Skyscraper (26 page)

Her heart tightened. She couldn't believe, she couldn't trust,
and yet—she told herself angrily, sorrowfully, it's like a spell, an enchantment; I can't get away from it—

“People of my age,” he said lightly, “dream in impossibilities.” He loathed saying it, even for a purpose, even to disarm her. It brought things too close. He smiled, shrugged. “Let's talk of other things. Or, rather, of young Shepard. Sarah, you must believe that, despite appearances, I have Lynn's welfare at heart as closely as you have. This boy, you really approve of him?”

“I didn't at first,” she replied, reluctant yet forced into it. “I have been anxious for Lynn to make something of a career for herself. Not that that matters at all,” she said half to herself, her mouth falling into the bitter lines of retrospective failure and starvation. “Marriage is bound to interfere. But—if they love each other—”

“Of course, if they love each other,” he agreed instantly. “But has the boy any future, where he now is, in the bank? Has he—influential friends? Or any friends, in fact? Where does he hail from, who are his people? You see I know very little about him,” he admitted.

She answered, readily enough, telling him all she knew of Tom Shepard. No, as far as she knew, Mr. Norton was his only friend of “influence.” As for friends his own age—had David meant that? She knew he traveled with some of the UBC men, lived with a couple of engineers his own age or a little older.

“He appears to be a boy who would make friends everywhere, as well as in his job,” Dwight said thoughtfully.

“Not in the job,” she told him, “as much as outside of it—except for young Rawlson, one of the salesmen in our department. They are together a lot. I've seen them going out, quitting time, arm in arm. Rawlson seems a clever boy,” she went on idly, “and has, I believe, a little money of his own. His uncle is a director in First Citizens'.”

She went on talking, thinking only on the surface of what she was saying, thinking instead how pleasant this was, how Sunday night seemed a nightmare, seemed something that could not have happened. Yet it has happened. But she should have known better; to force Dwight into a corner was always to bring
out the worst in him, it always led to making him say things he couldn't possibly mean. Out of her experience with him she had learned that only, it seemed, to forget it. And he had given his word of honor Lynn was safe.

Dwight listened, his eyes bright with courteous attention. He too was thinking, beneath the surface. Rawlson, eh? It should be easy to meet him.

 

 

 

A GNAWING SUSPICION
THERE WOULD BE SOME DELAY, TOM FOUND, in assuring himself of the UBC position. There, in the tower, with its countless visible and invisible wires, its network, at once so concrete and practical, yet so symbolic, the mills ground slowly. Tom had said nothing to Mr. Norton about resigning. Life had, perhaps, taught him very little caution, but it had taught him enough to make sure of the bird in the bush before you cast away the bird in hand. It was several weeks before his application and interviews bore fruit. But when it was finally settled that he was to have Noonan's coveted place and salary, he approached Mr. Norton in some trepidation, his ears ringing with prophetic admonitions, warnings, and expressions of disapproval.

Could I have a moment of your time, Mr. Norton?” he asked, in the doorway between Norton's room and his own little antechamber.

Norton had just returned from a luncheon conference. His usually austere but pleasant features were troubled, and his eyebrows twitched in the way they had when he was irritated or annoyed over something. Tom realized that this was hardly a propitious time to approach his superior. His gay heart sank. Norton—well, he wasn't his guardian or anything by a long shot, but he had taken an interest in him, he had done his best for him. To pull out of the association gracefully would have been harder than he had anticipated.

“I was just going to ring for you. Come in. Shut the door behind you,” Norton replied.

Tom crossed the intervening space and stood beside the desk. He was smiling, an engaging sort of grin, from sheer nervousness. Mr. Norton pushed his chair back, leaned his head against it, placed the finger-tips of one hand against the finger-tips of the other with a delicate accuracy and looked up. “I wanted to tell you, sir—” Tom began.

“That can wait,” Norton said abruptly. He launched the bolt. It distressed him to launch it, therefore his tones were dryer than ever, more devoid of humanity.

“Tom, have you been so indiscreet as to talk over the affairs of the bank with outsiders?”

Tom answered quickly, without thinking, “No, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He recalled Rawlson. Norton, watching him, saw the hot color creep up the strong young throat, stain the lean cheeks. He shook his head and felt his own throat tighten. Lying—?

“Better think again.”

Rawlson? Rawlson was not an outsider. Lynn? He had talked to Lynn. Lynn was not an outsider. He said painfully, “I—haven't talked outside. That is, other people in the bank know, Mr. Norton; they've spoken to me about it. I haven't said a word to anyone else.”

“Someone has.” Norton's voice was low. “There are indications—on the Street, in brokers' offices. Indications of a leak somewhere. More than anyone not actually concerned in this matter you have been in my confidence.”

Tom thrust his chin out. He looked belligerent. He also looked guilty. In a sense he was guilty, and felt it—because he might have been the means of a “leak,” and an important one. In another sense he was actually and practically guilty; but he did not know that.

“Do you mean that I—”

“What am I to think, Tom?” asked the older man. He added, under Tom's stare and little gasp: “There's no one else. Unless—it's someone you've talked to—Do you think—anyone in the bank?

Tom shook his head stubbornly. He thought Rawlson—But,
no, Rawlson had intimated that he would “do nothing further.” It wasn't likely to be Rawlson. Without him, Tom, Rawlson couldn't operate accurately anyway, couldn't gage the exact moment, hadn't his finger on the pulse of this affair. It couldn't be Rawlson.

Norton in common with almost everyone else in the trust department had not been unaware of Tom's and Lynn's attachment. He spoke of Lynn now, a little hesitantly.

