Chapter 2

How to Succeed in Business—One Way

I got there by going out on deck. The skyline was still going by; we were passing the Wall Street district, and the sun was bright and the water sparkling.

I went up one deck too many and so walked aft in the open along the boat deck’s narrow space, hemmed in on one side by lifeboats and by the windows of the deluxe staterooms on the other. As I did, the deck door of one of the staterooms opened and she came out.

The long black coat was gone. She was wearing a white bare-shouldered sundress and big, dark sunglasses. The hair was still faded silver, but nothing else about her was faded. She had the happy, relaxed air of someone about to enjoy a little quiet, after a hectic time. Which I guess was the case.

It was as good a chance as I might have all day, short of walking up to her door and knocking.

As she started to pass me, not looking at me at all, I said, “Procedural meeting.”

She looked at me for a fraction of a second out of the corners of wonderfully sky-blue eyes, and went on.

I turned after her. “Procedural meeting,” I said, louder.

This time she turned, and really looked at me. Then she went on again.

“ABC,” I called. She kept going.

And a voice behind me said, “D, E, F. What the hell are you up to?”

It was the last person on earth, or rather on water, that I wanted to see at that moment. It was Twit-Twit.

“Nothing. Why aren’t you at the bar?”

She had come out of a passageway door. “Because I thought I’d find out what was delaying you. Since when did you start molesting gray-haired old ladies?”

“I wasn’t molesting gray-haired old ladies. I was practicing my spelling lesson.”

“You were like hell. You said something to that woman.”

Sometimes the most distracting thing you can say is the plain truth.

“I gave her the code word,” I said.

“Go code-word yourself,” said Twit-Twit. “And you know what word I’m thinking of.”

“Come off it.”

Twit-Twit is too smart a tactician to press an advantage once she has gained it. She said, “Come in and get your drink.”

But as we walked down to the promenade deck, she added, “Don’t think you’re fooling anyone, junior.”

The only people at the smoking room bar were the Dolans and a dark, sallow man with a droopy, Stalin-like mustache, although others were still at some of the tables nearby. The man with the mustache had a bright-blue shirt and the look of a weasel who is momentarily sleepy, and I concluded he was fairly drunk. Two Martinis stood in front of two bar stools, and Twit-Twit (In case you wonder, as a lot of people have, why she is called Twit-Twit, it’s because her last name is Twickenham and, as explained in The Traces of Brillart, when she was in school some of her classmates nicknamed her Twit-Twit because they thought she was flighty and brainless. How wrong they were.) and I climbed onto the appropriate stools. That put me next to the sleepy weasel.

I sipped the Martini. It was still very cold, and clean, and dry. There’s something about the first drink of the day, and I winked my appreciation to the bartender. He smiled. It still looked like the beginning of a good trip.

Tom was saying, “My glass is empty. Why is my glass always empty?”

Twit-Twit said, “There’s a little leprechaun who keeps boring holes in the bottom of it.”

Betsy snorted. “There’s a big hole in the top of his glass,” she said, “and a little leprechaun named Dolan keeps finding it.”

Tom pushed his glass to the smiling bartender. “It’s the story of my life,” he said.

The sleepy weasel lurched in my direction and said, “How’s everything?” I said it was fine and turned to Twit-Twit. But it wasn’t that easy.

“Think we’re gonna have good trip?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I never been on this boat before. Any big boat, that matter. I always fly.”

Twit-Twit murmured in my ear, “You make friends so easily. How I admire the gift.”

“Go code-word yourself.”

I turned and surveyed the tables and the few who had not already gone down to lunch. One man, sitting with a slender, dark-haired girl whose back was to us, looked like a real case history. He had not bothered to take off his dark cap or his sunglasses, his hands were encased in immaculate white-mesh gloves, and he wore a short-sleeved sport shirt with a gaudy tie. He continually turned a sort of bold, unblinking stare around the room in a way suggestive of a periscope.

