her sour lined oldmaidish face was twisted into a sugary smile. "Mr. Savage, Mr. Moorehouse says would you mind meeting him and Mr. Bingham at the Plaza at twelve thirty when he takes Mr. Bingham to lunch?"
He spent the morning on routine work. Round eleven Eveline Johnson called him up and said she wanted to see him. He said how about towards the end of the week. "But I'm right in the building," she said in a hurt voice. "Oh, come on up, but I'm pretty busy. . . . You know Mon- days."
Eveline had a look of strain in the bright hard light that poured in the window from the overcast sky. She had on a grey coat with a furcollar that looked a little shabby and a prickly grey straw hat that fitted her head tight and had a kind of a last year's look. The lines from the flanges of her nose to the ends of her mouth looked deeper and harder than ever. Dick got up and took both her hands. "Eveline, you look tired."
"I think I'm coming down with the grippe." She talked fast. "I just came in to see a friendly face. I have an ap-
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pointment to see J. W. at eleven fifteen. . . . Do you think he'll come across? If I can raise ten thousand the Shuberts will raise the rest. But it's got to be right away because somebody has some kind of an option on it that expires tomorrow. . . . Oh, I'm so sick of not doing any- thing. . . . Holden has wonderful ideas about the pro- duction and he's letting me do the sets and costumes . . . and if some Broadway producer does it he'll ruin it. . . . Dick, I know it's a great play."
Dick frowned. "This isn't such a very good time . . . we're all pretty preoccupied this morning."
"Well, I won't disturb you any more." They were standing in the window. "How can you stand those riveters going all the time?"
"Why, Eveline, those riveters are music to our ears, they make us sing like canaries in a thunderstorm. They mean business. . . . If J. W. takes my advice that's where we're going to have our new office."
"Well, goodby." She put her hand in its worn grey glove in his. "I know you'll put in a word for me. . . . You're the whitehaired boy around here."
She went out leaving a little frail familiar scent of co- logne and furs in the office. Dick walked up and down in front of his desk frowning. He suddenly felt nervous and jumpy. He decided he'd run out to get a breath of air and maybe a small drink before he went to lunch. "If anybody calls," he said to his secretary, "tell them to call me after three. I have an errand and then an appointment with Mr. Moorehouse."
In the elevator there was J. W. just going down in a new overcoat with a big furcollar and a new grey fedora. "Dick," he said, "if you're late at the Plaza I'll wring your neck. . . . You're slated for the blind bowboy."
"To shoot Bingham in the heart?" Dick's ears hummed as the elevator dropped.
J. W. nodded, smiling. "By the way, in strict confidence
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what do you think of Mrs. Johnson's project to put on a play? . . . Of course she's a very lovely woman. . . . She used to be a great friend of Eleanor's. . . . Dick, my boy, why don't you marry?"
"Who? Eveline? She's married already."
"I was thinking aloud, don't pay any attention to it." They came out of the elevator and walked across the Grand Central together in the swirl of the noontime crowd. The sun had come out and sent long slanting mote- filled rays across under the great blue ceiling overhead. "But what do you think of this play venture? You see I'm pretty well tied up in the market. . . . I suppose I could borrow the money at the bank."
"The theater's always risky," said Dick. "Eveline's a great girl and all that and full of talent but I don't know how much of a head she has for business. Putting on a play's a risky business."
"I like to help old friends out . . . but it occurred to me that if the Shuberts thought there was money in it they'd be putting it in themselves. . . . Of course Mrs. Johnson's very artistic."
"Of course," said Dick.
At twelve thirty he was waiting for J. W. in the lobby of the Plaza chewing sensen to take the smell of the three whiskeys he'd swallowed at Tony's on the way up off his breath. At twelve fortyfive he saw coming from the check- room J. W.'s large pearshaped figure with the paleblue eyes and the sleek strawgrey hair, and beside him a tall gaunt man with untidy white hair curling into ducktails over his ears. The minute they stepped into the lobby Dick began to hear a rasping opinionated boom from the tall man.