“There is Miss Harding—you are, I know, close friends. If, through something you said to her—oh,” he added hastily, as Tom's eyes grew brilliant with anger, “I assure you she might talk, outside, inadvertently, not realizing the mischief that she would cause, if she talked to—the wrong people. Women are like that,” said Norton dourly.

“You can leave her out of it,” Tom told his superior truculently.

Norton didn't care to be spoken to truculently. He was, he assured himself, making every allowance for the lad, trying hard to get to the bottom of this. The information which had come to him in the last few hours had caused him to lose a good deal of face. Someone very weighty had said, “What about that confidential secretary of yours, Norton?”

He could have—and had—replied, “What about yours, Wright?” But it so happened that other confidential secretaries were time-proved and tested. Tom was the youngest in any branch of the bank; the newest; and, Norton had acknowledged to himself with a sigh, the least responsible, the least genuinely interested in the business of banking.

He said, “Very well, we'll leave her out. But you have admitted that you've talked. To whom, please?”

“It doesn't matter,” Tom said, white. “Not to anyone who—who—”

He broke off. Rawlson? No, again, that was impossible.

“You haven't,” Norton argued, “shown much interest in your work. I've given you every opportunity—The fact that you could go out of this office and discuss the private affairs of the bank lightly shows me that you do not hold your part here in
deep concern. You spend a good deal of your spare time fraternizing with the young men upstairs in the tower. I had hoped, when I placed you here, that you would want to get ahead, that you would study, would fit yourself for a more responsible position, would interest yourself in every phase of the work. But unfortunately you show no such inclination.”

“If my work isn't satisfactory—” began Tom, very white now.

“It has been satisfactory, as far as routine goes,” Norton assured him, “but no farther. Tom, do you refuse to tell me with whom you have been discussing the projected merger?”

“I haven't discussed it,” Tom shouted, goaded into a pyrotechnic display merely because, but for the grace of God—of Lynn, he would have been as guilty as hell, facing the quiet disapproving eyes of the elder man—“except—except to mention it to people within the bank, who hadn't—who couldn't—”

He had floundered long enough. Norton took a measure of cold pity on him. Lynn Harding, of course. He had talked to Lynn, she had talked to—heaven knew whom. It was distinctly traceable. Yet he wasn't so sure. Lynn had always seemed like a most level-headed girl to Mr. Norton; Miss Dennet thought highly of her—

Well, it didn't matter. It was possible, probable even that, if Tom had talked, his talking hadn't affected things one way or the other. But the point was that, having talked, he proved himself unworthy of trust. Norton said so now.

“Never mind. I'll take your word for it, I have to. But whether or not you've done the organization harm by your conscious or unconscious indiscretion is beside the point. The point is, we can't afford to have young men who gossip connected with us. The job of confidential secretary is just that. I'm sorry, Tom, but—”

“I'm being fired?” Tom asked quietly.

“I'm letting you go,” Norton substituted the more courteous term. “You aren't particularly happy with us; why should you be when you're not interested in the work? And this incident has proved to me beyond question of a doubt that you take your
obligations far too lightly. I'm sorry, Tom,” he said, and sincerely. “I wanted to see you make something of yourself, I tried to help you—”

Tom admitted that, stiffly enough. He was sore, bruised, in his mind and in his pride. He couldn't, he thought, ruefully say now, “Take your damned old job, I've got me another, I was going to resign when you sprang this on me.”

If he resigned as an anticlimax Norton would believe more than ever that he'd had it up his sleeve, as a way out, in case he was caught; or that he'd had it up his sleeve, as a way out, in case he was caught; or that it was a lie to save his face, out of bravado—

Somehow, he got out of the office, with Norton sitting there, like a judge, staring at him, sighing a little, eyebrows twitching.

On the following Monday Tom went to work for the UBC shooting skyward in the express elevator, passing the hivelike activities on the first six floors with a sense of discomfort.

Once in his new job he was to accustom himself to curious hours. The checkerboard—that square of ruled cardboard upon which, as neatly as any problem, the hours on duty of the men in the master-control room had been worked out—was an elastic affair, Tom might get to work at eight, cease at eleven, return at three, and work until night. Or most of his work might be afternoon and evening. For this reason he was to see rather less of Lynn, calling her up at odd times to report progress and peace of mind, running in to see her evenings, between programs as it were.

He had not told her that he had been let out. He thought, walking from Lynn's office, if I tell her she might believe that I did—spill the beans. He consoled himself with believing that she wasn't likely to find out. Norton wouldn't be apt to discuss it with her—or would he? And she had known that he, Tom, was going to “resign.” Let her think it, as long as possible. Then, if he had to tell her—but perhaps he wouldn't, he thought—turning craven at the idea.

It was Sarah who told her, after being called into a conference with Norton, a conference that concerned Lynn herself.
Coming out of Norton's private room Sarah was deeply troubled. Idiotic of Norton to feel that Lynn might be involved! She had spoken to him on the subject and so strongly that he had admitted it had been only a fantastic guess on his part.

“You know her better than I do,” he had said, “and if you consider her loyalty impregnable—”

“As much so as my own,” she told him. “No, Mr. Norton, you'll have to look elsewhere for your traitor—As for Tom,” she had said, sighing, “I don't believe he would so such a thing consciously.”

But she felt she must speak to Lynn. She waited until they were dining together one night in Sarah's apartment. They were alone. After dinner, listening to Lynn talk of Tom's happiness in his new position, she asked gravely, “Lynn, has Tom ever spoken to you about a rumor of a merger between the bank and the First Citizens'?”

Lynn put down the cigarette she had picked up. Her heart was racing. Instinctively, in a perfectly natural impulse to protect Tom, if he needed protection, she replied instantly, “Why, no, he never has. Why?”