Point of No Return (5 page)

If you were successful at the Stuyvesant you ended by developing a priestly, untouchable, ascetic attitude. You learned to think of your own financial life and your own problems as something apart from those other financial complications. If you did well enough to become an executive in the Stuyvesant, and this required a long time and an arduous apprenticeship, you found yourself solving the problems of individuals who had difficulty living within incomes approaching a hundred thousand dollars a year. You found yourself spending the working day discussing the investment of huge sums of money, only to get home yourself and to worry because the butcher's bill had risen some twenty dollars above the previous one. You had to debate the purchase or the sale of controls in business enterprises and then return home yourself to decide whether or not you could afford to buy a motor lawn mower, or a ready-made or a tailor-made suit. In time this gave you a split personality since you had to toss your own problems completely aside and never allow them to mingle in any way with those of clients and depositors when you reached your desk at the Stuyvesant. At your desk you had to be a friend and confidant, as professional as a doctor or a lawyer, ready and with an intelligent perspective for almost anything. Anthony Burton had once said that this attitude was one's responsibility toward society. Though personally Charles had never felt like a social worker, he felt this responsibility. He was already forgetting Nancy and the children, already assuming his business character, when he said good morning to Gus, the doorman on the sidewalk outside the Stuyvesant.

“Is it wet enough for you, Mr. Gray?” Gus asked.

“It has to rain sometime,” Charles said. “Are you a grandfather yet?”

“No, not yet,” Gus said, “but any minute now.”

Then Charles said good morning to Joe inside the door. The bank was scrupulously neat and cleared for action. He could hear the click of the adding machines in back and he could see the new pens and blotters on the depositors' tables as he walked past the tellers behind their gilded wickets and turned to the right past the foreign department to the coat-room. When he had hung up his coat and hat, he looked at himself in the mirror. Though his herringbone suit was a little tight, it was adequate, and he automatically straightened the coat and adjusted his tie. His slightly freckled face was moist from the rain and his sandy hair, though it was carefully trimmed, needed brushing, so he went to the washroom. He had learned long ago that you did not neglect exterior details when you sat out near the vice-presidents' desks by the front window.

Though you seldom talked of salaries at the Stuyvesant, your social status was obvious from the position of your desk. Charles occupied one of the two flat mahogany desks that stood in a sort of no man's land between the roll-top desks of the officers and the smaller flat-tops of lesser executives and secretaries crowding the floor of the bank outside the cages. A green rug extended from the officers' desks, forming a neat and restricted zone that just included Charles's desk and the one beside it which was occupied by Roger Blakesley. Charles could see both their names, Mr. Blakesley and Mr. Gray, in silver letters, and he was pleased to see that he had got there first from the eight-thirty, a minute or two ahead of Roger and Mr. Burton and ahead of everyone else near the windows.

Mr. Burton's desk, which had the best light, was opened already and so was that of Mr. Stephen Merry, the oldest vice-president, and so were all the others except one. This was the desk of Arthur Slade, the youngest vicepresident of the Stuyvesant, who had died in a plane accident when returning from the West Coast six months before. The closed desk still gave Charles a curious feeling of incompleteness and a mixed sense of personal gain and loss because he had been more friendly with Arthur Slade than with anyone else in the Stuyvesant—but then you had to die sometime. Once Arthur Slade had sat at Charles's own place but that was before Mr. Walter Harry, who had been president when Charles had first come to the bank, had died of an embolism and everyone had moved like players on bases—Burton to Harry, Merry to Burton, Slade to the vacant roll-top—and so on down to Charles himself. The Stuyvesant was decorously accustomed to accident and death and now it was moving time again and it was so plain where one of two persons might be moving next that it was embarrassing. Any observing depositor and certainly everyone employed in the bank, right up to the third floor, must have known that either Mr. Blakesley or Mr. Gray would move to Arthur Slade's desk by the window. Undoubtedly they were making side bets out in back as Charles used to himself when he had first come there from Boston. Undoubtedly the clerks and the secretaries and the watchmen had started some sort of pool.

