Read Online Executive Suite by Cameron Hawley - Free Book Online

of the meeting.
    For once Walt Dudley was caught off guard. His smile vanished. “But I’m taking the seven o’clock plane to Chicago. The furniture market opens Monday and we’re to have a preview showing for the chain and mail order boys tomorrow.” His last words weakened as if the hearing of what he had said destroyed its validity. “Well, I can probably get a later plane.” The smile was back. “Dust off my chair, Erica, I’ll be there.”
    Walling was facing her, frowning. “I don’t see how I can possibly make it, Miss Martin. Everything’s set to start our test run on the molding process as soon as the five o’clock shift comes off.”
    â€œBetter hold it up,” Dudley advised, the older man to the younger.
    â€œWe can’t hold it up,” Walling protested. “They’ve already started reacting the finish resin. It has to come off on schedule or not at all. We’ve spent a whole month getting things organized for this one weekend. If we miss now it will be a month before we can get things set again for another factory test.”
    â€œCouldn’t they go ahead without you?” Erica Martin asked, framing the question so that it was a way of telling him that nothing must stop him from attending the meeting. Don Walling was a new vice-president … it had been less than two years since he had moved up to the Executive Suite … there were still things that he had to be taught.
    â€œI don’t see how. There’ll be decisions to make as they go along,” Walling said, “but under the circumstances, I don’t suppose there’s anything else that can be done except to hold up.”
    He was learning, Erica decided, but there was more to learn … he hadn’t taught himself to hide his feelings.
    â€œCheer up, boy,” Dudley broke in with a forced laugh, the good actor covering a fellow player’s bad cue. “The meeting might turn out to be a quickie and then you could still get over to the factory in time.”
    Erica Martin was tempted. She knew how important the test run was. She had seen the preliminary estimates that had been attached to the appropriation request. If the new molding process worked out it might well become the most important development in years. A month’s delay would be serious. If Avery were there he would almost certainly tell Walling to go ahead with the test run and not worry about the meeting. Yet she dared not yield to the temptation to speak for him. That was the frustrating prohibition that hemmed in her whole life. She knew, better than any living person, what Avery Bullard’s reaction would be to any given situation, yet she never dared anticipate it. She could only repeat his words, relay his orders, echo his commands. That was all. Anything else was beyond the border line.
    Outside the door, Erica Martin groped, as she had groped so many times before, to find some bench mark of reason that would make it easier to orient her thinking and find some justification for the unpleasant situation in which she constantly found herself. She was always in the bufferland between Avery Bullard and his vice-presidents. She had nothing to do with the orders that she relayed, yet she was forced to be the object of the resentment and anger that they aroused. The demand for a six o’clock executive committee meeting was an arbitrary act of dictatorship, issued without consideration of anyone else’s plans or desires. She agreed. But it wasn’t her fault. Why should they hate her … and they did hate her, all of them! Walling was the only one who had dared to show it, but that was only because he was new, because he hadn’t learned yet that a mask was essential equipment for the vice-president’s trade. They all had their masks, Dudley’s was laughter, Alderson’s was his impassivity, Grimm’s was the thin blue veil of smoke that drifted