“We have interesting traveling companions,” I told Twit-Twit.

“We sure do, and I’ve got a little suspicion you’re going to turn out to be the most interesting of them all. Honey.”

“I’ve already told you what you can do.”

“If we’re going to have another, let’s get it and then go below. I’m starved.”

“So am I.” I waved to the bartender.

“I may be seasick,” the guy next to me said. “What’s it like when you’re seasick? I never got seasick going to Catalina or Avalon. Now I think I will be.”

“Drink cognac and water, don’t look at the horizon, and forget about the possibility,” I said.

“You’re a doctor?”

“No.” The drinks were in front of us, and Twit-Twit and I reached at the same time and gulped at the same time. “I can make enemies fast, too,” I told her. “Hang around and see.”

“No, don’t,” she said. “He’s tight. How about dejeuner?” she asked the Dolans.

“They sure pick up the patois fast on these foreign schooners,” said Tom. “Let’s go.” He scribbled the suite number on the check, and we slid off the bar stools.

“Well, what business are you in?”

I don’t like being rude, and I wanted to defer to Twit-Twit as much as I could.

“Magazines,” I said, and followed her toward the door.

As we passed the man with the white-mesh gloves, I noticed he was holding a glass containing some kind of yellowish liqueur like Strega or chartreuse.

* * * *

We had asked for a table for four when we first came aboard. The maître d’hôtel took us to it. It was in a cornet of the dining salon and was one of the best tables in the room. Twit-Twit looked at me.

“I suppose you did this, too.”

“I suppose I did.”

“Do you have stock in the line?” asked Betsy.

“I own the line.”

But I wondered how I had really done it.

Next to us was another table for four. There was a little, elderly man with cottony hair and a continual good-humored chuckle, and a rather gaunt, dark younger woman who was evidently his wife, sitting with another couple who were rather nondescript except for the man’s glowing Technicolor tie.

The steward approached us. Behind him was our waiter; hovering behind him was the server, and not too far in the distance, the sommelier. You must admit there’s nothing like French dining service.

The steward said the chef was offering a very nice cold caneton à l’orange in aspic, or if we wanted something more hearty, the boeuf bourguignon was very good. We all looked at the menu which offered about thirty-five entrées, decided on the duck, with consommé first, agreed on Chablis, and were leaning back comfortably when a page approached the table next to us.

“M’sieu R. Pennypacker?”

He didn’t pronounce the name very well, but I understood, nevertheless. Old Cotton-Hair nodded eagerly.

The page handed him a ship’s cablegram, saluted, and left. Pennypacker—I could not believe that it was he—thumbed open the envelope, read the message, leaped out of his chair, and uttered a loud “Hey!” It brought around every head that was within earshot.

“Listen to this,” he yelped happily. He was addressing the woman opposite him, but twenty other people heard him read, “‘Beth today made you grandfather again. Boy, seven pounds eight. Everyone well. Congratulations. Doctor Maxwell.’ How about that?” he demanded.

The people around broke into applause. So did the other couple at his table. So did we.

“A grandfather again,” he said proudly.

“How many is that?” the other man at his table asked.

“Six,” he said. “Six of the loveliest little chickadees you’ve ever seen in your life.”

The consommé had arrived; the sommelier was pouring our wine. Tom raised his glass. “To the chickadees,” he said. “May they live long and fly far.”

Other people around us raised their glasses, too. The old man bowed his head in appreciation. It was rather touching.

We finished our broth, and he said, “I must really go up and acknowledge that cable. Are you finished, dear?”

She said what sounded like, “Yes, Richie.”

Tom said, “Congratulations, Richie,” and the old man waved happily.

As the waiter and server held their chairs for them, the other man at the table asked indignantly, “How are our steaks coming?”

As they left, I noticed that Mrs. Pennypacker clung to her husband’s arm and limped markedly.

After they were gone, I told Tom, “It isn’t Richie, it’s Reggie.”

