Never Leave Me by Harold Robbins Read Free Book Online Page A

me, as if your main concern is getting the account for yourself rather than perform a service for your client.”
    You can go far with faking, then you got to throw the whole hog. “Mr. Brady,” I smiled gently. “If I may have the same privilege of bluntness that you claim for yourself I would like to say that you haven’t the faintest idea of what I’ve been talking about. Because you are thinking selfishly of how this campaign would personally benefit Matt Brady’s interests rather than the industry.”
    I felt rather than heard the vague shock that stirred around the table. Chris stared disapprovingly at me.
    Matt Brady’s voice was deceptively smooth. “Go on, young man.”
    I stared into his eyes. Maybe I was crazy but I thought there was a twinkle of smile lurking in its depths. “Mr. Brady,” I said quietly. “You make steel and I make opinions. I assume you know your business and when I buy anything made of your product—a car or a refrigerator—I rely on the fact that you have supplied the proper kind of metal in it to do the job. The fact that you do keeps me buying.”
    I turned from him and looked down the long table at his confreres. “Gentlemen,” I continued, “on the books of each of your companies you carry an item called good will. Some of you carry that item at a dollar, some of you may carry it at a million dollars or more. I don’t know the accounting method used to determine the value of that intangible. I’m not a book-keeper. I sell intangibles. You can’t hold what I give you in your hands, you can’t put it on a scale and weigh it, you can’t count it and put it into inventory.”
    They were interested now. I could tell from the looks on their faces. “I deal in that item you call
    good will. If I may be permitted to recall for a moment some things people were saying about your business just a little while ago, I would like to remind you of them. They are not pleasant reminders but, unfortunately, necessary to my argument.
    “After the attack on Pearl Harbour, there was a common saying here in New York that the Japanese had returned the Ninth Avenue El to us. And rightly or wrongly, they blamed you, the steel industry, for selling it to them. It didn’t matter that the truth was greatly different from the rumour; what did matter was that for a long time you were resented for it.
    “It didn’t bother you then. You were not concerned with selling your product to the public, you were engaged in an all-out war effort. But it would have mattered if you had been dependent on the consumer for your livelihood at that time. I know. For in Nineteen Forty-two I was called down to Washington to help get the scrap metals drive out of its doldrums. And one of the main reasons it had not been doing as well as it should was because the people did not trust what you would do with that metal. We set up an educational campaign that the public accepted. Result: with the public’s faith in you restored and the use for the metal clearly set forth—the flow of scrap to your rolling mills was most successful.”
    I paused to catch my breath and take a sip of water from the tumbler in front of me. From the corner of my eye I could see that even Matt Brady had been interested in what I had said.
    “Good will, gentlemen,” I began again. “That’s my business. I try to help people think kindly of you. I probably won’t sell a ten-cent can opener for you.
    “But if I’m successful people will think more highly of you than they do to-day. And the chances are that if they like you more, the many things you sell will be sold more easily. Whether you gentlemen realize it or not, it is just as important for you to have your customers like you as it is for the man in the candy store on your corner.
    “And like, it or not, gentlemen, as far as I’m concerned you’re nothing but the guys in business in the biggest candy store on the biggest corner in the world.” I picked up the papers in front of