An owl too many, p.18
An Owl Too Many, page 18
“Us, too,” said Dodie somewhat numbly.
Winifred smiled. “My reason for wishing to see you is that, while I have no wish to interfere with your actual operations even if I had the expertise to do so, which I certainly haven’t, I do have some ideas on marketing and sales promotion that I’d like to lay before you. Along with the offer of sufficient funds to carry them out, needless to say. That’s why I took the liberty of barging past your dragoness and setting off this dreadful row, for which I most humbly beg your pardon, but I don’t suppose I’d ever have got to reach you if I hadn’t. Do you suppose we ought to put Elvira on a couch or somewhere?”
“I’d be inclined to leave her as she is,” said Peter. “If we try to move her before she’s had a chance to sleep it off, she might go into another tantrum. I don’t know anything about hypnosis.”
“You sure had me fooled,” said Bill. “I had you figured for an expert.”
“No, it’s just that I had the chance to observe a couple of other people on whom Fanshaw had worked the same trick. Fortunately I also happen at the moment to be wearing Fanshaw’s suit and he hadn’t got around to emptying his pockets. Look, we have a lot to talk about. Why don’t we make ourselves comfortable?”
“Sure thing, come right on in.”
Dodie led the way into what must be the executive office, it looked to Peter more like his late Aunt Effie’s back sitting room. Along with a flat-topped golden oak desk that still had some of its varnish, there were a swivel chair that probably squeaked, a maple spring rocker and settee covered in badly faded chintz, a goosenecked desk lamp, one of those spidery black iron floor lamps with a yellowed parchment shade that everybody who couldn’t afford anything flossier used to have back in the thirties, a few rag rugs, and a great many photographs, some in frames, some thumbtacked to the walls. There was even a matronly black parlor stove with a coal hod sitting beside it and a kettle steaming on top. On the rug closest to the stove lay a Boston terrier, gray around the muzzle, wheezing gently as he slumbered.
“Tiger’s our watchdog,” Bill explained. “Haul up and set, folks. You take the rocking chair, Winifred, that’s where your grandfather always liked to sit. He was an interesting old fellow, always had some new bee in his bonnet. We got a kick out of having him around. Gosh, it’s good to see you in his place, Winifred. You too, er—”
“Oh, I’m sorry. This is my good friend Professor Peter Shandy from Balaclava Agricultural College. I’m also on the faculty there, as you probably didn’t know,” Winifred was adding with naive pride when the door opened and yet another woman in one of the yellow coveralls that were evidently standard wear at Golden Apples bustled in with a handful of letters. She wasn’t young, but she bounced along like a ten-year-old.
“Nor rain, nor squish, nor standing around half the night holding up sacks for the boys to sling sand into stays this swift courier in her appointed rounds. Here’s your mail. Oops, sorry, didn’t know we had visitors. Say, did you know Elvira’s stretched out on the lobby floor, snoring worse than Tiger? I suppose she was up all night working on the sandbags, poor thing, but it’s not like her. Elvira’s always acted so proper. Hadn’t we better bring her in here and put her on the settee?”
“No,” said Bill, “if she’s that tuckered out we’d better just let her sleep. I guess we ought to put a blanket or something over her. Dodie, maybe you’d like to do that so Mae can get on with her work. Thanks for the mail, Mae. Hope it’s not all bills this time.”
“Mae’s a great one for mothering everybody,” he added after she’d left. “Nice woman, she’s been with us ever since we started. Say, Winifred, here’s a letter from your lawyer. Mind if I open it now?”
“No, please do. I expect that’s merely a request for an appointment, since he hadn’t been allowed to reach you by telephone.”
Bill ripped open the envelope, using a somewhat prissy celluloid paper knife molded in the shape of a winsome tot with a bow in her hair, clutching an even winsomer pussycat with a bow around its neck. Catching Peter’s cocked eyebrow, he grinned.
“Family heirloom. My grandmother brought it home from the movies one Bank Night back during the Depression. She was so stuck on Ramon Navarro that my grandpop tried to sue him for alienation of affections. Say, what’s this?”