“Reggie?” Betsy paused in mid-forkful. “It sounded like Richie.”

“Because you don’t know who that is.”

“Who is it?” asked Tom.

I dropped my voice. “That’s Reginald Pennypacker. The industrial spy. I can’t believe it.” I never meant anything more in my life.

“The what?” said Twit-Twit.

“Skip it for now. Until the other people at his table have left. Then I’ll tell you. At least, as much as I know. But that old sweet lump of kindliness is one of the most fantastic sons of bitches in the United States.”

“And with that cliff-hanger you leave us?”

“Only for a while. What else is new?”

Tom said, “Well, the Daily News had an interesting story this morning on page 3, if anyone saw it.”

I had.

“Merrilee Moore is missing,” said Tom.

Betsy looked up. “You’re kidding.”

“I am not. She had contracted to make a picture in Greece. She came to New York three days ago from Beverly Hills to fly over. Then she disappeared.”

Twit-Twit said, “Merrilee Moore can no more disappear than Mount Everest can. It’s a publicity stunt.”

“I don’t know,” said Tom. “She’s a funny dame. Shy. Quiet. Insecure.”

“You know her?” said his wife with the overtones of all wives.

“I’ve met her. Keep your hair on.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“It was on my last trip to Hollywood. A few of us had lunch.”

“With Merrilee Moore?”

Tom will play the long-suffering husband just so long. Then his patience runs out.

“Well,” he said, “there was a girl at the table. As I recall, the initials were M. M. And it was not Marjorie Main.”

We all ate duck a moment.

“She’s a doll,” he added. “Who knows? Maybe she’s on this ship, right this minute. Crossing by sea instead of by air.”

It was time to change the subject. The people at the Pennypacker table had left. I said, “Now I’ll tell you about Pennypacker.”

“What’s an industrial spy?” said Twit-Twit.

“Well, it’s an interesting and very new profession,” I said. “You know about international spies.”

“I’ve read Eric Ambler.”

“And John Le Carré. Well, an industrial spy is the same thing, but a little more localized. And considerably better paid. It goes like this.”

I leaned back and watched our server bring us individual pots of filtre.

“Supposing you’re a manufacturer, making a product that retails at fifty dollars and grosses twenty million dollars a year. And you discover that your nearest competitor is about to bring out the exact same product, or even one better, to sell at $39.50. You know production costs for this gadget, marketing costs, everything. Yet your competitor is about to beat you by ten dollars on the same product. Your twenty-million-dollar business is going up the flue. What do you do?”

“Buy a hot-dog stand,” said Tom.

“What do you do?” asked Betsy.

“Two things. First, you recognize that your competitor has discovered some process that enables him to make the same product cheaper and better. Second, you hire an industrial spy to find out how he’s doing it. There are only three or four such people in that business. The best, far and away, is Reginald Pennypacker. He’s raised company-spying to a fine art.”

“How do you know?” said Tom.

“If he’d talk, he’d make a whale of a magazine story. And after all, I’m a magazine writer. So I tried to do a story on him more than two years ago. I never got any further than talking to him on the phone a couple of times. He sounded younger than he looks, incidentally. I think he actually wanted publicity, but he also knew that it was not good for his business. Staying under cover is important to him—obviously. I’ve never even seen a picture of him.”

“Well, you must admit,” said Betsy, “you could hardly find a more unsuspicious old guy.”

“He looks like Uncle Wiggly,” said Twit-Twit.

“The secret of his success,” said Tom.

“But how does he really operate?” asked Twit-Twit.

“By boldness. For example, a metal-processor has worked out a new and better way to treat steel, and his competitor wants to know how he is doing it. They call in Pennypacker, and old Reggie spends a week or more in the plant of his employer, learning this particular branch of steel-processing. He is of course briefed on what to look for when he gets into the enemy plant. Then he gets in.”

“How?”

