Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

The truth, Tom thought. The truth about what? The truth about Maria? Shall we all sit down now and tell each other the truth? Suddenly he felt immensely angry. “You’ve had an easy life, Betsy,” he said in a deadly quiet voice. “You just stay here and take care of the kids and enjoy your moral indignation while I go in town every day to wrestle with guys like Hopkins. But don’t read me lectures. The truth is I’m doing the best I can with the world as I see it.”

“ Go to hell ,” Betsy said with passion.

“Thanks,” Tom replied. “Is that the last of your moral advice?”

Betsy didn’t answer. She was pale and quiet all through dinner. After she had put the children to bed, Tom said to her, “Haven’t we been making an awful lot out of nothing?”

“I guess we have,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in. And if you’re going to see Hopkins tomorrow, you better get a good night’s rest yourself.”

SAUL BERNSTEIN walked into the First National Bank, which was the biggest building in South Bay. As a boy he had thought “the bank” a frightful monster, for he had often heard his parents worrying about whether it would take their store away, as though it were a giant who could reach out and rip the building from its foundations, but for two years now, he had been a member of the bank’s board of directors, and he no longer thought of it as anything but a rather tired group of men trying to meet their responsibilities. He walked to the rear of the bank, opened a gate in a low partition there, and approached the desk of Walter Johnson, the president. “Good morning, Walt,” he said. “I’d like to find out the bank balance of two men: a Mr. Thomas R. Rath and a Mr. Edward F. Schultz.”

“Just a minute,” Johnson said, and picked up his telephone. Bernstein sat down. That morning he had received in the mail from Edward Schultz a photostat of a document written on the personal stationery of Mrs. Florence Rath. “To Whom It May Concern,” the document said. “In exchange for his services for the rest of my life, and in place of paying him a regular salary for same from this day forward, I hereby bequeath my entire possessions, including my house and land, to Edward F. Schultz, who has served me faithfully for more than thirty years.” This was typewritten, with the date, June 10, 1953. Florence Rath’s signature followed, written by a quavering hand.

Bernstein had studied this and had carefully reread the long, precisely phrased will which Sims had sent him, a document which was dated January 18, 1948. Edward’s document was not a legal will like the one which left everything to Tom, Bernstein saw, but it might be considered a legal contract, and quite a case might be built on that. And regardless of the legal technicalities, what had old Mrs. Rath intended?

As he waited for Johnson to get him the figures he had requested, Bernstein reviewed for the hundredth time the possibilities, the different combinations of circumstance, which theoretically could have led to contradictory documents. It was possible that old Mrs. Rath had simply been forgetful, had made her bargain with Schultz and forgotten to tell her lawyer or grandson. It was possible she had deliberately refrained from telling them, for fear that their objections might be painful. On the other hand, she might have told her grandson of the change, and young Rath might have decided simply to say nothing about it to anyone, confident that his grandmother’s agreement with Schultz would be thrown out of court because of legal technicalities — because it bore the names of no witnesses to the signature. And theoretically it was just as possible that the document presented by Schultz was in some way a fake, although Bernstein was quite sure that Schultz’s lawyers would have had the signature examined before accepting the case. His real responsibility, Bernstein felt, was to discover which of these circumstances had actually happened. Until he knew that, it would be impossible to tell what paragraphs in the thick law books which lined the walls of his inner office should be chosen to justify a decision in the case. It was, of course, difficult to resurrect the past, but not impossible. In a small town the past clung to the present more permanently than in a big city. People’s footprints lasted longer before they were stamped out.

The bank president wrote several figures on a pad. “Mr. Rath has a savings account with approximately nine thousand dollars in it, deposited on September 2, all in one check from a real-estate outfit in Westport,” he said. “Mr. Schultz has a savings account of approximately seventy-eight thousand dollars, deposited here over a period of thirty years, in varying amounts on the third of each month.”

“Are you sure?” Bernstein asked in astonishment.

“Those are the figures.”

“Thank you,” Bernstein said.

“Not a bit,” Johnson replied. He knew he was not supposed to give out such figures, but in South Bay a man who had demonstrated good intentions and the ability to keep his mouth shut could get any information he wanted.

Bernstein walked slowly up Main Street. It was surprising how often bank balances helped to point the way toward justice. The figures he had just learned might mean anything or nothing, but they at least rid his mind of the picture of the faithful impoverished old servant being cheated by a young heir. Here the servant was richer than the heir, all of which went to show, Bernstein reflected, that a man must guard himself against his own prejudices. And another thing: how could old Schultz have continued his deposits if he had had no salary for several months? And why were his monthly deposits of “varying amounts”? Wouldn’t an employee with a regular salary tend to deposit the same sum every month? Perhaps he had cashed his checks, spent varying amounts, and deposited the remainder, Bernstein thought, but it would be strange if such a haphazard plan enabled a butler to save so much. How much had Mrs. Rath been paying him? Suddenly Bernstein had an idea. He hadn’t worked in a delicatessen all during his boyhood without learning anything.

Quickening his pace, Bernstein walked to Hopeland’s Grocery Store, which specialized in luxury items. That is where Mrs. Rath would have been almost sure to order her groceries. He went to the room on the second floor where Julius Marvella, the manager, was busy reckoning his accounts. “Morning, Julius,” he said.

“What are you doing up here, Judge?” Julius replied, grinning. “Have you come to take me in?”

“Not today. I wondered if you could tell me something. Did old Mrs. Rath trade here?”

“Nope — she went to Fritz’s place.”

“Why?”

Julius shrugged.

“Did she ever trade here?”

“A long time ago, when I was a kid. Then she changed.”

“Do you know why?”

Julius shrugged again.

“Nobody’s going to get into trouble if you tell me,” Bernstein said. “And you won’t have to appear in court. I won’t mention your name.”

“Okay, Judge,” Julius said. “This guy Schultz did all her buying for her, and he wanted kickbacks. He asked Pop to pad Mrs. Rath’s bill. Not just a little, mind you — Schultz wanted him to add twenty per cent every month and kick back fifteen per cent to him. You know how Pop was on that stuff. He threw the bastard out.”

“Thanks,” Bernstein said.

“I don’t know what Fritz did for him,” Julius said. “I’m making no charges — I’m just telling you what happened here. I don’t want to get Fritz into trouble. You know how it is, Judge — Fritz might get a chance to put me in a jam someday. It don’t pay to start things in a town like this. Wouldn’t be long before he found some way to knock me.”