His eyes narrowed, his jaw turned to solid rock. “Winifred, it says here you want out.”
“What? Let me see that.”
Winifred was not, after all, too well-bred to snatch. “Why, this is outrageous. Whatever can he have been thinking of? Peter, you were there, you heard my instructions. I made myself perfectly clear, did I not?”
“Clear as a bell. This past Saturday morning,” Peter explained to the Compotes, “Winifred had a meeting with Debenham, who’s been her family lawyer for many years, and a man named Sopwith, who’s the new trust officer for the Binks estate. President Svenson and I sat in on the meeting. Winifred is ceding a portion of her estate to the college in order to establish a field station which will also include a television station. Her financial concerns therefore are very much ours, aside from the fact that she’s a personal friend and we don’t want to see her taken for a ride.”
“So?” Bill Compote was still wary.
“So, as they were going through her various holdings, she told Sopwith to sell some shares her grandfather had bought in a company called Lackovites, with which you’re doubtless familiar, and invest the proceeds in Golden Apples.”
“My reason, as I said at the time,” Winifred added, “was that I had studied both companies’ operations and found that Golden Apples has a superb record for quality and honesty but a rather feeble one in sales promotion, if you’ll forgive me for saying so; whereas the Lackovites people are superb merchandisers but their products are trash and I want no part of them. When I learned how strong my financial interest in Golden Apples is, I resolved to become personally involved in implementing a more aggressive merchandising program. That’s why I instructed Mr. Debenham to arrange a meeting with you. There was absolutely no question of my asking you to buy me out, even if—er—”
“Even if we’d had the money, which we sure as heck don’t,” Bill finished for her. “Then what’s this letter all about?”
“I cannot imagine. Mr. Debenham, of all people! I—I’m shattered. Excuse me.”
Winifred sniffled and searched frantically in the pocket of her slacks. Dodie handed her a box of tissues.
“Thank you, Dodie. I do beg your pardon. It’s just that we’ve been so—tell them, Peter.”
Winifred buried her face in a tissue. Peter cleared his throat, wishing to blazes he knew what to tell. Now that he’d met Bill and Dodie on their own turf, he found it hard to believe they were masterminding some evil plot; but why should he take them at face value when so many others were turning out to be shams? For all he knew, Tiger might not even be their dog.
Well, what the hell? If this pair were running the show, there was no point in not telling them what they must already know. If they weren’t, then it was only decent to cue them in. One way or another, they were surely involved; those little compote sketches among Emmerick’s effects, not to mention the sleeping beauty on the lobby floor out there, clinched the matter. He began with Emmerick.
A few minutes later, Bill was scratching his ginger mop like a cat with a flea. “Godfrey mighty! You mean to say this bird Emmerick just went up in the net alive and kicking and came down dead? Just like that?”
“Exactly like that. And next morning, when we telephoned to notify the company he was supposedly working for, they’d never heard of him.”
“Or said they hadn’t.” This was Winifred’s show and she wasn’t going to be left out of it. “At this point, I feel disinclined to believe anything about anybody. However, it does seem unlikely that the Meadowsweet Construction Company would lie about having employed Mr. Emmerick just because he’d been killed in a bizarre fashion. One does hear rumors of strange doings in large corporations. Protecting their image, I believe it’s called. But Meadowsweet isn’t all that large a corporation.”
“Size doesn’t matter,” said Bill. “We had a mighty strange thing happen right here in Briscoe a few months back.”
“Now, Bill, Winifred doesn’t want to hear about that silly business at the hardware store,” Dodie interrupted. “What happened next, Professor Shandy?”
Peter did feel some curiosity about what happened at the hardware store, but what he wanted most was to get out of here and back to Balaclava. He plugged on, with a good many contributions from Winifred: through Fanshaw’s appearance, his arrest, his hypnotic jailbreak; through the temporary abduction of Viola Buddley, the doodles that appeared to implicate the Compotes in one fashion or another; he thought they might as well realize they weren’t being taken automatically as the good guys. Finally he got to Winifred’s kidnapping, the return of Fanshaw in a different guise, and the smashing grand finale that had led to their mad ride down the Clavaclammer and this morning’s visit to Golden Apples.
