There was a dead silence in the conference room of Ferris Hydraulics, Inc.
Sol Hirzhorn took his call to Chuck Ferris next morning in Julie’s office because he didn’t want Keith Stewart to hear what was said. The girl started the tape recorder as he lifted the instrument and stood back in the room.
He said, ‘That Chuck Ferris? Morning, Chuck. The boys tell me they had quite a party with your engineers.’
‘That’s right,’ said Chuck cautiously. ‘About the intercoolers. There was a difference of opinion on the inlet temperature of the water.’
‘Manny tells me that he’s putting on a swimming party at the mill next August. Girls and all.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Mr Ferris. ‘Quit ribbing, Sol. My boys had the rivers mixed up. We’re redesigning the intercoolers for your plant right now. That won’t hold up the job, and our quotation stands. There’s quite a bit more copper will be needed, but that’s our mistake and we pay for it.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Mr Hirzhorn. ‘Mr Stewart that I sent with Manny, he was very impressed with what he saw.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Ferris, rather relieved, ‘that’s nice to know.’
‘Really impressed, he was. He had a long talk with Manny on the plane on the way back. They didn’t put much importance on this intercooler business, now that’s all cleared up. They advised me to go right ahead and sign the Heads of Agreement so the attorneys could draw up the contract. There’s only one point to be settled now.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Who’s going to pay Keith Stewart?’
There was dead silence on the line. The tape rolled on.
‘He’s not on your pay-roll and he’s not on mine,’ said the old lumber-man. ‘He isn’t going to be on mine, either. I asked him to look over the scheme as a friend. He said he didn’t understand why the intercoolers were so small, so I sent him up with Manny to see your boys. Well, they found that there’d been a mistake in your office.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Mr Ferris. ‘You think he ought to get something?’
‘I sure do. Kind of a consultant fee.’
‘What were you thinking of?’ asked Mr Ferris cautiously.
‘One per cent on the contract.’
Mr Ferris leaped in his chair. ‘Jeez!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s — that’s over seventeen thousand dollars! He’s not a guy that’s in that sort of money!’
‘See here, Chuck,’ said the old man evenly, ‘a guy’s worth what he earns. If he’d not spotted that the intercoolers were too small they’d have gone into the plant the way they were. Next July or August we’d have had to stop production for a month or more while you put the job right. Maybe we’d have had a lawsuit over it. There’s big money involved. Do you know what one day’s production from that mill is worth?’
‘I know, I know,’ said Mr Ferris petulantly. ‘Still -seventeen thousand dollars! That’s three Cadillacs!’
‘If we’d had a lawsuit over this, ’n you lost, it would have cost you fifty Cadillacs,’ said Mr Hirzhorn.
‘Sure. But there isn’t going to be a lawsuit. We’ve got the new design laid out in the drawing office right now. I was in there just a few minutes ago.’
‘Sure there isn’t going to be a lawsuit,’ said Sol Hirzhorn. ‘Maybe there isn’t going to be a contract either. My son Joe, he said right from the start we should have had some competition in on this.’
There was a pause. ‘You really feel that this guy’s contribution rates seventeen thousand dollars?’
‘I certainly do,’ said the old man. ‘If those intercoolers had gone in as the old design we’d have been up for ten fifteen times that amount. And it wouldn’t have been me who paid it.’
Mr Ferris threw in the towel. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you think right, well, that’s the way it is, Sol. That’ll be okay with us at this end.’
‘Well, that’s fine,’ said Mr Hirzhorn. ‘Jim Rockawin, he’s got the Heads of Agreement typed out ready. If he brings them to the Tacoma office tomorrow morning I’ll sign up, and he can sign for you. Then we’ll get them right over to my attorneys. There’s just one clause needs adding: seventeen thousand dollars payable to Mr Keith Stewart for consultant services. Oh — one thing more. Mr Stewart will be leaving for England day after tomorrow, so Jim Rockawin had better bring the cheque along with him, with the Heads of Agreement. Seventeen thousand dollars.’