". . . never one of those who could hold my peace while injustice ruled in the marketplace. It has been a long struggle and one which from the vantage of those three- score and ten years that the prophets of old promised to
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man upon this earth I can admit to have been largely crowned with material and spiritual success. Perhaps it was my early training for the pulpit but I have always felt, and that feeling, Mr. Moorehouse, is not rare among the prominent businessmen in this country, that material suc- cess is not the only thing . . . there is the attainment of the spirit of service. That is why I say to you frankly that I have been grieved and wounded by this dark conspiracy. Who steals my purse steals trash but who would . . . what is it? . . . my memory's not what it was . . . my good name . . . Ah, yes, how do you do, Mr. Savage?"
Dick was surprised by the wrench the handshake gave his arm. He found himself standing in front of a gaunt loosejointed old man with a shock of white hair and a big prognathous skull from which the sunburned skin hung in folds like the jowls of a birddog. J. W. seemed small and meek beside him. "I'm very glad to meet you, sir," E. R. Bingham said. "I have often said to my girls that had I grown up in your generation I would have found happy and useful work in the field of publicrelations. But alas in my day the path was harder for a young man entering life with nothing but the excellent tradition of moral fervor and natural religion I absorbed if I may say so with my mother's milk. We had to put our shoulders to the wheel in those days' and it was the wheel of an old muddy wagon drawn by mules, not the wheel of a luxurious motorcar."
E. R. Bingham boomed his way into the diningroom. A covey of palefaced waiters gathered round, pulling out chairs, setting the table, bringing menucards. "Boy, it is no use handing me the bill of fare," E. R. Bingham addressed the headwaiter. "I live by nature's law. I eat only a few nuts and vegetables and drink raw milk. . . . Bring me some cooked spinach, a plate of grated carrots and a glass of unpasteurized milk. . . . As a result, gentlemen, when I went a few days ago to a great physician at the request of one of the great lifeinsurance companies in this city he was
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dumbfounded when he examined me. He could hardly be- lieve that I was not telling a whopper when I told him I was seventyone. 'Mr. Bingham,' he said, 'you have the magnificent physique of a healthy athlete of fortyfive' . . . Feel that, young man." E. R. Bingham flexed his arm under Dick's nose. Dick gave the muscle a prod with two fingers. "A sledgehammer," Dick said, nodding his head. E. R. Bingham was already talking again: "You see I prac- tice what I preach, Mr. Moorehouse . . . and I expect others to do the same. . . . I may add that in the entire list of remedies and proprietary medicines controlled by Bingham Products and the Rugged Health Corporation, there is not a single one that contains a mineral, a drug or any other harmful ingredient. I have sacrificed time and time again hundreds of thousands of dollars to strike from my list a concoction deemed injurious or habitforming by Dr. Gorman and the rest of the splendid men and women who make up our research department. Our medicines and our systems of diet and cure are nature's remedies, herbs and simples culled in the wilderness in the four corners of the globe according to the tradition of wise men and the findings of sound medical science."
"Would you have coffee now, Mr. Bingham, or later?"
"Coffee, sir, is a deadly poison, as are alcohol, tea and tobacco. If the shorthaired women and the longhaired men and the wildeyed cranks from the medical schools, who are trying to restrict the liberties of the American people to seek health and wellbeing, would restrict their activities to the elimination of these dangerous poisons that are sap- ping the virility of our young men and the fertility of our lovely American womanhood I would have no quarrel with them. In fact I would do everything I could to aid and abet them. Someday I shall put my entire fortune at the disposal of such a campaign. I know that the plain people of this country feel as I do because I'm one of them, born and raised on the farm of plain godfearing farming
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folk. The American people need to be protected from cranks."
"That, Mr. Bingham," said J. W., "will be the keynote of the campaign we have been outlining." The fingerbowls had arrived. "Well, Mr. Bingham," said J. W., getting to his feet, "this has been indeed a pleasure. I unfortunately shall have to leave you to go downtown to a rather im- portant directors' meeting but Mr. Savage here has every- thing right at his fingertips and can, I know, answer any further questions. I believe we are meeting with your sales department at five."
