Progress through the ranks had moved Steve Wyatt up from the seventh floor a year ago; since then his desk position had been switched three times-each time closer to the head of the room. As portfolio manager for the Wakeman Fund, a closed-end mutual fund, he now rated a desk less than twenty feet from the splendid dark-oak door of the executive sanctum, inhabited by the old man himself: Howard Claiborne, descendant of merchant princes, Wall Street patrician, gentleman of glacial elegance honed by ancient habit, representing the quiet wealth of old money, the image of grace and comfort, well-worn elegance, and mellow tone.
Wyatt rolled his desk swivel chair back on its casters to sit down and turned to speak to the blond young man at the next desk.
“Anything come up?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” The blond man gave him a brash grin. “I put a few notes on your desk.”
“Thanks for covering for me, Jimmy. It was important.”
“Sure-what was her name?”
Wyatt waved a hand and smiled. “How’s the Yankee Croesus? Good mood or bad?”
“Good, today. I took your report on Motors in to him, and he liked it. I heard him grunt four times while he was reading it.”
“Four times?”
“Four times. Indeed. You did a hell of a job.” Jimmy grinned at him.
“Did that seem to surprise him?”
“God, no. The last time anything gave the old man a surprise was when Truman beat Dewey. That’s nothing-old man Bierce told me the last time Claiborne smiled was the day they repealed the Volstead Act. But he liked your report, even if he didn’t crack a smile, and that’s saying something, since it came from a man whose guiding principle is ‘No.’”
Wyatt grinned and nodded, and watched Jimmy get up to walk over to the railing that surrounded the secretary’s desk just outside the door of Claiborne’s office. Jimmy De Angelo was a slim, blond, northern Italian youth with the fresh open innocence of a Midwestern college sophomore; he was inoffensive and eager to be helpful. Wyatt watched him go over to the railing to speak with the girl at the desk there. She was Howard Claiborne’s private secretary, but in the feudal setup of Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers even a private secretary didn’t rate a room of her own; her status was indicated only by the oak railing that separated her desk from the bullpen. She was a Polish girl-Anne Goralski. A small girl, dark and pretty. Smooth Indian-black hair gracefully surrounded her olive face. Jimmy De Angelo had been dating her casually for a few weeks.
She was smiling up at Jimmy while he talked; but then her eyes slid past Jimmy and came to rest on Wyatt. He let his eyelids droop when he smiled at her. She lifted her eyes to reply to something Jimmy De Angelo said; De Angelo turned, shaking his head, to come back to his desk, and the girl returned her glance to Wyatt and suddenly gave him a blinding smile. It was lovely and brilliant. Her teeth were bright, she looked happy and flirtatious.
De Angelo sat down, glum, and turned his back to make a phone call. Wyatt propped one elbow on his desk and looked past De Angelo’s shoulder at the girl. She had gone back to her work. The thought which had edged into his mind in Hackman’s office was still there: she was Howard Claiborne’s private secretary.
Dimly he heard De Angelo, talking on the phone: “It’s quoted forty-five to forty-six bid and asked, CTM… Well, I know, but Gulfstream Investments sold a big block, you know.” Wyatt leaned back in his swivel chair, his eyes closing down to slits, thinking.
Promptly at five o’clock, Howard Claiborne emerged from his cork-lined office and marched into the bullpen rather like a Buckingham Palace guard. Claiborne had nostrils like a horse; he carried his head high. He wore a carnation in his buttonhole and looked as dignified as a penguin.
The old man’s appearance always had a disintegrating effect on conversation. The muted bedlam of the bullpen subsided to a low rumble, soft voices speaking into telephones. Claiborne stopped at Anne Goralski’s desk to say a few words and then came forward, dropping a remark here and there-each of his words was received as attentively as a ransom note. He had a dignified core of blue ice; he carried around him an aura of melancholy antique solitude, indifference to trivialities-a gentleman of privilege with a shrewd, skilled intellect. He was the heir to one of the great fortunes, but in spite of that, he had, according to the values of his generation, chosen to start out as a page boy and runner for the family bank firm.
He stopped by Steve Wyatt’s desk. “You did a satisfactory job on the Motors report.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Claiborne nodded and moved on-the evening ritual. From here he would go directly to the Wall Street heliport, where his private copter would pick him up and whisk him to his estate on Fishers Island.
When the dapper, unbent old figure had disappeared into the corridor, the bullpen erupted. Typewriters were tilted back into their desks, and the steno girls gathered together to leave in a twittering knot. The men shoved papers into briefcases, straightened up their desk tops, and went out by ones and twos. Wyatt sat back, relaxed, his arrogant high-bred face sleepy, watching bemusedly while Jimmy De Angelo made his preparations for leaving, and then, instead of heading for the hall, went to the secretary’s railing, where Anne Goralski was repairing her eye shadow with the aid of her compact. De Angelo spoke; the girl shook her head; De Angelo shrugged angrily.
De Angelo came past Wyatt’s desk with a downturned mouth and joined the exodus. Wyatt stayed put. The huge arena was almost empty when he left his desk and went toward the girl’s little fenced-in enclosure. She was busy liberating a little sweetheart rose from the vase on her desk and pinning it to her dress. When she looked up at him with her warm brown eyes, he said, “I just wanted to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
He smiled at her. “You light up the whole room.”
It was a direct attack, but it didn’t put her off; it amused her. She had put the telephone receiver on her shoulder, head tilted against it to free her hands, and now she shushed him with a gesture and spoke softly into the phone. “Yes, Mr. Bierce.” She hung up and got out of her chair. She went through the little gate and said, “I’ll be back immediately-I’ve got to hear the rest of this, it must be good.” Wrinkling her nose at him, she disappeared into the executive offices.
Glancing impatiently across the empty bullpen, Wyatt lit a cigarette and waited.
She was true to her word. Within less than sixty seconds she reappeared. She had good breasts and a provocatively outflaring rump; she was animated and vibrant-and, he thought, ready to be aroused by gentle, easy masculinity.
She settled her nice round little ass in the chair, not taking her eyes off him. “Now, then, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir,” he told her. “‘My prince,’ if you like.”
She wet her lips with the sharp pink tip of her tongue and said, “You were saying, my prince?”
“To begin with, I don’t mean to tread on anyone’s toes.”
“Whose, for instance? Mine?”
“De Angelo’s.”
She only grinned at him. “Tell me, do you always talk with your teeth together?”
“That’s breeding.” He glanced at the door and said, “A stock-broker with a reputation as the wildest party thrower in West-chester County has invited me to a bash at his suburban bungalow tonight, only I have a terrible problem.”
“And?”
“The invitation is for two,” he said, and turned his hands over. “You see how it is. Mr. Hackman was absolutely insistent that I bring with me the most beautiful young lady of my acquaintance. Of course, you are the most beautiful young lady of my acquaintance, and in order to meet the requirement, I would have to bring you. However, since we’ve hardly exchanged fifty words in three months, I don’t hold out much hope of meeting the requirement. That’s my problem.”