in the sense thatthey are subsidiary. The owner is the owner, and if he has to make a fewsubsidiary changes, all right. But nothing really affects the owner, nomatter whether you've got gentle mares or thoroughbreds."
Bolen nodded, as though he had expected that exact answer. "You are avery certain man, aren't you, Mr. Cutter?"
"Would I be here, in this office, heading this company, if I weren't,Bolen?"
Bolen smiled.
Cutter straightened in his chair. "All right, do we go on? Do we shootfor the limit?"
Bolen chose his words carefully. "I am interested in testing myConfidet, Mr. Cutter. This is the most important thing in the world tome. I don't recommend what you want to do. But, as long as you'll giveme accurate reports on the effects of the Confidet, I'll go along withyou. Providing you grant me one concession."
Cutter frowned.
"I want our written contract dissolved."
Cutter reddened faintly. Nobody ever demanded anything of him and got iteasily, but his mind turned over rapidly, judging the increase inefficiency, the increase in profits. He would not necessarily have tostop with administrative personnel. There were other departments, too,that could stand a little sharpening. Finally he nodded, reluctantly."All right, Bolen."
Bolen smiled and left quickly, and Cutter stared at his desk for amoment, tense. Then, he relaxed and the hard sternness of his facesoftened a bit. He put his finger on his desk calendar, and looked at adate Lucile had circled for him. He grinned, and picked up thetelephone, and dialed.
"This is George H. Cutter," he said to the man who answered. "My wife'sbirthday is next Saturday. Do you remember that antique desk I boughther last year? Good. Well, the truth is, she uses it all the time, sothis year I'd like a good chair to match it. She's just using anoccasional chair right now, and..."
* * * * *
Like everything he gave her, Mary liked his gift extremely well, andnight after night, after the birthday, he came home to find her at thedesk, using the chair, captaining her house and her servant staff. Andthe improvement was noticeable in her, almost from the first day. Withina month, he could detect a remarkable change, and for the first time,since they had been married, Mary gave a dinner for thirty peoplewithout crying just before it started.
There were other changes.
Quay brought in efficiency report after efficiency report, and by theend of three months, they had hit eighteen and seven-tenths percentincrease. The administrative office was no longer the dull, listlessplace it had been; now it thrived and hummed like the shop below. Cuttercould see the difference with his own eyes, and he could particularlysee the differences in certain individuals.
Brown and Kennedy showed remarkable improvement, but it was really HarryLinden who astonished Cutter. An individual check showed a sixty-percentincrease by Linden, and there was a definite change in the man's looks.He walked differently, with a quick, virile step, and the look of hisface and eyes had become strong and alive. He began appearing early inthe morning, ahead of the starting hour, and working late, and the onlytime he missed any work hours, was one afternoon, during which, Lucileinformed Cutter, he had appeared in court for his divorce trial.
Within a month, Cutter had fired Stole and Lackter and Grant, asdepartment heads, and replaced them with Brown, Kennedy, and Linden. Hehad formulated plans for installation of the Confidets in the draftingdepartment and the supply department, and already the profits ofincreased efficiency were beginning to show in the records. Cutter wasfull of new enthusiasm and ambition, and there was only one thorn in theentire development.
Quay had resigned.
Cutter had been startled and extremely angry, but Quay had beenunperturbed and stubborn. "I've enjoyed working with you immensely,George, but my mind is made up. No hard feelings?"
Cutter had not even shaken his hand.
It had bothered him for days, and he checked every industrial company inthe area, to see where Quay had found a better position. He was highlysurprised, when he learned, finally, that Quay had purchased a smallboat and was earning his living by carrying fishermen out onto the Bay.Quay had also married, four days after his resignation, and Cutterpushed the entire thing out of his mind, checking it off to partialinsanity.
By February of the next year, he had promoted Harry Linden to Quay's oldjob, gotten rid of the deadwood that showed up so plainly on theindividual checks, and the total efficiency average had reachedthirty-three percent. His and Mary's anniversary was on the fourth ofMarch, and when that day arrived, he was certain that he had reachedthat point where he could expand to another plant.