As soon as they were alone E. R. Bingham leaned over the table to Dick and said, "Young man, I very much need a little relaxation this afternoon. Perhaps you could come to some entertainment as my guest. . . . All work and no play . . . you know the adage. Chicago has always been my headquarters and whenever I've been in New York I've been too busy to get around. . . . Perhaps you could suggest some sort of show or musical extravaganza. I be- long to the plain people, let's go where the plain people go." Dick nodded understandingly. "Let's see, Monday afternoon . . . I'll have to call up the office. . . . There ought to be vaudeville. . . . I can't think of anything but a burlesque show." "That's the sort of thing, music and young women. . . . I have high regard for the human body. My daughters, thank God, are magnificent physical specimens. . . . The sight of beautiful female bodies is relaxing and soothing. Come along, you are my guest. It will help me to make up my mind about this matter. . . . Between you and me Mr. Moorehouse is a very extraor- dinary man. I think he can lend the necessary dignity. . . . But we must not forget that we are talking to the plain people."
"But the plain people aren't so plain as they were, Mr. Bingham. They like things a little ritzy now," said Dick, following E. R. Bingham's rapid stride to the checkroom.
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"I never wear hat or coat, only that muffler, young lady," E. R. Bingham was booming.
"Have you any children of your own, Mr. Savage?" asked E. R. Bingham when they were settled in the taxi- cab. "No, I'm not married at the moment," said Dick shakily, and lit himself a cigarette. "Will you forgive a man old enough to be your father for pointing something out to you?" E. R. Bingham took Dick's cigarette between two long knobbed fingers and dropped it out of the win- dow of the cab. "My friend, you are poisoning yourself with narcotics and destroying your virility. When I was around forty years old I was in the midst of a severe eco- nomic struggle. All my great organization was still in its infancy. I was a physical wreck. I was a slave to alcohol and tobacco. I had parted with my first wife and had I had a wife I wouldn't have been able to . . . behave with her as a man should. Well, one day I said to myself: ' Doc Bingham' -- my friends called me Doc in those days -- 'like Christian of old you are bound for the City of Destruction and when you're gone, you'll have neither chick nor child to drop a tear for you.' I began to interest myself in the proper culture of the body . . . my spirit I may say was already developed by familiarity with the classics in my youth and a memory that many have called prodigious. . . . The result has been success in every line of endeavor. . . . Someday you shall meet my family and see what sweetness and beauty there can be in a healthy American home."
E. R. Bingham was still talking when they went down the aisle to seats beside the gangplank at a burlesque show. Before he could say Jack Robinson, Dick found himself looking up a series of bare jiggling female legs spotted from an occasional vaccination. The band crashed and blared, the girls wiggled and sang and stripped in a smell of dust and armpits and powder and greasepaint in the glare of the moving spot that kept lighting up E. R. Bing-
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ham's white head. E. R. Bingham was particularly de- lighted when one of the girls stooped and cooed, "Why, look at Grandpa," and sang into his face and wiggled her geestring at him. E. R. Bingham nudged Dick and whis- pered, "Get her telephone number." After she'd moved on he kept exclaiming, "I feel like a boy again."
In the intermission Dick managed to call Miss Williams at the office and to tell her to suggest to people not to smoke at the conference. "Tell J. W. the old buzzard thinks cigarettes are coffinnails," he said. "Oh, Mr. Sav- age," said Miss Williams reprovingly. At five Dick tried to get him out but he insisted on staying till the end of the show. "They'll wait for me, don't worry," he said.
When they were back in a taxi on the way to the office E. R. Bingham chuckled. "By gad, I always enjoy a good legshow, the human form divine. . . . Perhaps we might, my friend, keep the story of our afternoon under our hats." He gave Dick's knee a tremendous slap. "It's great to play hookey."
At the conference Bingham Products signed on the dotted line. Mr. Bingham agreed to anything and paid no attention to what went on. Halfway through he said he was tired and was going home to bed and left yawning, leaving Mr. Goldmark and a representative of the J. Win- throp Hudson Company that did the advertising for Bing- ham Products to go over the details of the project. Dick couldn't help admiring the quiet domineering way J. W. had with them. After the conference Dick got drunk and tried to make a girl he knew in a taxicab but nothing came of it and he went home to the empty apartment feeling frightful.
