CHAPTER III
It was three o’clock in the afternoon and almost time for the Widow Foshay to come in with the broth.
Thinking of it, Packer gagged a little.
Someday, he promised himself, he’d beat Tony’s brains out. If it hadn’t been for him, this never would have started.
Almost six months now and every blessed day she had brought the broth and sat and talked with him while he forced down a bowl of it. And the worst of it, Packer told himself, was that he had to pretend that he thought that it was good.
And she was so gay! Why did she have to be so gay? Toujours gai, he thought. Just like the crazy alley cat that ancient writer had penned the silly lines about.
Garlic in the broth, he thought—my God, who’d ever heard of garlic in beef broth! It was uncivilized. A special recipe, she’d said, and it was all of that. And yet it had been the garlic that had done the job with the yellow spore-life—it was the food needed by the spores to kick them into life and to start them growing.
The garlic in the broth might have been good for him as well, he admitted to himself, for in many years, it seemed, he had not felt so fine. There was a spring in his step, he’d noticed, and he didn’t get so tired; he used to take a nap in the afternoon and now he never did. He worked as much as ever, actually more than ever, and he was, except for the widow and the broth, a very happy man. Yes, a very happy man.
He would continue to be happy, he told himself, as long as Tony left him to his stamps. Let the little whippersnapper carry the load of Efficiency, Inc.; he was, after all, the one who had insisted on it. Although, to give him credit, he had done well with it. A lot of industries had signed up and a whole raft of insurance companies and a bunch of bond houses and a good scattering of other lines of business. Before long, Tony said, there wouldn’t be a business anywhere that would dare to try to get along without the services of Efficiency, Inc.
The doorbell chimed and he went to answer it. It would be the Widow Foshay, and she would have her hands full with the broth.
But it was not the widow.
“Are you Mr. Clyde Packer?” asked the man who stood in the hall.
“Yes, sir,” Packer said. “Will you please step in?”
“My name is John Griffin,” said the man, after he was seated. “I represent Geneva.”
“Geneva? You mean the Government?”
The man showed him credentials.
“Okay,” said Packer a bit frostily, being no great admirer of the government. “What can I do for you?”
“You are senior partner in Efficiency, Inc., I believe.”
“I guess that’s what I am.”
“Mr. Packer, don’t you know?”
“Well, I’m not positive. I’m a partner, but I don’t know about this senior business. Tony runs the show and I let him have his head.”
“You and your nephew are sole owners of the firm?”
“You bet your boots we are. We kept it for ourselves. We took no one in with us.”
“Mr. Packer, for some time the Government has been attempting to negotiate with Mr. Camper. He’s told you nothing of it?”
“Not a thing,” said Packer. “I’m busy with my stamps. He doesn’t bother me.”
“We have been interested in your service,” Griffin said. “We have tried to buy it.”
“It’s for sale,” said Packer. “You just pay the price and –”
“But you don’t understand. Mr. Camper insists on a separate contract for every single office that we operate. That would run to a terrific figure –”
“Worth it,” Packer assured him. “Every cent of it.”
“It’s unfair,” said Griffin firmly. “We are willing to buy it on a departmental basis and we feel that even in that case we would be making some concession. By rights the government should be allowed to come in under a single covering arrangement.”
“Look,” protested Packer, “what are you talking to me for? I don’t run the business; Tony does. You’ll have to deal with him. I have faith in the boy. He has a good hard business head. I’m not even interested in Efficiency. All I’m interested in is stamps.”
“That’s just the point,” said Griffin heartily. “You’ve hit the situation exactly on the head.”
“Come again?” asked Packer.
“Well, it’s like this,” Griffin told him in confidential tones. “The government gets a lot of stamps in its daily correspondence. I forget the figure, but it runs to several tons of philatelic material every day. And from every planet in the galaxy. We have in the past been disposing of it to several stamp concerns, but there’s a disposition in certain quarters to offer the whole lot as a package deal at a most attractive price.”
“That is fine,” said Packer, “but what would I do with several tons a day?”
“I wouldn’t know,” declared Griffin, “but since you are so interested in stamps, it would give you a splendid opportunity to have first crack at a batch of top-notch material. It is, I dare say, one of the best sources you could find.”
“And you’d sell all this stuff to me if I put in a word for you with Tony?”
Griffin grinned happily. “You follow me exactly, Mr. Packer.”
Packer snorted. “Follow you! I’m way ahead of you.”
“Now, now,” cautioned Griffin, “you must not get the wrong impression. This is a business offer—a purely business offer.”
“I suppose you’d expect no more than nominal payment for all this waste paper I would be taking off your hands.”
“Very nominal,” said Griffin.
“All right, I’ll think about it and I’ll let you know. I can’t promise you a thing, of course.”
“I understand, Mr. Packer. I do not mean to rush you.”
After Griffin left, Packer sat and thought about it and the more he thought about it, the more attractive it became.
He could rent a warehouse and install an Efficiency Basket in it and all he’d have to do would be dump all that junk in there and the basket would sort it out for him.
He wasn’t exactly sure if one basket would have the time to break the selection down to more than just planetary groupings, but if one basket couldn’t do it, he could install a second one and between the two of them, he could run the classification down to any point he wished. And then, after the baskets had sorted out the more select items for his personal inspection, he could set up an organization to sell the rest of it in job lots and he could afford to sell it at a figure that would run all the rest of those crummy dealers clear out on the limb.
He rubbed his hands together in a gesture of considerable satisfaction, thinking how he could make it rough for all those skinflint dealers. It was murder, he reminded himself, what they got away with; anything that happened to them, they had coming to them.
But there was one thing he gagged on slightly. What Griffin had offered him was little better than a bribe, although it was, he supposed, no more than one could expect of the government. The entire governmental structure was loaded with grafters and ten percenters and lobbyists and special interest boys and others of their ilk. Probably no one would think a thing of it if he made the stamp deal—except the dealers, of course, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it except to sit and howl.
But aside from that, he wondered, did he have the right to interfere with Tony? He could mention it to him, of course, and Tony would say yes. But did he have the right?