“He has a million ways. Maybe he claims he is a union representative. Or a big bidder for the product. He has occasionally pretended to be a police captain, looking for a holdup suspect, and asks the management to let him tour the plant so he can spot his man. Once, for stage dressing, he bribed a real patrolman in a Midwest town to drive him to the plant gate.”

“Then?”

“He spots what he needs to spot. Maybe he pretends to be a camera fan and takes a few pictures. More often the camera is hidden in his tie or belt buckle. Anyway, he gets what he wants. And for a high price. Who’d suspect a lovable old grandfather?”

“You’ve got to hand it to him,” Tom said. “Think he’d stand still for a TV interview next fall?”

“He’d be crazy to. But maybe he would, if you let him keep his back to the camera. You’ll have the chance to brace him on this trip. Keep one thing in mind, though.”

“What?”

“He doesn’t always operate according to law. Like the kidnapping. Two years ago.”

“Is this a joke?” said Twit-Twit.

I said, “Remember how Three-Kay oil was introduced? The manufacturer leaked news of the new automobile crankcase oil they had developed well in advance of its actual introduction.”

Tom said, “Sure he did. For the sake of publicity.”

“Right. Then suddenly you heard nothing about the product and it didn’t appear on the market for a year. Why?”

“Why?”

“Because the process that made the new oil possible was developed by one engineer at Three-Kay. Only he could map the production process to manufacture it in quantity. Three-Kay had a competitor who didn’t want to be caught without a similar product. The competitor hired Reggie.”

“What happened?”

“Two things. The development engineer who had invented the new oil disappeared. For six months. In that time the competitor learned all Three-Kay knew about the new oil. They learned the process and how to duplicate the equipment. When Three-Kay came out with their new ten-thousand-mile oil, the competitor had the same thing.”

“By golly, that’s right,” said Tom. “I even bought some of it for that Jag we had then.”

“What happened to the engineer?” asked Twit-Twit.

“He had been kidnapped. For six months. Very comfortably. He wasn’t tortured, or anything. The story is that he was flown to one of the smaller Greek islands, where he was given every benefit and courtesy.

“But for six months he was a prisoner, constantly guarded by three men—hired by Pennypacker, presumably. Meanwhile, Pennypacker went to work personally. When the competing firm had caught up with Three-Kay’s research, the engineer was flown to Athens in a private plane and dropped off at the airport. He was even handed ten thousand bucks for consolation. A few days later he showed up in Dallas.

“With as wild a tale as you can imagine. But subsequent investigation proved he was telling the truth. He had been on the island he described, and they even found the house where he had been held.”

“And little old Uncle Wiggly did that?”

“No one can prove it. But in certain circles he gets the credit. His retainer, just for consultation, before he ever lifts a finger, is twenty-five G’s. And it’s paid, gladly.”

“I wonder what he’s doing on board,” said Tom.

“Probably just on vacation,” I said.

“Let’s go topside,” said Betsy.

* * * *

We took the elevator and went up and out on deck, and got some fresh air. I looked north. You couldn’t see Long Island, but we were probably nearing the Hamptons.

Then, because we were all a little tired, and well-dined and wined, we decided on naps, and went to the suite.

This was two bedrooms and a little living room, and we had arranged that Tom and Betsy would have the big bedroom, and Twit-Twit the smaller room with upper and lower bunks. I would use a sort of day bed in the parlor.

I had complained that this was not very companionable, but had not won much attention. Not that I expected to.

When the others had retired I stripped to my shorts, hung up a few suits from my bag, and then I lay down on the day bed. For a little while I could not get to sleep, perhaps because of the filtre. Anyway, I lay there thinking of how suddenly the whole thing had happened.

As I did, I heard a scuffling at the door and saw an envelope push under the doorsill. I got out of bed and picked it up. It was addressed to me in a feminine handwriting.

It said, simply:

“ABC—Starboard boat deck tonight at ten.”

It was signed “M. M.”

Things were starting to work.

* * * *

Perhaps this is as good a time as any to tell you as much as I knew myself at this particular moment.