Arthur Hailey - Wheels

A sudden, night breeze from the lake stirred the air and set leaves rustling overhead. Erica shivered.

Hank Kreisel suggested, "let's go in."

The chauffeur, who appeared to double in butlerage, swung heavy front doors open as they approached the house.

A few yards inside, Adam stopped. He said incredulously, "I'll be damned!"

Beside him, Erica, equally surprised, stood staring. Then she giggled.

The main floor living room into which they had stepped had all the accouterments of elegance - deep broadloom, comfortable chairs, sofas, sideboards, bookshelves, paintings, a hi-fi playing softly, and harmonious lighting. It also had a fullsize swimming pool.

The pool, some thirty feet long, was attractively blue tiled, with a deep end, shallow end, and a three-tiered diving board.

Erica said, "Hank, I shouldn't have laughed. I'm sorry. But it's . . .

surprising."

"No reason not to laugh," their host said amiably. "Most people do. Good many think I'm nuts. Fact is, I like to swim. Like to be comfortable, too."

Adam was looking around him with an amazed expression. "Its an old house. You must have ripped the inside out."

"Sure did."

Erica told Adam, "Quit making like an engineer and let's go swimming."

Obviously pleased, Kreisel said, "You want to?"

"You're looking at an Island girl. I could swim before I could talk."

He showed her to a corridor. "Second door down there. Lots of swimsuits, towels."

Adam followed Kreisel to another changing room.

Minutes later, Erica executed a dazzling swallow dive from the highest board. She surf aced, laughing. "This is the best living room I was ever in."

Hank Kreisel, grinning, dived from a lower board. Adam plunged in from the side.

When they had all swum, Kreisel led the way - the three of them dripping - across the broadloom to deep armchairs over which the butler-chauffeur had spread thick towels.

In a fourth chair was a gray-haired, frail-appearing woman, beside her a tray of coffee cups and liqueurs. Hank Kreisel leaned over, kissing her cheek. He asked, "How was the day?"

"Peaceful."

"This is my wife, Dorothy," Kreisel said. He introduced Erica and Adam.

Adam could understand why Zoe had been left downtown.

Yet, as Mrs. Kreisel poured coffee and they chatted, she seemed to find nothing strange in the fact that the others had had a dinner engagement in which - for whatever reason - she was not included. She even inquired how the food had been at the Detroit Athletic Club.

Perhaps, Adam thought, Dorothy Kreisel had come to terms with her husband's other life away from home - his various mistresses in "liaison offices," which Adam had heard of. In fact, Hank Kreisel seemed to make no secret of his arrangements, as witness Zoe tonight.

Erica chatted brightly. Obviously she liked Hank Kreisel, and the evening out, and now the swim, had been good for her. She appeared glowing, her youthfulness evident. She had found a bikini among the available swimwear; it was exactly right for her tall, slim figure, and several times Adam noticed Kreisel's eyes stray interestedly Erica's way.

After a while their host seemed restless. He stood up. "Adam, like to get changed? There's something I want to show you, maybe talk about."

So finally, Adam thought, they were coming to the point - whatever the point was.

"You sound mysterious, Hank," Erica said, she smiled at Dorothy Kreisel. "Do I get to see this exposition too?"

Hank Kreisel gave his characteristic twisted grin. "If you did, I'd like it."

A few minutes later they excused themselves from Mrs. Kreisel who remained, placidly sipping coffee, in the living room.

When they had dressed, Hank Kreisel guided Adam and Erica through the main floor of the house, explaining it had been built by a long-dead auto mogul, a contemporary of Walter Chrysler and Henry Ford. "Solid. Outside walls as good as Hadrian's. Still are. So I tore the inside apart, put new guts in." The parts manufacturer opened a paneled doorway, revealing a spiral staircase, going down, then clattered ahead. Erica followed, more cautiously, Adam behind her.

They walked along a basement passageway, then, selecting a key from several on a ring, Hank Kreisel opened a gray metal door. As they entered the room beyond, bright fluorescent lighting flooded on.

They were, Adam saw, in an engineering experimental workshop. It was spacious, organized, among the best-equipped of its kind that he had seen.

"Spend a lot of time in this place. Do pilot stuff," Kreisel explained.

"When new work comes up for my plants, bring it down here. Then figure out best way of production at cheapest unit cost. Pays off."

Adam remembered something which Brett DeLosanto had told him: that Hank Kreisel had no engineering degree, and his only training before beginning business for himself was as a machinist and plant foreman.

"Over here." Kreisel led the way to a low, wide work table. An object on it was covered by a cloth which he removed. Adam looked curiously at the metal structure underneath - an assemblage of steel rods, sheet metal, and connected internal parts, the size about equal to two bicycles. On the outside was a handle. As Adam turned it, experimentally, parts within the structure moved.

Adam shrugged. "Hank, I give up. What the hell is it?"

"Obviously," Erica said, "it's something he's submitting to the Museum of Modern Art."

"Maybe that's it. What I ought to do." Kreisel grinned, then asked,

"Know much about farm machinery, Adam?"

"Not really." He turned the handle once again.

Hank Kreisel said quietly, "It's a threshing machine, Adam. Never been one like it, or this small. And it works." His voice took on an enthusiasm which neither Adam nor Erica had heard before. "This machine'll thresh any kind of grain - wheat, rice, barley. Three to five bushels an hour. Got pictures proving it . . ."

"I know enough about you," Adam said. "If you say it works, it works."

"Something else works, too. Cost. Mass-produced, it'd sell for a hundred dollars."

Adam looked doubtful. As a product planner, he knew costs the way a football coach knows standard plays. "Surely not including your power source." He stopped. "What is your power source? Batteries? A small gas motor?"

"Thought you'd get around to that," Hank Kreisel said. "So I'll tell you. Power source isn't any of those things. It's some guy turning a handle. Same way you did just now. Same handle. Except the guy I'm thinking of is an old Eastern geezer in a jungle village. Wearing a slope hat. When his arms get tired, a woman or a kid'll do it. They'll sit there, hours on end, just turn the handle. That's how we'll build this for a hundred bucks."

"No power source. Too bad we can't build cars that way." Adam laughed.

Kreisel told him, "Whatever else you do. Do me a favor now. Don't laugh."

"Okay, I won't. But I still can't see massproducing, in Detroit of all places, a piece of farm machinery" - Adam nodded toward the thresher - where you turn a handle, for hours on end, to make it work."

Hank Kreisel said earnestly, "If you'd been to places where I have, Adam, maybe you would. Parts of this world are a long way from Detroit.

That's half our trouble in this town: we forget those other places.

Forget that people don't think like we do. We figure everywhere else is like Detroit, or ought to be, so whatever happens should be our way: the way we see it. If others see different, they have to be wrong because we're Detroit! We've been like that about other things.

Pollution. Safety. Those got so hot we had to change. But there's a lot more thinking left that's like religion."

"With high priests," Erica put in, "who don't like old beliefs challenged."

Adam shot her an annoyed glance which said: Leave this to me.