number is just a gimmick, to make it sound scientific for the ads and the label. It’s an alkyd resin, water-thinned, and there’s no question it’s a damn good paint. We’re planning to offer an absolute three-year money-back guarantee against peeling or blistering on bare wood using a recommended primer. I don’t know how much you know about house paint-”
“I live in a hotel.”
“You’re lucky-I think I’ll have some of the cognac after all. This coffee isn’t doing anything for me.”
The detective splashed a dollop of cognac in the younger man’s coffee cup.
Forbes went on: “I don’t know how people who own houses manage to keep their sanity. Father maintains that the reason outside paints break down so fast is that houses are better insulated and present-day appliances give off so much steam-dishwashers, humidifiers, driers. The steam has to go somewhere. It breaks the paint seal and exits by way of a blister, which then peels down to the wood. The public, of course, simply figures we’re marketing an inferior product, to break down faster so we can sell more paint. This worries my father. Where will it end? In government regulation, he thinks. Socialism.”
He snorted scornfully and sipped at his coffee. “Hey, this is good. Maybe we ought to add a few drops of cognac to each gallon of paint and see if it lasts any longer.” He winced. “I’m not really up to being facetious this early in the morning. God knows, it’s serious. We must have a couple of million dollars invested in T-239. The first company out with a really nonpeelable product is going to mop up. Everybody’s been working on it. Well, about eighteen months ago we came up with a formula that gave very good lab results. That didn’t necessarily mean it would stand up well on a house. We put it through an elaborate series of tests, and those tests can’t be hurried. There’s really no substitute for slapping a coat of paint on a piece of cedar siding and leaving it out in different kinds of weather. Sure enough, after a few months the white paint turned yellow. We took care of that and all the technical boys are very pleased with the way things have turned out. But Dad happens to believe in being two hundred percent certain. That’s how we’ve got caught. He ordered a new series of tests, and we can’t hope to have T-239 in the stores before next May at the earliest.”
“And United States Chemical stole the formula?”
“More than the formula. The really important thing was the test results. A year and a half is a long time to keep a secret in any business. By not having to duplicate the tests, they save a huge amount of money and cut months off the development period. We’ve been getting rumbles about a new indestructible paint they’re about to launch with a long-term guarantee. They did a fair job of keeping it under wraps, but we finally managed to purloin a can. And it’s T-239, all right, with a few modifications. And a source in their experimental division tells us they rushed into production after a crash testing program that couldn’t possibly prove anything about durability. They’re making the first announcement on the CBS breakfast show next Tuesday morning. In other words, they’ll beat us out by five months.”
Without looking directly at him, Shayne had been studying the young man as he talked. He was twenty-five, Shayne judged. One moment he was caught up in his explanation, taking it with utter seriousness. A moment later he would make a clumsy gesture and seem to sneer at the importance of what he was saying. At times he was capable of producing a sudden, engaging grin. Having talked at length with the senior Hallam, Shayne knew the younger man’s position in the company must be far from easy.
Shayne’s gun came up.
“Ducks,” he said in a low voice.
Forbes reached for his shotgun, then sat back with a flap of his hand. There were five pintails and a single, quartering in and rising. At first Shayne thought they were all his. As he tracked them, they veered more and more to the right, crossing at the extreme limits of his gun’s range. There were two quick bangs from the next blind, a thousand feet distant. Two ducks plummeted out of the sky.
“Dad’s still got his eye,” Forbes remarked. “I assume that was Dad and not Walter. Walter Langhorne and a shotgun are two different animals.”
“You aren’t shooting this morning?” Shayne said.
Forbes said defensively, “I’m too shaky. When I was a boy I used to come out here with Dad all the time. I don’t see much point in it any more.”
He sipped his coffee. “I’m beginning to feel hungry. Nothing like fresh air and not enough sleep. Let me finish, and maybe by then we won’t get any dirty looks if we go back and have a decent breakfast. I was about to tell you about United States Chemical. They’re teetering on the edge. They have a nice tax-loss position and Dad sees no reason why they shouldn’t merge with E. J. Despard, through an exchange of stock, to everybody’s benefit. They won’t even discuss it. It’s a Boston company, wholly owned by the Perkins family. We’re Goliath and they’re David, and in real life how often does David win? But this paint coup gives them a reprieve. By the time we stumble out with T-239, they’ll have another ten percent of the market and much prestige, and maybe they can stay out of our clutches. What I’m really saying is, to put this in proportion, it’s more important to them than it is to us. Dad never likes to come in second, but in the long run we probably won’t even lose much money. But for United States it’s life or death. Literally.”
“What happens if you find out anything before Tuesday?”
“Well, we’re coming down to the wire, Mr. Shayne. We’d need something so good we could go into court with it on Monday. Calling you in was Dad’s idea. This weekend was mine, a kind of last-ditch expedient. I thought if we could get you and Begley here, plus enough of the rest of us to feed you leads and suggestions, something might give. Begley was foolish to accept, in my opinion. He probably thought it would be suspicious not to. You can question various people individually during the day and get your ammunition ready. Tonight we’ll run an all-night poker game and put on the pressure. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the soul sessions people have been having lately.”
“The what?”
“They’re called soul sessions. That’s not a very good name for them. A bunch of people get together for a weekend. By that I mean sixty hours straight without sleep, in the same couple of rooms. For the first ten or twelve it’s like any ordinary cocktail party. Everybody talks on the surface. Then in the middle of the next day you stop trying to impress people, because you’re too tired. You get down to what’s really on your mind. I’ve sat through a couple and they didn’t do much for me, but I have friends who claim the experience changed their life. I don’t mean we’ll do any of that deep probing here.”
Shayne said skeptically, “Your father agreed?”
Forbes gave a half laugh. “I didn’t describe it quite like that to him. But he’s been involved in around-the-clock bargaining sessions with union people, and he knows that funny things happen between two o’clock in the morning and daybreak. You forget the stereotypes, the prepared positions. You realize that the other people in the room are human beings.”
“In Hal Begley’s case I wouldn’t go that far.” Shayne poured more coffee from the big thermos. “Are you certain the Begley firm handled the theft?”
“Positive. Begley himself isn’t directly involved. All the contacts have been handled by a girl named-”
He snapped his fingers. Shayne put in, “Candida Morse.”
“Yes. Begley went on the United States payroll as a management consultant for three months at forty thousand a month. Needless to say, that hundred and twenty thousand didn’t buy any management consulting, because he couldn’t consult his way out of a paper bag. It bought a Xerox copy of a three-hundred-page report. Our source at United States copied one of those pages. The heading had been clipped off but otherwise it was word for word page ninety-nine of our T-239 material, which Walter Langhorne and I put together last spring.”
Shayne thought for a moment. “How many copies did you make?”
“None at all. What we were doing was pulling the story together for the board of directors, so they could decide whether to budget for it at the June meeting. As a rule I get a little impatient with office security. Good Lord-we decide on a new advertising approach for some product, and the way we carry on you’d think it was plans and specs for a round-the-world missile. But the cloak and dagger stuff was justified on this one, even I could see that. It stayed in the safe and was only brought out for board members. They had to read it in the office under the eye of a certain Miss Phoebe McGonigle, who is so security-minded that she wouldn’t let her own mother go to the bathroom without proper clearance. So we aren’t talking about the kind of security lapse where some production worker sneaks into the super’s office after the rest of the day shift has gone home. This came from somebody close to the top.”
“How many possibilities, do you figure?”