The next morning Dick overslept. The telephone woke him. It was Miss Williams calling from the office. Would Mr. Savage get himself a bag packed and have it sent down to the station so as to be ready to accompany Mr. Moorehouse to Washington on the Congressional. "And,
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Mr. Savage," she added, "excuse me for saying so, but we all feel at the office that you were responsible for nailing the Bingham account. Mr. Moorehouse was saying you must have hypnotized them." "That's very nice of you, Miss Williams," said Dick in his sweetest voice.
Dick and J. W. took a drawingroom on the train. Miss Williams came too and they worked all the way down. Dick was crazy for a drink all afternoon, but he didn't dare take one, although he had a bottle of scotch in his bag, be- cause Miss Williams would be sure to spot him getting out the bottle and say something about it in that vague acid apologetic way she had, and he knew J. W. felt he drank too much. He felt so nervous he smoked cigarettes until his tongue began to dry up in his mouth and then took to chewing chiclets.
Dick kept J. W. busy with new slants until J. W. lay down to take a nap saying he felt a little seedy; then Dick took Miss Williams to the diner to have a cup of tea and told her funny stories that kept her in a gale. By the time they reached the smoky Baltimore tunnels he felt about ready for a padded cell. He'd have been telling people he was Napoleon before he got to Washington if he hadn't been able to get a good gulp of scotch while Miss Williams was in the ladies' room and J. W. was deep in a bundle of letters E. R. Bingham had given, him between Bingham Products and their Washington lobbyist Colonel Judson on the threat of pure food legislation.
When Dick finally escaped to his room in the corner suite J. W. always took at the Shoreham, he poured out a good drink to take quietly by himself, with soda and ice, while he prepared a comic telegram to send the girl he had a date for dinner with that night at the Colony Club. Held barely sipped the drink when the phone rang. It was E. R. Bingham's secretary calling up from the Willard to see if Dick would dine with Mr. and Mrs. Bingham and the Misses Bingham. "By all means go," said J. W. when
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Dick inquired if he'd need him. "First thing you know I'll be completing the transaction by marrying you off to one of the lovely Bingham girls."
The Bingham girls were three strapping young women named Hygeia, Althea and Myra, and Mrs. Bingham was a fat faded flatfaced blonde who wore round steel spec- tacles. The only one of the family who didn't wear glasses and have buckteeth was Myra who seemed to take more after her father. She certainly talked a blue streak. She was the youngest, too, and E. R. Bingham, who was striding around in oldfashioned carpetslippers with his shirt open at the neck and a piece of red flannel undershirt showing across his chest, introduced her as the artistic member of the family. She giggled a great deal about how she was going to New York to study painting. She told Dick he looked as if he had the artistic temperament.
They ate in some confusion because Mr. Bingham kept sending back the dishes, and flew into a towering passion because the cabbage was overcooked and the raw carrots weren't ripe and cursed and swore at the waiters and finally sent for the manager. About all they'd had was potatosoup and boiled onions sprinkled with hazelnuts and peanut- butter spread on wholewheat bread, all washed down with Coca-Cola, when two young men appeared with a micro- phone from N.B.C. for E. R. Bingham to broadcast his eighto'clock health talk. He was suddenly smiling and hearty again and Mrs. Bingham reappeared from the bed- room to which she'd retreated crying, with her hands over her ears not to hear the old man's foul language. She came back with her eyes red and a little bottle of smellingsalts in her hand, just in time to be chased out of the room again. E. R. Bingham roared that women distracted his attention from the mike, but he made Dick stay and listen to his broadcast on health and diet and exercise hints and to the announcement of the annual crosscountry hike from Washington to Louisville sponsored by Rugged Health,
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the Bingham Products houseorgan, which he was going to lead in person for the first three days, just to set the pace for the youngsters, he said.
After the broadcast Mrs. Bingham and the girls came in all rouged and powdered up wearing diamond earrings and pearl necklaces and chinchilla coats. They invited Dick and the radio young men to go to Keith's with them but Dick explained that he had work to do. Before Mrs. Bing- ham left she made Dick promise to come to visit them at. their home in Eureka. "You come and spend a month, young feller," boomed E. R. Bingham, interrupting her. "We'll make a man of you out there. The first week orangejuice and high irrigations, massage, rest. . . . After that we build you up with crackedwheat and plenty of milk and cream, a little boxing or trackwork, plenty of hiking out in the sun without a lot of stifling clothes on, and you'll. come back a man, nature's richest handiwork, the paragon of animals . . . you know the lines of the im- mortal bard . . . and you'll have forgotten all about that unhealthy New York life that's poisoning your system. You come out, young man. . . . Well, good night. By the time I've done my deep breathing it'll be my bedtime. When I'm in Washington I get up at six every morning and break the ice in the Basin. . . . How about coming down for a little dip tomorrow? Pathé Newsreel is going to be there. . . . It would be worth your while in your business." Dick excused himself hastily, saying, "Another time, Mr. Bingham."
