Read Online Point of No Return by John P. Marquand - Free Book Online Page A

it might be appropriate to say that Roger Blakesley used an electric razor. It was one of those small matters that could possibly count for something, but as he weighed the question he was appalled at his own small-mindedness, and he followed Mr. Burton to the depositors’ room without speaking.
    That subterranean room, like most bank interiors, had formerly been decorated with dark paneled walls and indirect lighting, with an oval table, and chairs, until someone had hit upon the idea that the Stuyvesant was old enough to have a tradition and the room, in which large customers met with officers and attorneys, ought to have some of that tradition. Thus some interesting prints and pictures now adorned the walls, old prints of Broadway, the Seventh Regiment marching down Fifth Avenue in the Civil War, framed pieces of Continental currency, ancient lottery tickets, century-old advertising broadsides, and a shelf with the first account books of the Stuyvesant. The State Street Trust in Boston, Tony Burton used to say, went in for ship models and now they had so many it made him seasick. He did not want to go as far as this but at the same time it did not hurt to show that the Stuyvesant had a past.
    The group had already gathered in the room with a past, although the material under discussion at this routine meeting was to deal essentially with the future. Stephen Merry was there, wearing his new oversize tortoise-shell glasses, and Roger Blakesley with his rimless glasses, and Alfred Brock from trust administration and Tom Joyce and two other men from the trust department. When the door was closed everything was friendly, because they were one big family.
    â€œThat was an awful rain last night,” Steve Merry said. “Our cellar leaked again.”
    Then they all sat down and talked for a few moments about cellars and the difficulties of subsurface drainage and Tony Burton began to tell about his own cellar and heating plant until he checked himself and said they had better get to work.
    Charles sat listening attentively with his eye on Roger Blakesley as Tony Burton took the meeting over. Since it was a routine conference, he knew most of the subject matter already—the general money situation, the holdings in new accounts, the stability of certain industries. Roger Blakesley, it seemed to Charles, was talking more than usual and trying almost too hard to contribute useful ideas. Charles could follow the discussion with no difficulty and at the same time think of Malcolm Bryant upstairs. He remembered, too, that he must have two hundred dollars transferred to the housekeeping account for Nancy, but his watchfulness never flagged. No matter how dull and how meaningless it was, you had to be very careful at a meeting. You had to remember the arguments and the way the minds had worked around the table. At any moment Tony Burton was apt to ask your opinion.
    It was only after half an hour that anything came up of an unusual nature. It came so entirely out of the blue that he had to think carefully back to what had led up to it. Somehow the thread of the meeting and its purpose had been dropped and Tony Burton had embarked on an extraneous subject, and it was most unusual for Tony to stray from the agenda. Suddenly he had announced, out of a clear sky, that a new depositor, with whom Charles was not acquainted, was applying for a six months’ loan of three hundred thousand dollars. He was a man named Godfrey W. Eaton who was the head of a substantial company manufacturing tiling. Roger Blakesley had seen him first and he had taken him to Stephen Merry and afterwards to Tony Burton. The bank had investigated Mr. Eaton through all the ordinary channels and now all his business life was down on a memorandum that sounded like the dossiers of a hundred other people whose names had come up at loan conferences.
    Mr. Eaton was from the Middle West, where he had owned a number of small factories, and Mr. Eaton had