‘Will you shut up, Joe?’ I said. To Pat: ‘Where is he? In hospital?’
‘They took him home. He wants you. The housekeeper said for you to go right on over.’
It was then I realized I didn’t even know where Aitken lived.
‘Where do I find him?’ I asked, getting to my feet.
‘He has a little shack out on Palm Boulevard,’ Joe said with a cynical smile. ‘A twenty-fourbedroom job with a lounge big enough to serve as a bus garage; just a throw away: a weekend cabin.’
I ignored him, looking at Pat.
‘The Gables, Palm Boulevard,’ she said briskly. ‘Third house up on the right.’
She began to open drawers and files, taking out papers and dumping them in a folder.
‘What are you up to?’ I asked, staring at her.
‘You may need these. I can’t imagine R.A. wants to see you so you can hold his hand. There’s a board meeting tomorrow. You’ll have to handle it. He’ll want to see all the papers, and here they are,’ and she thrust the folder at me.
‘But he’s broken his leg! He won’t want to talk business.
‘He’ll be in pain. Maybe they’ll have given him a shot by now.’
‘I’d take them, Ches,’ Pat said seriously. ‘You could need them.’
And as it turned out, she was right. I did need them.
The Gables was a vast house standing in a two-acre garden with a view over the sea and the distant hills. I wouldn’t have said it had twenty-four bedrooms, but it had at least ten. It was a nice house: the kind of house I would have liked to have owned. The kind of house your friends would have to admire even if they secretly hated you.
There was a fair-sized swimming-pool to the left of the house and a four-car garage which housed R.A.’s Bentley, a Cadillac tourer, a Buick estate wagon and T.R.2 runabout.
The garden, a mass of rose trees, begonias, petunias and such like, was floodlit. The swimmingpool was floodlit too, and looked lonely as I drove up the sanded drive: it was the kind of pool that would only look its best when dressed with bikini-clad beauties.
I was slightly stunned by this affluence. I knew R.A. was a Big Wheel, but I had no idea his earnings could run to a show this big and this lavish.
I left my car, toiled up twenty marble steps that led to the front door and rang the bell.
There was the usual short delay before the door opened and a tall, fat man wearing an English butler’s outfit raised white eyebrows at me. I learned later his name was Watkins, and he had been imported from England at a considerable cost.
‘I’m Chester Scott,’ I said. ‘Mr. Aitken is expecting me.’
‘Yes, sir. Will you step this way?’
I followed him through a large hall, down some stairs and into a room R.A. obviously used as his workroom. There was a desk, a dictaphone, four lounging chairs, a radio and about two thousand books lining the walls.
‘How is he?’ I asked as Watkins turned on the lights and made ready to fold his tent and steal away into the distant spaces of the house.
‘As comfortable as can be expected, sir,’ he told me in a voice a mortician would have envied. ‘If you will wait a few minutes, I will tell him you have arrived.’
He went away, and I took a turn around the room, staring at the book titles.
After a while Watkins came back.
‘Mr. Aitken will see you now.’
Clutching the bulky folder Pat had forced on to me, I followed him along a passage and into an elevator that hauled us up two storeys. We walked across a fair-sized landing to a door, Watkins rapped, turned the handle and stood aside.
‘Mr. Scott, sir.’
Aitken was lying in a single divan type of bed. The room was large and one hundred per cent masculine. The drapes were drawn back from the big window that looked on to the moon-lit sea.
Aitken looked as he always looked, except it seemed odd to find him lying down instead of standing up. He had a cigar between his teeth, and there were papers strewn over the bedspread. A bedside lamp made a pool of light around him, the rest of the room was in shadows.
‘Come in, Scott,’ he said, and I could tell by the rasp in his voice that he was pretty testy. This is something, isn’t it? Pull up a chair. I’m going to make some fool pay for this! I’ve sent my attorney down to take a look at those steps: they’re a damn death trap. I’m going to sue the ears off them for this, but that doesn’t mend my leg.’
I pulled up a chair near him and sat down. I started to express my sympathy, but he brushed that aside.
‘Save it,’ he said irritably. Talking about it won’t do any good. I’m going to be out of action for at least four weeks if I can believe that fool of a doctor. When you get to my age and weight a broken leg can be tricky. If I don’t watch out, I’ll be lame, and that’s one thing I’m not going to be. So I’ll have to stick here. There’s that board meeting tomorrow. You’ll have to handle it.’ He stared at me. ‘Think you can do it?’
This was no time to be modest.
‘You tell me how you want it handled,’ I said, ‘and I’ll handle it.’
‘Got the papers with you?’
That’s when I blessed Pat. I would have looked four kinds of a dumb cluck if I hadn’t listened to her. I took the papers from the folder and offered them to him.
He looked at me for a long ten seconds, then his hard face creased into the resemblance of a smile.
‘You know, Scott,’ he said as he took the papers, ‘you’re a pretty smart fella. What made you bring these? What made you imagine I wouldn’t be laid low and unable to work?’
‘I couldn’t imagine you being laid low, Mr. Aitken,’ I said. ‘You’re a man who isn’t laid low easily.’
‘That’s a fact.’ I could see I had said absolutely the right thing. He put the papers down and reached forward to knock ash off his cigar into the ash-tray on the bedside table.
‘Tell me something, Scott: have you got any money?’
This unexpected question startled me, and for a moment I stared at him.
‘I have just over twenty thousand dollars,’ I said.
It was his turn to look surprised.
‘Twenty thousand, eh? As much as that?’ Then he chuckled. This was the first time since I had known him I had ever seen him look jovial. ‘I guess I haven’t given you much time to spend your money, huh?’
‘It’s not that bad,’ I said. ‘Most of it came to me in a legacy.’
‘I’ll tell you why I asked,’ he said. ‘I’m getting tired of working for a bunch of egg-heads. I’m planning to set up on my own in New York. For the next four weeks you’re going to run the International. I’ll tell you what to do, but you’ll have to do it, and there will be times when you will have to make a snap decision without consulting me. I don’t expect you to keep calling me up and asking me this and that. I’ll give you the broad policy to work on, but you will have to implement it. If you make a success of it, and when I get back, I’ll give you a chance every man in this racket would give his ears to have. I’ll make you my partner in New York if you are willing to put your money into the business. It’ll mean you’ll run the place up there while I keep die International going. That way both of us will make a lot of money, Scott. What do you think?’
‘Why, sure.’ I sat forward, my heart thumping. ‘You can count on me, Mr. Aitken.’
‘Okay, we’ll see. You run the International without a mistake and you’re in. Slip up and you’re out. Understand?’
I hadn’t any time to think what this chance would mean, for we got right down then to the board meeting, but later, when I had the time to think about it, I realized how big this chance could be. It could easily give me the opportunity to break into Aitken’s class, and sooner or later set up on my own. With a twenty-thousand-dollar stake, with the opportunities New York can offer to a go-ahead advertising man and with Aitken’s backing, I really had a chance, as he had said, that any man in the racket would give his ears to have.
I was with Aitken for two and a half hours: going through the board meeting minutes, and then on to policy matters that he would have had to tackle himself during the coming week. Pat had given me every paper we needed. She hadn’t missed out on one, and that made a big impression on Aitken. Finally, around eleven-thirty, a tall, thin woman in a black silk dress, who I afterwards learned was Mrs. Hepple, his housekeeper, came in and