He put down the telephone and leaned back, a little weary. Julie came forward from the back of the room. ‘He won’t know if he’s coming or going,’ she said softly. She turned off the tape recorder. ‘Shall I do a transcript?’
‘May as well,’ he said. ‘We’ll have it at the office in the morning, case they have second thoughts.’
‘They won’t do that,’ she said. ‘They want this job too much.’
He got up from her chair. ‘He’s earned it,’ he said. ‘A guy has a right to be paid for the job he gets mixed up in, whether he’s accustomed to that scale of dough or not.’ He smiled. ‘Pay off his mortgage.’
‘It’ll do more than that,’ she said. ‘It’s three times the value of his mortgage.’
‘Well, he’ll have a little bit of loose change, then.’
‘Is he going back to England day after tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘That’s what he wants to do.’
‘Had I better get busy with the reservations for his trip?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes, do that.’
‘On the office?’
‘Why, certainly. On the travelling overhead.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll see him presently. I’ve got the mail right here, Mr Hirzhorn, if you’d like to see it now.’
Half an hour later while Sol Hirzhorn was getting ready to go into Tacoma for a business lunch appointment she called Keith Stewart to her office. ‘There’s two or three things,’ she said, businesslike and efficient. ‘First, Jim Rockawin called yesterday. He’s got some shipping documents he wants you to sign, about the engine salvaged from your sister’s yacht.’
Keith nodded. ‘He was going to get those.’
‘Well, you’ve just got to sign and it’s all through. The engine will be shipped upon a British ship sailing Thursday of next week, the Clan McAlister, to London docks. He’s having it consigned to you, care of Perkins and Durant in London. Is that okay with you?’
‘Fine,’ said Keith. ‘When can I sign the documents?’
‘Well now, that’s another thing. Mr Rockawin is coming to the head office tomorrow morning to sign the Heads of Agreement for the Flume River contract. Will I call him and tell him to bring the documents along with him then?’
‘That would be fine.’
‘Okay, I’ll do that. Mr Rockawin has been talking with some of the Boeing engineers, and they certainly would like to take you through the plant one day. Would you like to do that tomorrow afternoon?’
‘I’d like to do that very much, if Mr Hirzhorn can spare me.’
She glanced at her diary. ‘He’s got a business lunch today, and another one tomorrow. He won’t be back here either day till around five o’clock.’ She smiled. ‘I know that he’d appreciate an hour in the workshop with you then.’ She stood in thought for a moment. ‘Suppose we fix Jim Rockawin for ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Signing the Heads of Agreement and your shipping documents won’t take more than half an hour. He could take you on then to lunch with the Boeing engineers and see some of the plant. Then I’ll have the Cessna at the Boeing Field a quarter after four to bring you right back here.’
‘Well,’ said Keith, ‘that’d be grand for me. But it’s putting everybody to a great deal of trouble.’
She shook her head. ‘The airplane and the pilot would be standing idle in the hangar. Manny’s got meetings in Seattle and Joe hardly ever flies. I’ll fix that. Now there’s another thing, Mr Stewart, and that’s about your consultant fee.’ One of her duties was to deal with awkward or embarrassing matters for her gra
ndfather.
‘My what?’
‘Consultant fee, Mr Stewart. Mr Hirzhorn asked you to look the Ferris plans over and you discovered a mistake that had to do with the intercoolers. To check on that you had to go to Cincinnati. Well, the Ferris crowd had made a mistake that would have cost both parties a great deal of money if it had gone through. Mr Ferris reckons that your technical services rate a consultant fee, and he called Mr Hirzhorn about it this morning,’ she said, lying like a good personal secretary. ‘They reckoned that one per cent of the contract would be a reasonable figure — that’s seventeen thousand dollars. Is that okay with you?’
Keith was dumbfounded. ‘But that’s absurd!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s much too much!’
‘It’s what’s usual in this country,’ she said off-handedly. She could lie beautifully, with a perfectly straight, business-like expression. ‘If you want to talk Mr Ferris out of it you’ll have to go to Cincinnati. But there’s no reason for you to do that. It’s in line with fees paid every day for consultant technical services.’
