“Sit down, Spencer,” the president said.
“Yes, sir,” Mark said. He dipped into the chair, and sat with bright expectancy.
“Too bad about Hugo,” McHale said, scowling, putting his cigar back in his mouth and puffing swiftly to bring it to life.
“Yes, it is,” Mark said. “He’s a fine man. He... he’s probably innocent — wouldn’t you say?”
“He’s through.” McHale said it with finality. “He’s been a problem all along. We held an emergency Board Meeting at noon. Hugo’s out.” The president of the company scowled, looking past Mark to distant, important horizons of his highly skilled executive mind. Mark experienced a sense of awe. It would be wonderful working for this man...
“Now about you...” the president said.
“Yes?” Mark said eagerly.
“I never could understand why Hugo took you out of the shop,” McHale said. “He knows our company policy. I have to be fair, though. I got out your record. I’ve been studying it.” He opened the center drawer of his desk and took out a file folder, thick with papers. He put it on the desk top, closed the center drawer, then waved vaguely at the folder with his cigar.
“Do you know what this record shows?” he said.
“No, sir,” Mark said, suppressing his eagerness.
“It shows that company policy Is right,” McHale said. “You are a good machinist. But in the field? You make repairs. You don’t make suggestions for improvements. You don’t have a college mind. Oh, Hugo’s been covering for you; but the fact remains that it takes a college man in the field, not a repairman. You don’t have the technical know-how to suggest changes in design.”
Mark was silent, ice forming in his blood.
“I just don’t know why Hugo promoted you out of the shop,” McHale said. “But I have to be fair to you. You can’t keep your present job. In fact, we don’t need a special field engineer, we have resident engineers all over the country to handle breakdown problems and suggest changes in design. But you’re a good company man. I don’t see how I can just send you back to a lathe. It’s a problem. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make a job for you as swing shift efficiency expert — until a lead man job opens up. It will be quite a salary cut, but no one needs to know about that but the payroll department. They have to know, of course. Or, if you’d rather look for another job, I’ll see that you get the highest recommendation. Go for the top. If you can handle the job I won’t hinder you with another company.”
Stunned, Mark remained like a statue. Once, his face muscles cramped visibly. Slowly his eyes went dead.
McHale looked at the ceiling, puffing furiously on his cigar, and waited. “Maybe you’d like to think it over,” he said abruptly. “Take a couple of weeks vacation and think about it. You have it coming. If you don’t, I’ll clear it. At your present salary, too!”
“No!” Mark said, his voice harsh. He took a deep breath. “That is, I’ll take the vacation at my present salary. Why not?” His grin was twisted, apologetic. “But I’ll take the job. It is a promotion — from what I was, isn’t it...”
“That’s the spirit,” McHale said, obviously relieved. “And you can be sure I’ll keep my eye on you.” He came around his desk and shook hands with Mark. “A man with your field experience should make a good shop foreman, once he gets a few years of management experience in his background.”
He pushed Mark toward the door, shaking his hand enthusiastically, puffing blue smoke from his rich cigar.
Mark smiled brightly at Gertrude on his way back to his cubicle. With his door closed, he sat down at his desk. He looked at his name, shadowed in reverse on the frosted glass of his closed door. And a slow flush built up on his face.
Claire had bought him this cubicle with his name on the door. The whole, simple truth had come home to Mark at last. Her relief which she couldn’t conceal when she learned Hugo had been arrested and she would no longer have to keep paying.
“You admired Air. Rice and could thin\ no wrong of him,” Claire had said, “but it came as no surprise to me. He is a selfish egotistical man. Don’t grieve for him, grieve for his wife.”
And Air. McHale, frowning, “I JUST DON’T KNOW why Hugo promoted you out of the shop...”
And Hugo’s hate curved lips, saying, “Why do you suppose I lifted you out of the shop? Because you had some very special talent?”
Suddenly Mark’s lips began to tremble. Tears streamed from his eyes. Then his head was cradled in his arms on the desk while he sobbed openly, shaking with the torment that possessed him, the grief he could never share, the thing he could never let Claire know he knew.
He became quiet. Finally he lifted his head. He took out a cigarette and lit it, staring unseeingly at the surface of his desk.
He fished in his side coat pocket and brought out a slip of paper. He unfolded it and flattened it on the desk. He studied it, then reached for the phone.
“Outside, Gertrude,” he said in a quiet, subdued voice.
He read the phone number off the slip of paper as he dialed it.
“I would like to speak to Mr. Rosen,” he said.
There was quite a wait.
“Mr. Rosen?” Mark Spencer said. “I was in earlier this afternoon and ordered a bedroom set with twin beds. Remember? I’m calling to cancel the order.”
To Skin a Cat
by Elijah Ellis
It may be true, as the bard would have us believe, that “truth is the trial of itself”. But most human predicaments require a more practical solution.
The jury didn’t leave the box. They huddled around the foreman, whispering among themselves. It wouldn’t take them long to reach a verdict — since there was only one verdict they could possibly give.
I leaned back in my chair at the prosecution table, and looked up at the ancient ceiling fans that did little to cool off the sweltering, jampacked courtroom. I lowered my gaze, glanced briefly across the aisle at the defense table.
The defendant himself was putting on a show of complete indifference, but I noticed that he kept clenching and unclenching his fists. He was a pretty-boy, with masses of black curls and a girl’s full-lipped mouth. He was around twenty-five. He was also a murderer. I knew it. Everyone in the courtroom knew it. Jack Vendise had taken a shotgun away from old Bob Blaisedell and blown out the old man’s brains. Nice fellow, Jack Vendise.
I turned in my chair until I could look back over the rail that divided the courtroom. Every seat was taken. Farmers in overalls and hickory shirts sat with women in print dresses and sunbonnets. Just beyond the rail, in the first row of seats, sat Betty Blaisedell, the murdered man’s daughter.
Betty was sixteen. She had on a shapeless black dress and her eyes were red and puffy from crying, but she was enjoying the whole thing. She sat between her mother, who was also in black, and her uncle, Roy Blaisedell.
My gaze lingered on Roy. He was a big, beefy, sunburned man. He looked awkward and sweaty in an ill-fitting suit. He never took his eyes away from the defendant. Roy had loved his older brother, Bob.
I just hoped Roy wouldn’t start anything here in court.
I looked on around the big, low-ceilinged room. Beyond the defense table, Sheriff Ed Carson sat with his back to the wall. Our eyes met, and Ed gave me a somber wink.
Then the foreman of the jury rose. “Yer honor, we’ve reached a verdict.”