At the Shoreham he found J. W. finishing dinner with Senator Planet and Colonel Judson, a smooth pink toad- faced man with a caressingly amiable manner. The senator got to his feet and squeezed Dick's hand warmly. "Why, boy, we expected to see you come back wearin' a tigerskin. . . . Did the old boy show you his chestexpansion?" J. W. was frowning. "Not this time, senator," said Dick quietly.
"But, senator," J. W. said with some impatience, evi-
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dently picking up a speech where it had been broken off, "it's the principle of the thing. Once government inter- ference in business is established as a precedent it means the end of liberty and private initiative in this country." "It means the beginning of red Russian bolshevistic tyr- anny," added Colonel Judson with angry emphasis. Sena- tor Planet laughed. "Aren't those rather harsh words, Joel?""What this bill purports to do is to take the right of selfmedication from the American people. A set of lazy government employees and remittancemen will be able to tell you what laxative you may take and what not. Like all such things, it'll be in the hands of cranks and busybodies. Surely the American people have the right to choose what products they want to buy. It's an insult to the intelligence of our citizens."
The senator tipped up an afterdinner coffeecup to get the last dregs of it. Dick noticed that they were drinking brandy out of big balloonglasses. "Well," said the senator slowly, "what you say may be true but the bill has a good deal of popular support and you gentlemen mustn't forget that I am not entirely a free agent in this matter. I have to consult the wishes of my constituents . . ." "As I look at it," interrupted Colonel Judson, "all these socalled pure food and' drug bills are class legislation in favor of the medical profession. Naturally the doctors want us to con- sult them before we buy a toothbrush or a package of licorice powder." J. W. picked up where he left off: "The tendency of the growth of scientificallyprepared proprie- tary medicine has been to make the layman free and self- sufficient, able to treat many minor ills without consulting a physician." The senator finished his brandy without an- swering.
"Bowie," said Colonel Judson, reaching for the bottle and pouring out some more. "You know as well as I do that the plain people of your state don't want their free- dom of choice curtailed by any Washington snoopers and
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busybodies. . . . And we've got the money and the or- ganization to be of great assistance in your campaign. Mr. Moorehouse is about to launch one of the biggest educa- tional drives the country has ever seen to let the people know the truth about proprietary medicines, both in the metropolitan and the rural districts. He will roll up a great tidal wave of opinion that Congress will have to pay at- tention to. I've seen him do it before."
"Excellent brandy," said the senator. "Fine Armagnac has been my favorite for years." He cleared his throat and took a cigar from a box in the middle of the table and lit it in a leisurely fashion. "I've been much criticized of late, by irresponsible people of course, for what they term my reactionary association with big business. You know the demagogic appeal."
"It is particularly at a time like this that an intelligently- run organization can be of most use to a man in public life," said Colonel Judson earnestly. Senator Planet's black eyes twinkled and he passed a hand over the patch of spiky black hair that had fallen over his low forehead, leaving a segment of the top of his head bald. "I guess it comes down to how much assistance will be forthcoming," he said, getting to his feet. "The parallelogram of forces."
The other men got to their feet too. The senator flicked the ash from his cigar. "The force of public opinion, sena- tor," said J. W. portentously. "That is what we have to offer.""Well, Mr. Moorehouse, you must excuse me, I have some speeches to prepare. . . . This has been most delightful. . . . Dick, you must come to dinner while you're in Washington. We've been missing you at our lit- tle dinners. . . . Goodnight, Joel, see you tomorrow." J. W.'s valet was holding the senator's furlined overcoat for him. "Mr. Bingham," said J. W., "is a very public- spirited man, senator, he's willing to spend a very consid- erable sum of money." "He'll have to," said the senator.
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