He was about to order her a mink stole in celebration, but it was alsothat day that he was informed that she was suing him for divorce. Herushed home, furious, but she was gone. She had taken her clothes andjewelry and the second Cadillac. In fact, all that she had left of herpersonal possessions were the antique desk and chair. When the trial wasover, months later, she had won enough support to take her to France,where, he learned, she purchased a chateau at Cannes.
He tried to lose himself in his work, but for the first time in hislife, he had begun to get faintly worried. It was only a sliver ofworry, but it kept him from going on with the expansion. Stocks in thecompany had turned over at an amazingly rapid rate, and while it wasstill nothing more than intuition on his part, he began to tighten up,readying himself to meet anything.
The explosion came in July.
Drindor Products had picked up forty-nine percent of the stock on themarket, by using secondary buyers. There had been a leak somewhere,Cutter realized, that had told his competitor, Drindor, the kind ofprofit he was making. He knew who it had been instantly, but before hecould fire Harry Linden, all of his walls crashed down. Four monthsbefore, to put more _esprit de corps_ into Linden, he had allowedLinden eight shares of his own stock, intending to pick it up later fromthe market. Linden had coerced with Drindor. Cutter lost control.
A board of directors was elected by Drindor, and Drindor assumed thepresidency by proxy. Harry Linden took over Cutter's office, as VicePresident In Charge.
Cutter had wildly ordered Edward Bolen to remove the Confidets one weekbefore, but even then he had known that it was too late, and thesmiling, knowing look on Bolen's face had infuriated him to a screamingrage. Bolen remained undisturbed, and quietly carried the disks away.Cutter, when he left his office that final day, moved slowly, veryslowly.
* * * * *
He brooded for many long days after that, searching his mind for a wayto counterattack. He still had enough stock to keep him comfortable ifhe lived another hundred years. But he no longer had the power, and hethirsted for that. He turned it around and around in his brain, tryingto figure out how he could do it, and the one thing he finally knew, theone certain thing, was that if he used enough drive, enough strength,then he would regain control of the company he had built with his ownhands and mind.
He paced the library and the long living room and the dining room, andhis eyes were lost, until he saw, through the doorway of the sewingroom, that desk and that chair, and he remembered he hadn't doneanything about that.
He paused only briefly, because he had not lost an ounce of his abilityto make a sudden decision, and then he removed that disk and carried itto the library and fitted it under the cushion of the large, worn,leather chair.
By fall, he had done nothing to regain control, and he was less certainof how he should act than he had been months before. He kept driving bythe plant and looking at it, but he did so carefully, so that no onewould see him, and he was surprised to find that, above all, he didn'twant to face Harry Linden. The memory of the man's firm look, the sharp,bold eyes, frightened him, and the knowledge of his fright crushed himinside. He wished desperately that Mary were back with him, and he evenwrote her letters, pleading letters, but they came back, unopened.
Finally he went to see Robert Quay, because Quay was the only man in hismemory whom he somehow didn't fe
ar talking to. He found Quay in a smallcottage near the beach. There was a six-day old infant in a crib in thebedroom, and Quay's wife was a sparkling-eyed girl with a smile thatmade Cutter feel relatively at ease for the first time in weeks.
She politely left them alone, and Cutter sat there, embarrassed faintly,but glad to be in Quay's home and presence. They talked of how it hadbeen, when Quay was with the company, and finally Cutter pushed himselfinto asking about it:
"I've often wondered, Bob, why you left?"
Quay blushed slightly, then grinned. "I might as well admit it. I gotone of those things from Bolen, and had it installed in my own chair."
Cutter thought about it, surprised. He cleared his throat. "And then youquit?"
"Sure," Quay said. "All my life, I'd wanted to do just what I'm doing.But things just came easy to me, and the opportunities were