We got out of the cab and crossed the street, and O’Connor took us through it. We used the one elevator that was in service. O’Connor took us upstairs and down again, finally showing us the “stockbrokers’ board room,” as he called it, across from the elevators downstairs. But Hortense corrected him.
“Mr. O’Connor,” she said, “it may have been designed for eminent stockholders, but now it has become the reception room of the Hortense Garrett Biographical Institute, and for that purpose, is perfection itself. Do you agree, Dr. Palmer?”
“I can’t imagine anything better.”
And I couldn’t. It was large, a bit higher than most rooms and wainscotted in some kind of wood. It was dignified in a quiet, high-toned way.
A half-hour later we were in the Black Tahiti Restaurant just down the street. We all ordered margaritas and some sort of Polynesian food which I don’t remember the name of, but Hortense was the only one who had anything to eat. When the drinks came, Garrett tasted the salt on his glass, raised it, and said: “To the Hortense Garrett Institute.” When we had all taken a sip, he added: “Once more Dr. Palmer reaches out and grabs the brass ring from nowhere.”
“Dr. Palmer,” I said, “did nothing of the sort. He just passed on a tip that paid off — as we think.”
“I imagine you saw, though, after meeting the colonel, Lloyd, why I had to be sure you weren’t being used?”
“Was he using you is the question,” Sam Dent said.
I should have been pleased with myself, but I wasn’t. We were in a booth. I don’t know whether the Garretts being on one side of the table, with Dent and me on the other, upset me or what; but for some reason I felt gloomy in spite of the building and the giant steps we were taking toward getting the Institute started. But Sam was truly depressed.
“The point,” he said, “is not the brass ring that was grabbed or who was using whom, but what we do with the worst turkey I ever heard of, now that we seem to have it. Mr. Garrett, I hate to be a killjoy, but if Bagastex broke Colonel Lucas, think what it will do to you.”
“Make me rich is all.”
“Richer,” Hortense said. “He’s already filthy rich — except that the Hortense Garrett Institute will, to some extent, change that situation.”
“How can stuff you can’t sell make you rich?” Sam asked.
“By my changing the angle of promotion.”
“Lucas gave it all the promotion a product could ask for. That’s what landed him behind the eight ball.”
“I said I would change the angle.”
“Am I supposed to ask how?”
“By ninety degrees, exactly.”
“What is this, some kind of joke?”
“Not at all, Sam. As you’ve observed a great many times, Bagastex, horizontal, was a flop, a turkey, a bust. It had to be made too thick. Kids tripped on it. It took a power tool to cut it. And it created a storage problem in places that handled it. But vertical — as house siding — it’s perfect. That’s where the ninety degrees come in. I had some of the stuff sent to the lab up in Wilmington and told them to work on it, see what it was good for, if anything. Don’t forget, Sam, I often know a thing from a thing, and with this crazy thing, the point of it is: it’s cheap. So they heated it, hoping it would soften and they could press a matrix into it and mold it to look like bricks or stone or something. But all it did was turn white. No matter what color it had been from the dye that had been put in it, when it was heated, it turned white. Pete Holton there in the lab kept thinking there had to be some way of making use of that characteristic. And all of a sudden, he had it — or thought he had. He loaded some oil bidons on a truck, drove down to Georgia, and propositioned the Bagastex foreman for a few gallons to take back home so he could fill up that hole in his cellar without calling a goddam plumber who would, in turn, have to apply for a permit which he wasn’t at all sure he could get because it involved his sewer connection. So, for a hundred bucks, the foreman filled the bidons with liquid Bagastex, the mush they rolled into sheets and tried to sell as linoleum. It just so happened that this batch of stuff was red, so when Pete got back, he poured a bidon of it into the tray he’d used for heating, and as it was starting to set, he pressed a matrix into it, one he’d made from a brick wall, a hammered mold of wet cardboard that he had let dry. The Bagastex took the impression and looked exactly like brick except that the joints were red, just like the rest. But a hot wire grid, when he pressed it down on them, burned them white; they looked like the plaster between bricks. Then he built a small house of the stuff on the hill there by the lab. He’s been swamped with inquiries about it. Curiously, it uncorked one advantage we hadn’t anticipated, that no metal siding has. It’s slightly porous, so ivy clings to it, which it won’t do to steel, aluminum, or copper.”
“I just love that little brick privy,” murmured Hortense with stars in her eyes — “its walls all covered with ivy—”
“You go wash your mouth out with soap,” Mr. Garrett snapped.
“I’m showing appreciation!”
He tried to reprove her some more but had to laugh in spite of himself. We all had to laugh.
Mr. Garrett went on: “The funny part of it was that I knew nothing about it until Lloyd Palmer called. Holton had sent me a memo, but I didn’t take time to read it until Miss Immelman brought me the file we had on Bagastex. There it was on top — and I got busy quick. So... once more we have Lloyd Palmer to thank. Let’s drink to him.”
By then more margaritas had been ordered. They all picked theirs up, and I picked mine up before I remembered that I shouldn’t drink. By now I thought it was impossible to feel any crummier, in spite of the laughing I’d done. But with those three glasses raised in my honor, I managed it. Garrett looked at his watch and then asked Sam if he was all squared away for tomorrow.
“I am,” Dent said, “if Mrs. G. likes the building and you’ve come to a final decision that you want the deal to go through.”
“I love it,” Hortense said.
“Then it’s all yours, Sam. See that O’Connor is paid, and for God’s sake, check all the stock that Lucas turns in for those subsidiary companies. I don’t say he’d forge duplicates—”
“I do.”
“Let’s both say it, then.”
“Mr. Garrett, it’s all under control.”
“O.K., take it away.”
Mr. Garrett looked at his watch, motioned to the waitress for the check, then got up and followed her to the desk to pay it. When he came back, Sam asked him: “You’ll be here tomorrow?”
“I hadn’t expected to be. I have to be getting back. If something comes up, call me and—”
“You’re going back tonight?” Hortense asked, surprised.
“It’s not too late. I’ll have the road to myself.”
“Well, don’t wake me by calling me up.”
“Do I ever? How did you get here, by the way?”
“Taxi.”
“Lloyd, would you see her home?”
“Be only too glad, of course.”
Mr. Garrett had left his car in the ARMALCO garage. As soon as we were out on the street, he flagged a cab to take him there. He kissed Hortense, got in, and drove off. Same Dent flagged a cab, kissed her, and drove off. By then, I had told her where I was parked, but without saying a word, we knew we weren’t calling a cab. We swung hands and started walking down Seventeenth Street by the light of the moon, carefree, goofy, and happy just from knowing we would be together that night. We hardly said anything driving out or in the apartment, hanging her coat up, or having our first kiss of the evening.