“By gorry,” said Bill when they got through. “If that isn’t the darnedest! What are you going to do now?”
“Good question,” said Peter. “We’ve sent a message to the Clavaton police to come and collect the tugboat, which contains some interesting evidence, including a number of fake passports allegedly issued to Fanshaw under various names and guises. Unless he had another lot of passports stashed somewhere else, and assuming that he did in fact manage to break away last night as I’ve surmised, this should limit his ability to get out of the country.”
Peter shrugged. “Not that it’s going to make him any easier to track down, I don’t suppose. A chap with his moxie could take some finding even in a phone booth. The big question, of course, is whether Fanshaw’s actually the ringleader or just one of the crew. As to what in Sam Hill it’s all in aid of, your guess is as good as mine.”
19
“WELL, BY JINGO, I bet I can give a pretty good guess.” Bill Compote was hopping mad. His eyes flashed green as a cat’s, his ginger hair flopped in the air as he leaned over the desk, pointing one long knobby finger like a pistol. “You been talking to anybody about dumping your Lackovites stock, Winifred? Before that meeting, I mean.”
Winifred considered. “Now that you mention it, I suppose I may have hinted at it, in a way. Not in so many words, of course. But we’ve had people coming to the field station for classes on natural foods: what to pick, how to prepare them, their nutritional value, and all that. Inevitably we always get around to which of the packaged brands on the market are worthwhile and which aren’t, and I’ve expressed my opinions freely on the merits of Golden Apples versus Lackovites. As I mentioned, I’ve also made a good many inquiries about the two companies, mainly by going around to different stores on my bicycle and pumping the clerks. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the Lackovites salesmen had got wind of my nosing around, and had some of my comments repeated to them. Anybody who knows or suspects that the Binks Trust has been holding shares in Lackovites must surely have brains enough to realize I was getting ready to dump them. Why do you ask, Bill?”
“Because they’re trying their damnedest to buy us out, that’s why. They’ve been pulling all sorts of dirty tricks trying to break us down, but we haven’t budged an inch and don’t intend to. What it looks like to me now is that they’ve given up on Dodie and me and started in on you. That would make more sense anyway, you being the principal stockholder.”
“My dear Bill,” Winifred replied, “surely you must realize, as I do, that it’s been your hard work and firmness of principle that has made Golden Apples what it is today, and mere accident of birth that has caused me to become involved. With your permission, I shall this week instruct Mr. Debenham”—she winced—“I shall instruct my legal representative to sign over twenty percent of my holdings to you and Dodie. That will put us on an even fifty-fifty basis, so that we can work as equal partners for as long as I’m able to pull my weight. In the event of my death or incapacitation, my half will revert to you. I realize I’m still taking gross advantage of my position as Miss Moneybags, but I do feel that I have something besides money to contribute and I want my chance to try. Furthermore, if we’re really having a knock-down fight with Lackovites, I jolly well want to be in on it.”
“Oh, Winifred!”
Dodie was hugging Miss Moneybags for all she was worth. Bill was pumping her hand, Tiger was trying to climb up in her lap. Peter realized he himself was beaming like a proud father. If the Compotes were phonies, then he was the lost Dauphin of France.
“Well then, that’s settled.” Winifred nodded briskly to conceal her emotion and settled Tiger more comfortably on her knees. “Now let me explain what I have in mind with regard to our merchandising program.”
She did so, lucidly and concisely, setting forth her plans, backing them up with facts and figures. Bill and Dodie listened as though they’d been hypnotized, interjecting a word now and then only to clarify or amplify. They were entranced by her scheme for free advertising on the Balaclava television station, somewhat flabbergasted by her suggestions for landscaping the grounds of the old brewery in order to project a new, more prosperous image for Golden Apples.
“But that will cost a mint,” Dodie objected.
“I think not. Will it, Peter?”
