Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson Read Free Book Online

which would do for mental disease what the March of Dimes has done for polio.”
    “Sounds like a good idea,” Tom said, realizing he was expected to register enthusiasm.
    “What Mr. Hopkins wants now is a young man to begin helping him with research for the speeches he will have to make to kick the project off. Later he will want someone to help him draw up a prospectus for an organization and to start getting the people together. Are you interested?”
    “I certainly am!” Tom said heartily. “I’ve always been interested in mental health!” That sounded a little foolish, but he could think of nothing to rectify it.
    “This wouldn’t be a very high-paying job,” Walker continued. “We were thinking of a figure somewhere near seven thousand dollars.”
    Tom knew then that Walker had talked to Dick Haver at the foundation and learned what he had been making. The union of bosses is the most powerful union in the world.
    “I’d been hoping for more than that,” he said. “Ordinarily, salary wouldn’t be an important consideration for me, especially in connection with a job of this kind, but I have increasing personal responsibilities. I feel I should be making ten thousand dollars a year.”
    “Wouldn’t that be quite a jump from your present position?” Walker asked bluntly. Ogden, who had been sitting almost motionless, put his hand in his pocket and took out a package of cigarettes.
    “It would,” Tom said, “but there would have to be considerable incentive for me to leave the foundation.”
    Walker, lolling comfortably in his chair, glanced at Ogden, who had just finished lighting a cigarette.
    “We don’t have to make any decisions now,” Ogden said, in a casual, almost bored voice.
    Walker nodded. “Perhaps the next step would be to have him meet Mr. Hopkins,” he said to Ogden, as though Tom were not in the room.
    “All right,” Ogden said.
    “Could you have lunch with Mr. Hopkins at twelve-thirty, day after tomorrow?” Walker asked.
    “Certainly,” Tom said.
    “Meet me here, and I’ll take you up and introduce you,” Walker concluded.
    Tom thanked him and hurried out of his office. When he got in the elevator, he glanced at the operator, but it was a thin man he had never seen before. In a telephone booth in the enormous lobby downstairs he called Bill Hawthorne, who had told him about the job in the first place. “Come on down and give me some briefing,” he said. “I’m supposed to have lunch with Hopkins day after tomorrow!”
    “With Hopkins!” Bill said in an awed voice. “Say, for a guy who hasn’t even been hired yet, you’re doing all right!”
    They went to a bar two doors down the street and ordered Martinis. “Now tell me all about your boy Hopkins,” Tom said. “Walker tells me he’s starting a project on mental health. What’s it all about?”
    Bill sipped his drink thoughtfully. “What do you already know about Hopkins?” he asked.
    “Not much,” Tom said. “I’ve hardly heard of him. Somebody told me he started with nothing and he’s making two hundred thousand a year now. That’s about all I know–I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a picture of him.”
    “Precisely,” Bill said professionally. “Precisely.”
    “What the hell do you mean by that?”
    “I mean it looks like the public-relations boys have cooked up a big deal to put Hopkins on the map, and you’ve stumbled into it.”
    “I don’t get it,” Tom said.
    “Figure it out for yourself. Here’s Hopkins, about fifty years old, and the president of the United Broadcasting Corporation. As you say, he makes about two hundred thousand dollars a year, and that doesn’t count stock deals and all the rest of it. Inside the company he’s the biggest shot in the world. The top comedians and all the famous actors are scared to death of him. But outside the company he’s nothing. Taxi drivers don’t call him “Sir.” Waiters in restaurants more than five blocks from Radio Center