Charles pulled back his mahogany chair and sat down, glancing coolly at all the desks in front of him. Miss Marble, his secretary, had already arranged his engagement pad and now she was standing beside him with his morning mail. She reminded him of Nancy as Nancy had looked when he had first known her—a front-office girl, an executive's private secretary, as neat as a trained nurse, whose private life, like his own, was temporarily erased. In spite of that crowded room, for a few hours he and Miss Marble would be almost alone, dependent on each other in a strange, impersonal, but also an intimate relationship. As soon as he said good morning to Miss Marble, his whole mind set itself into a brisk, efficient pattern.

“There's nothing on your calendar,” Miss Marble said, “before the meeting, but Mrs. Whitaker has just called you.”

“You mean she's called this morning already?” Charles asked.

“Well, not Mrs. Whitaker,” Miss Marble said, and she smiled sympathetically. “Her companion called. Mrs. Whitaker's very anxious to speak with you.”

“All right,” Charles said. “Get her for me in five minutes,” and he picked up the letters.

Then Roger Blakesley and Anthony Burton came in from the coatroom and Charles nodded at them and smiled. Roger walked to his own desk at once and Miss Fallon, his secretary, was there, but Anthony Burton stopped for a moment. As he did so, it seemed to Charles that the whole bank was watching them and Mr. Burton must have been aware of this too, but he was more used than Charles to being watched. He stood straight, white-headed and smiling, dressed in a pearl-gray double-breasted suit with an expansive, heavy, gray checked necktie. He had that air of measured deliberation which eventually always covered the features and the postures of bank officers and corporation lawyers. He was slender and athletic, almost young-looking considering that he was close to sixty-five, though Charles could never think of him as having been a young man. Charles always thought of him as unchanging, a measured, deliberate, constant quantity, like a Greek letter in a mathematical formula.

“I didn't see you on the train,” Mr. Burton said.

Charles glanced at Roger Blakesley's desk. It was an opportunity but it was also a time to be careful.

“I didn't see you either,” Charles said. “Mrs. Whitaker is after me.”

It was better to do it that way. It did no harm to have him know about Mrs. Whitaker.

“Well, as long as she's after you and not me,” Mr. Burton said. “We'll see you at dinner Friday, won't we?”

“You can count on it,” Charles said. “Absolutely,” and he laughed and Anthony Burton laughed.

“Yes,” Mr. Burton said, “I suppose we can, Charley. How are Nancy and the children?”

“They're wonderful,” Charles said. “They keep me out of trouble.”

“Nancy's a great girl,” Mr. Burton said. “You boys are getting together at eleven, aren't you? I'll be there.”

He smiled and nodded and walked over to his desk in the corner.

Charles could not help but wonder whether Mr. Burton had weighed every word of that conversation as carefully as he had. For a second he wondered whether there might be some implication between the lines, but he could not think of any. It had simply been a bland routine conversation, friendly and nothing more. It could not very well have been anything else with Roger's desk right beside his own.

“Mrs. Whitaker's on the telephone now,” Miss Marble said, and Charles picked up the desk telephone, speaking softly as one always did in the bank.

“Good morning, Mrs. Whitaker. This is Mr. Gray.”

He could recognize a particular tone in her voice. It was the gracious, informal tone that she was in the habit of using when she wanted to make a pleasant impression on people who handled her affairs. It kept one at arm's length, though at the same time giving a pretty little picture of her capacities for universal understanding, democracy, and kindliness.

“Oh, Mr. Gray,” he heard her say, “it's so nice to hear your voice.”

It was difficult for Charles to respond properly to this remark because he was not at all glad to hear Mrs. Whitaker's and he had heard it a great deal lately, yet he had learned long ago never to be brief with a large depositor, particularly when the Chase, the Guaranty, and the National City were all making overtures for the Whitaker account.

“You sound well and happy, Mrs. Whitaker,” Charles said.