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ Keith muttered.
‘Jim Rockawin’s bringing the cheque out with him tomorrow morning,’ she remarked. ‘It’s probably made out by now. That’s because Mr Hirzhorn told Mr Ferris that you’re on your way back to England. They fixed between them that would be a reasonable fee, and there’s a clause in the Heads of Agreement about it.’
‘It’s much too much for the work I did,’ he repeated.
‘That may be so in England,’ she remarked. ‘I wouldn’t know. I can tell you one thing, though. If you want those Heads of Agreement altered in the morning, Jim Rockawin will have to call Mr Ferris in Cincinnati and you won’t get to Boeing in time for lunch. I’d leave things the way they are, if I were you.’ She paused. ‘There’s one more thing. Mr Hirzhorn said you’d be leaving us day after tomorrow. Will you be going straight through to London?’
Keith nodded. ‘I’ve got to hurry home. I’ve been away too long.’
‘Too bad that you can’t stay a little longer,’ said Julie. ‘Maybe you’ll be over again. I’ll call United and book you on the flight to Idlewild, New York, that connects with the night Pan-Am flight to London. Okay?’
‘Wait a bit,’ said Keith. ‘I don’t know that I want to fly. I was thinking that I’d have to go by train and boat.’
She said, ‘But you flew out to Vancouver and Honolulu, didn’t you?’
‘I got that free,’ he said. ‘At home - well I don’t live like you do here.’
She said, ‘I know it.’ She eyed him kindly. ‘You mustn’t think that everybody in the U.S. lives like Mr Hirzhorn,’ she said. ‘One day, maybe, I’ll get married, and then I’ll come down with a bump. Mr Hirzhorn has a right to live like this. He’s built up a great industry, and that’s about the only real interest he has, except the workshop.’ She paused. ‘I asked him about the reservations and the tickets,’ she remarked. ‘He said to put them through the office account.’
Keith paused for a moment, untangling her unfamiliar words. ‘You mean, he wants to pay my airline fare back to London?’
She smiled. ‘Not personally, of course. He said to me to put it on the travelling overhead at the office. But that’s what it adds up to.’
‘I can’t let him do that,’ Keith said. ‘Not with seventeen thousand dollars of Mr Ferris’ money in my pocket.’
‘You want to learn arithmetic,’ she said. ‘If this goes in the office overhead it gets deducted from the profit before tax is charged. Mr Hirzhorn won’t pay twenty per cent of these fares. If you pay, you’ll pay it out of your net income, one hundred per cent. That doesn’t make sense.’
She paused. ‘Don’t refuse him when he wants to do this little thing,’ she said gently. ‘You’ve given him a lot of pleasure with your letters and the clock. Let him do this for you.’
Chapter Eleven
Keith Stewart landed back in England at London Airport three days later, eighty days after he had left England from Speke. He passed through Immigration and Customs and took the airline coach for London. He stopped the coach and got off at the end of the South Ealing Road and got on a bus. Shortly before lunch time he arrived at his house in Somerset Road, carrying his suitcase. It looked a little small now, and a little tawdry, but he was very, very glad to be back.
He let himself in with his latchkey, for Katie would be at the shop and Janice would be having lunch at school. For the first time in months he could relax. He put his suitcase down, took off his coat, and went down to the basement. His clean workshop was untouched, the machines bright and shiny, ready for work. In the dirty workshop there was an enormous pile of correspondence on his desk, but outside the daffodils were nodding in the sunshine and the wind. He looked into Janice’s room, that once had been the scullery. The plastic duck still sat upon the four eggs, multicoloured, in the basketwork nest upon the table by her bed.
It was very good to be home.
He made a cup of tea and a couple of pieces of dripping toast. There was one job that must not be delayed. He put on his coat after the little meal and went out again. He walked a quarter of a mile to the shops of West Ealing, and into the local branch of the Westminster Bank. Before the eyes of the astounded cashier he endorsed a cheque for seventeen thousand dollars, and paid it into his account.
