Executive Suite Read Free Page A

Imagine!”
    Steigel’s grin broke again. “They have Mr. Bullard. Maybe that is enough.”
    Bruce Pilcher chose to disregard the obvious fact that Julius Steigel was having a bit of fun at his expense. “Suppose something would happen to Avery Bullard?”
    â€œHe is a young man.”
    â€œFifty-six on the nineteenth of September,” Pilcher flashed back, hoping to impress the old man with the meticulous accuracy of his information.
    Steigel shrugged. “Fifty-six is a young man. When I am only fifty-six I am just getting started. You know how old I am, Mr. Pilcher? My next birthday, seventy-one.”
    Dutifully, Bruce Pilcher picked up the cue. “Not really, Mr. Steigel! No one would ever suspect it.”
    â€œSeventy-one,” the old man repeated, his eyes glinting guardedly with the satisfaction of again having bested his new president in an argument. He disliked Pilcher but it was very necessary to keep from showing it. He needed him. Business had gotten so complicated these last few years that you had to have someone like Pilcher. It wasn’t enough any more to know how to run stores and buy and sell furniture. Last year alone, Pilcher had saved almost two hundred thousand dollars in taxes.
    A siren moaned to a stop on the avenue below the window and Pilcher turned, looking down, accepting the chance to avert his eyes. He was keenly disappointed at his failure to maneuver himself into a Tredway directorship. Odessa was only a rung on the way up. Tredway was the top of the ladder. If he could get on the Tredway board there was no telling where he might go. Avery Bullard would be no harder to handle than old Julius Steigel had been.
    The ambulance had stopped and the thick crescent of the crowd opened and closed like gaping pincers, swallowing up the hurrying man in white. Pilcher sharpened his interest only enough to block the aggravating drone of old Julius’ voice. The man in white was signaling and the driver was pulling out a stretcher, swinging it to force back the crowd, straightening it, bending down to lift the body.
    Pilcher began to speak but his voice froze in his throat. The man they were putting on the stretcher was unmistakably Avery Bullard.
    The old man was at his side now, puffing a little as he strained over the sill. “It looks maybe like—”
    â€œIt’s Avery Bullard,” Pilcher said, sharply grim.
    A low moan escaped from Julius Steigel’s lips.
    A blanket blotted out the figure on the stretcher and Pilcher swung around, standing stiffly, his eyes narrowed. “He’s dead.”
    Julius Steigel was an old man, at the moment a very old man, mystified and staring. “Only a minute ago you are saying, what if something should happen.”
    Pilcher brushed past him, snatching at the telephone on the desk. “This is Mr. Pilcher. Get me Caswell & Co.,” he barked at the receiver. Then a warning flashed in his mind … George Caswell would be too inquisitive … he was a Tredway director.
    â€œWait!” he commanded. “Get me Slade & Finch. Mr. Wingate.”
    He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Might as well salvage what we can out of this.”
    He was talking to the old man’s slumped shoulders, black against the light of the window. The sound of the siren faded away and finally lost itself in the overtone of street noises.
    The call came through. “Wingate? This is Bruce Pilcher. Now make this fast!” He flicked a glance at his wrist watch. “There’s only twenty-one minutes before the bell. Start selling Tredway common short. Feed out everything you can before the close. What? I said everything you can get rid of. Call me back at my office.”
    The receiver clattered down in the silence of the room. Steigel was facing him, gray-faced, wetting his thick lips. “You—you think—?”
    â€œWhen the street finds out in the morning that Avery Bullard is