Джон Макдональд - More Good Old Stuff

As she walked toward the sun room and caught sight of Roy Bedford, she felt the quick rise of hate. He was so sure of himself. So positive. So determined.

He jumped up and took her hand. “Hello, Patience. Nice to see you alone like this.”

She smiled, sat on the couch, and he sat across from her. She knew she was supposed to bring up the question first. That would give him some sort of an edge.

“What’s your proposition, Roy?” she asked bluntly.

Studying the glowing end of his cigarette, he said, “You’ve passed every dividend since the war. The forty thousand shares of stock outstanding have an over-the-counter value of twenty dollars a share. That’s thirty dollars under par. You and your sister own twenty-two thousand shares — eleven apiece. I own or control seventeen thousand three hundred and forty-one shares. It’s only a question of time until I get hold of the remaining six hundred and fifty-nine outstanding. You and your sister vote against me, giving me no hand in management.

“I have two propositions. If you and your sister will sell me fifteen hundred shares apiece, I will give you seventy-five thousand dollars each, or a bonus of forty-five thousand dollars each over market value, permitting each of you to retain ninety-five hundred shares each. The other alternative is to buy you out completely, and frankly I’d rather do that. It will take me six months to get the actual money, but I will pay you half a million apiece for all your stock. That’s two hundred thousand dollars over the present market value of the stock. That could be invested so as to give both you and Susan a life income of twenty thousand apiece.”

Patience smiled. “You make it sound so generous, Roy. You offer us a million for what we could have got three million for four years ago.”

“That was four years ago, Pat. I’m offering you a million for what you can get half a million for a year from now.”

“Evan doesn’t think so.”

“Evan is a dreamer, Pat. He’ll be out five minutes after I get the controlling interest.”

“Aren’t you a little hard, Roy?”

He smiled broadly. “Pat, I didn’t parlay a one-third interest in a little repair garage into big money in nine years by being soft. I’ll put my own men in. If this new line of hammers and special tools that Evan has developed is any good, we’ll take over. If not, we’ll toss it out.”

“It’s a good line, Roy. If we could only—”

“—get the steel. I know. You buy the gray-market steel and the increased cost bumps your production cost so high you can’t make money.”

“And you can?” she asked, smiling crookedly.

He lifted his chin. “Of course I can!”

She said slowly, “I’d like to sell out, Roy—”

“It’s a deal?” he asked eagerly.

She shook her head. “But I don’t want to do it this way. I don’t want to be licked. I don’t think Dad and Gramps care if I decide not to run the company, but I don’t think they would like to see me quit while I’m behind.”

Bedford smiled confidently. “Pat, that’s why you can’t ever make any money. You’re too sentimental.”

“Come back in six months, Roy. We’ll talk about it again.”

His face turned pale with anger. He jumped up and said, “These things don’t work that way, Miss Furnivall. I’m warning you. This offer is going to be good for exactly one week. Unless I get a decision at the end of that time, you may get a lot of surprises.”

She looked at him calmly. “You wouldn’t be threatening me, Roy?”

“I’ll make it my business to run that shabby little outfit of yours right into the ground and you right along with it!”

“Please get out of this house,” she said.

His mouth twisted in a humorless grin. “Polite even when you’re sore, hey? Sure, I’ll get out. But you better come around on your knees before the week is up.”

She stood up slowly and said distinctly, “Mr. Bedford, I don’t have to wait a week. I’ll tell you now. The Furnivall Pneumatic Tool Company will go into receivership rather than make any such deal with you. Good-by.”

“I suppose you think you’re talking for Susan, too?”

He didn’t wait for her to answer. The door slammed behind him and Patience stood leaning against the hallway door, weak and trembling.

He had defeated her. Through Susan.

Susan will see through him, she thought. She must!

That was the weak link. Susan. Gay, reckless Susan, who did not share her feeling of family pride in the name of Furnivall.

She called the plant, got hold of Evan Cleveland. She told him that she’d be down in a half hour to discuss something of importance...

Evan Cleveland had been in the same high school graduating class as Roy Bedford and Matt Otis. At the time of Alicia Crane’s death, Evan was just finishing his third year of engineering. He started out at Furnivall running a bank of automatic screw machines, eventually functioning as troubleshooter, assistant foreman, foreman, second assistant to the plant superintendent and finally, after the death of Roger Furnivall, factory manager.

He was short, broad, quick and naturally cheerful. He had red hair touched with gray, freckles across his pug nose and calm blue eyes with a glint of humor in their depths.

After Patience had finished telling him about the conversation with Bedford, he leaned back in his chair and glared at the papers on his desk.

“I did do right, didn’t I?” Patience asked.

“That’s just it, Pat. I don’t know. Yesterday I would have said yes. Today I don’t know.”

“What’s the trouble?” she asked, alarmed.

“Yesterday we were pretty sure of getting a hundred and fifty tons of steel at a price that wasn’t too bad. It would arrive by next Wednesday. But another bidder sneaked in and grabbed it. A week from today we’re going to either shut down or buy steel at prices that will make your eyes stand out on stalks.”

“There’s more than that,” she said, suddenly calm.

He stood up, walked over to the window and looked down at the plant yard, his blunt hands knotted behind him.

“You’re right, as usual, Pat.” He sighed. “Got a phone call this morning. A man named Feeney in Rochester, New York, is bringing suit against us for patent violation. The whole line of stuff we’re working on. Claims he had it first.”

“But I thought your patents were unchallenged!” she said.

“The courts will have to decide that. They may slap an injunction on us to keep us from turning out any of the new line.” He turned around suddenly and she saw that he looked old. “Pat,” he said, “I’ve an idea that if Roy Bedford didn’t have his eye on this place, we would have got our steel. Also, Roy owns a piece of Delansey Tool in Rochester. This guy Feeney worked for Delansey. You figure it out.”

She frowned. “Can he do that to us?”

Evan Cleveland gave her a tired grin. “Honey, he’s doing it. And you know as well as I do that if it doesn’t work this way, he’ll get us through Susan, marrying her if he has to, to get control of her stock. That boy is dynamite.”

“I’d better talk to Susan,” she said.

“Or take Bedford’s offer.”

She smiled with an effort. “Evan, if I took his offer now, I’d never again be able to think of my ancestors without blushing.”

She smiled at him and left his office.

Evan Cleveland sat down, rolling a yellow pencil between his blunt fingers.

Maybe it would be a good thing if she fights him, he thought. Maybe it would be a good thing if she loses every dime in the world. Maybe then I’d have the courage to tell her that I’ve loved her ever since the day she fell out of the pear tree and broke her wrist and didn’t cry.