He walked back to the house and let himself in. He took his coat off and went down to the workshop, and stood for a time in thought. He had brought back with him a few of the Ferris drawings of the hydraulic installations at the Flume River Mill, and his mind was playing upon those. The hydraulic motors might not be too difficult to make in model scale … and would be something new and up to date for readers of the Miniature Mechanic. Suppose he took the 20 cc Gannet engine as a basis, or any engine of about that power. Suppose he coupled the power generator on to that, aiming to deliver a quarter of a horsepower, working at a pressure of 300 lb per square inch, as a first guess … Then a miniature hydraulic motor driving something or other - a small bandsaw, for example - a tiny replica of the great handsaws he had seen in the mill … Start off with a bronze casting, like this … He seized a pad of paper on the desk and began to sketch.
An hour later he heard the gate clang and heard Janice’s footsteps on the path to the front door. He went upstairs and let her in before she could open the front door with her key. She dropped her satchel of school books and flew into his arms. ‘I’m glad you’re back,’ she said.
He hugged her clumsily. ‘Miss me?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Mm.’ And then she said, ‘It’s been dull, not having anything made.’
‘You been all right at school?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘I’d have come home early if I’d known you’d be here,’ she said. ‘We play hockey for the last hour now, Mondays and Thursdays. This is Monday, so we’ve been playing hockey. But if I’d known you were here I could have come home after school.’
‘Like hockey?’ he asked.
She nodded again. ‘Aunt Katie bought me a lovely hockey stick with a green and yellow handle, new. Diana’s got a new one, too. She’s awfully good at hockey.’
She struggled out of her coat. ‘I must put the kettle on because Aunt Katie will be coming home.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘She won’t be home for an hour.’
‘She gets off an hour earlier now,’ said Janice, rushing to the kitchen to fill the kettle. ‘She started doing that when you went away because she said she ought to be at home when I get back from school because you weren’t here, but I’m a big girl now, aren’t I? And then they started taking eight and tenpence from her pay packet each week because she left an hour early. Wasn’t that mean of them?’
Together they laid the kitchen table and put the macaroni cheese in the oven to heat and got out the bread and the butter and the jam and the cherry cake. Across the table she asked suddenly, ‘Did you go to where Mummy and Daddy were buried?’
‘Yes, I went ther
e,’ he said. ‘We had a stone made and put it up to mark the grave. I took a lot of photographs for you, but I haven’t had them developed yet. I’ll take them up to London, to Kodak, tomorrow or the next day.’ Better not trust them to a local photographer.
‘Were they buried on the island?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘On the island with the sea all round. Nobody lives there. You see, it’s only a little island, and there isn’t any water for people to drink, so nobody else can live there.’
She stood looking at him. ‘Can you hear the sea from the place where they’re buried?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You can hear the sea all round.’
‘I think that’s nice,’ she said. ‘They always liked the sea.’
‘I left the grey egg with them,’ he said, ‘because I thought they’d like to have something that was yours. I buried it just underneath the sand.’
She nodded. ‘They’ll like that.’
That was the end of it. She did not speak about her father or her mother again till they showed her the photographs ten days later.
Katie came in before the kettle boiled. ‘Keith!’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you let us know? I didn’t really think that you’d be home for another month. Where have you come from?’
‘There wasn’t really time to write,’ he apologised. It was out of their economic way of life to send cables about the world. ‘I came from the other side of America, right through. I left there … yesterday morning, I suppose. Times get a bit mucked up.’
She wrinkled her brows. ‘Flying?’
He nodded. There was much to tell her, but it would have to wait till Janice was in bed. ‘You’ve got so brown,’ she said in wonder. ‘Whatever have you been doing? Out in the sun?’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’
Janice said, ‘Diana went to Bournemouth with her Mummy and Johnnie, and they all came back ever so brown. Can we go to Bournemouth some day, Aunt Katie?’