“Not so you’d notice it. Balaclava has a policy of providing jobs for students. We’ll turn this into a work project for our landscape-architecture students, using shrubs, trees, and seedlings raised in our college nurseries and greenhouses which we’ll furnish you at wholesale prices, the proceeds to go to our Endowment Fund. The kids will do the work at reasonable hourly rates, various faculty members will supervise and grade them on the results. Cronkite Swope will do an ongoing feature series for the Balaclava County Fane and Pennon, no doubt your local paper will do the same. You’ll hold a big open house when the work’s completed, Winifred will make a nice little speech. It’ll be a fine publicity boost for Golden Apples and help the participating students get launched into good jobs.”
“Always provided those thugs from Lackovites don’t invite a pack of skunks along to the party.” Bill was too much a Yankee to count his chickens before they were hatched. “I’m a hundred percent in favor of everything you’ve said, Winifred, but what the heck are we going to do about this mess we’re in right now?”
“Find the skunk who’s running the show and put him out of business,” said Peter. “There’s got to be a mastermind somewhere, and I think you must be right about his working at Lackovites. What can you tell me about their operations?”
“Mainly that they’re a bunch of highbinders, but I guess you already know that. Winifred’s right about the merchandising, it’s the only thing that’s kept them going. Dodie and I aren’t much for running down our competitors, but the best we can say about Lackovites products is that most of the stuff they sell isn’t downright poisonous.”
“Provided you don’t try to live on it too long,” Dodie put in.
Bill snorted. “If you did, you’d either starve to death or come down with scurvy. Lackovites is in trouble with the Food and Drug Administration right now, if you want to know, though they’ve managed to keep it hushed up so far. In my opinion, that’s why they’re busting their britches to get hold of Golden Apples. Not to be tooting our own horn, but we do have a reputation for top-quality products. That’s the one thing now that might save their bacon: getting hold of our name and trading on it. Which isn’t to say they wouldn’t drag us down to their own level once they took over. I asked that last bunch of vice-presidents they sent over why they didn’t try using real food and putting in some quality controls instead of just trying to think up new ways to hustle the suckers, and they laughed at me. Cripes almighty, rather than let those vultures get their claws into Golden Apples, I’d burn this plant right down to the ground.”
“And I’d be with him, holding the matches,” said Dodie. “We’ve done a little what I guess you might call research on Lackovites ourselves. From what we can make out, they’ve got so many so-called executives over there all running in different directions that most of ‘em don’t have any notion what the rest are up to. Furthermore, they don’t seem to care, long as the money keeps rolling in. When they start losing customers, they just put together another big advertising campaign introducing some new so-called wonder product.”
“Which is the same old stuff in a different box,” growled Bill.
“Yes, dear, but people fall for the catchy commercials and come looking, so naturally the big chains figure they have to carry it, and so it goes. At least it’s kept going so far, but consumers aren’t quite so gullible as those hustlers think they are. The Lackovites gravy train’s beginning to run out of steam, and if those umpty-zillion executives aren’t starting to panic, all I can say is, they darned well ought to be.”
“So Winifred’s dumping her Lackovites shares might very well be a signal to other stockholders to do the same,” said Peter. “In any event, her infusion of new capital into Golden Apples is bound to have a serious impact on Lackovites unless they change their ways in a hurry. How soon do you think you folks can get started enlarging your sales force and improving your packaging?”
Bill smiled. “About twenty minutes from now. We’ve realized for a long time what was holding us back in the market, and we’ve had our contingency plan worked out in case we ever got our hands on some spare cash. First thing we’ll do is get our publicity department, namely me, to draft a news release about company expansion. Then we’ll start scouting around for some more good salesmen.”
“Most of whom will probably be women,” Dodie put in. “Our chief of sales, who’s also a woman, will run a training program so that they’ll know exactly what they’re selling and how to present it. With a big-enough crew and effective advertising, Janice will have us knocking the socks off Lackovites inside a month. As for packaging, we’ve already had a design studio work up some ideas. Want to see?”