Occasionally he was astonished at his own adaptability. He never sounded like himself when he spoke in those hushed tones at his desk. He sounded instead like a doctor or a diplomat, and now he was also a loyal friend of the Whitaker family, who could allow himself the least bit of jovial familiarity.

“Hewett and I are so dreadfully worried, Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “That's why it's so nice to hear your voice.”

He could not tell whether it was a further act of graciousness or a lapse of memory that made her refer to Mr. Whitaker as Hewett and he could not recall that she had ever done such a thing before.

“Why, I'm sorry,” Charles said. “What have you to be worried about?”

That was it. What did she have to be worried about?

“We have to sell something, Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “We have to sell something right away. We literally haven't got a cent of money.”

At least he was able to smile since Mrs. Whitaker was not there and the strange thing about it was that her tone of desperation was completely genuine, as genuine as though she had to sell some piece of furniture to pay the grocer. One part of him could smile but another part was honestly sympathetic. This was one of the things that the bank had taught him.

“Oh,” Charles said, and he was about to add that he was sorry, but he checked himself because he had learned that it made depositors angry if you became too actively sorry.

“And we simply don't know what to sell,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “We've been going over it and over it.”

“I know,” Charles said. “It's always difficult to make up one's mind.”

“We would like to sell something that has a loss to it,” Mrs. Whitaker said, “but there literally isn't anything. Everything shows a profit. Why don't you ever leave us anything with losses?”

Charles drummed his fingers softly on the desk and raised his eyes to the baroque ceiling with its new indirect lighting. It was a wonderful conversation and he wished he could tell Nancy about it but he knew enough not to gossip about clients, particularly large clients.

“Well,” he said, “I see what you mean, but the object usually is to show a profit. Most of our friends like it better that way. There are still advantages to having a profit rather than a loss.”

“Are there?” asked Mrs. Whitaker. “I know it's so if you say so, but you've simply got to help us, Mr. Gray—anything you decide on—you will help us, won't you?”

“Of course I will,” Charles said, and his voice was gently reassuring. “That's what I'm here for. Let me see, you have a number of short-term governments.”

“I know. Mr. Whitaker doesn't want to sell those,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “He refuses, absolutely.”

“Oh,” Charles said. “Why does he?”

“Because his father always said that you mustn't be a bear on the United States,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “He says that we must back up the government no matter what it does. If we don't back up the government, where will we be? I believe that, don't you?”

“I wouldn't say it would be disloyal,” Charles said. “Short-term governments are about the same as cash. That's the way they're generally used.”

“Suppose we try to think of something else,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “There must be something else.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “I'll tell you what I'll do. I'd better get a picture of the whole situation. If you're not well enough to come in yourself, I could send Mr. Joyce over to see you.”

“I don't think Mr. Joyce has the experience, do you?” Mrs. Whitaker said. “I know he's a charming young man, but he is still rather immature and he's always so, well, so indefinite. And Mr. Thingamajig, what's his name? The one Mr. Burton turned me over to the last time I came in, when you were out. He was indefinite too, and besides I thought he was a little
chétif
.”

“Whom do you mean?” Charles asked. “I can't exactly place him from your description.”

“That round-faced, pussycat man with glasses,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “The furtive, pussycat one.”

“You don't mean Mr. Blakesley, do you?” Charles asked.

“That's it,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “Mr. Blakesley.”

Charles glanced across at Roger Blakesley, who was busy dictating.

“I know him pretty well,” Charles said. “I wouldn't say he was a pussycat.”

“It's a compliment to you, Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Whitaker said, “that Hewett and I both want you to help us, and we simply have to find a hundred thousand dollars somewhere. It isn't asking too much for you to come over, is it?”

“No,” Charles said. “It's rather hard for me to get away but I think I can arrange it.”

“You see, we've decided after all to buy that ranch,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “Albert's fallen in love with it, and I think Mr. Whitaker has too, a little. You'll come at five, won't you, when we can all be quiet at teatime, and tell us how unwise it is?”