The branch manager at last dared to pour himself a heavy drink and left.
His bedside phone shrilled at 3 in the morning. “Jim Far-well,” he croaked into it while two clock dials with the hands making two luminous L’s wavered in front of him. His drink at the office had been the first of a series.
“This is Greenhough, Farwell,” snarled the voice of the senior partner. “You get over here right away. Bring Clancy, whatever his name is—the lawyer.” Click.
Where was “here”? Farwell phoned the Greybar. “Don’t connect me with his room—I just want to know if he’s in.”
The floor clerk said he was and Farwell tried to phone the home of the Chicago branch’s lawyer, but got no answer. Too much time lost. He soaked his head in cold water, threw his clothes on and drove hell-for-leather to the Greybar.
Greenhough was in one of the big two-bedroom suites on the sixteenth floor. A frozen-faced blond girl in an evening gown let Farwell in without a word. The senior partner was sprawled on the sofa in dress trousers and stiff shirt. He had a bruise under his left eye.
“I came as quickly as I could, Mr. Greenhough,” said Farwell. “I couldn’t get in touch with—”
The senior partner coughed thunderously, twitched his face at Farwell in a baffling manner, and then stalked into a bedroom. The blond girl’s frozen mask suddenly split into a vindictive grin. “You’re going to get it!” she jeered at Farwell. “I’m supposed to think his name’s Wilkins. Well, go on after him, pappy.” -t
Farwell went into the bedroom. Greenhough was sitting on the bed dabbing at the bruise and muttering. “I told you I wanted our lawyer!” he shouted at the branch manager. “I was attacked by a drunkard in that damned Mars Room of yours and by God booked by the police like a common criminal! I’m going to get satisfaction if I have to turn the city up-sidedown! Get on that phone and get me Clancy or whatever his name is!”
“But I can’t!” said Farwell desperately. “He won’t answer his phone and in the second place he isn’t that kind of lawyer. I can’t ask Clarahan to fight a disorderly-conduct charge— he’s a big man here. He only does contract law and that kind of thing. You posted bond, didn’t you, Mr. Greenhough?”
“Twenty dollars,” said the senior partner bitterly, “and they only wanted ten from that drunken ape.”
“Then why not just forget about it? Forfeit the bond and probably you’ll never hear of it again, especially since you’re an out-of-towner. I’ll do what I can to smooth it over if they don’t let it slide.”
“Get out of here,” said Greenhough, dabbing at the bruise again.
The blond was reading a TV magazine in the parlor; she ignored Farwell as he let himself out.
The branch manager drove to an all-night barber shop near
one of the terminals and napped through “the works.” A slow breakfast killed another hour and by then it wasn’t too ridiculously early to appear at the office.
He dawdled over copy until 9 and phoned the Greybar. They told him Mr. Greenhough had checked out leaving no forwarding address. The morning papers came and he found nothing about a scuffle at the Mars Room or the booking of Greenhough. Maybe the senior partner had given a false name—Wilkins?—or maybe the stories had been killed because Greenhough and Brady did some institutional advertising. Maybe there was some mysterious interlock between Greenhough and Brady and the papers high up on some misty alp that Farwell had never glimpsed.
Don’t worry about it, he told himself savagely. You gave him good advice, the thing’s going to blow over, Clarahan wouldn’t have taken it anyway. He hoped Pete Messier in New York wouldn’t hear about it and try to use it as a lever to pry him out of the spot he held, the spot Pete Messier coveted. Maybe there was some way he could get somebody in the New York office to keep an eye on Messier and let him know how he^was doing, just to get something he could counter-punch with when Messier pulled something like that garbled message stunt.