Powers of Attorney by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online Page A

he went back to his news. “You want to hear the hot dope?”
    â€œYou mean about Mason, Winthrop representing them?”
    â€œMason, Winthrop, my eye!” Barry cried in triumph. “Do you think old Clitus was going to let them get away with
that?
Not on your life, kid. This is old Tilney’s finest hour. Tower, Tilney will be retained as counsel to the new Standard Bank of Commerce.”
    Jake’s stare was now all that even Barry could have wished. “How do
you
know?”
    â€œOh, a tiny, tiny bird,” Barry responded with his widest grin. “A tiny bird called Clitus Tilney.”
    â€œHe
told you?”
    â€œNone other.”
    â€œBut why? What have you to do with it, unless...” Jake stopped. Very definitely, he could not endure to be told of Barry’s partnership by Barry.
    â€œUnless, exactly,” Barry concluded for him. “Unless I have a place in the merger. Which it so happens that Yours Truly does.” Barry puffed out his chest and put one hand over his heart and the other in his hip pocket in what was supposed to be a Napoleonic stance. “You have the privilege of seeing before you the new head of the pension trust department of the Standard Bank of Commerce!”
    Jake rose shakily to take the now proffered hand. “You mean you’re leaving us? Well, that’s terrific, old man, and it’s one hell of a fine job, but what about here?” He gripped Barry’s shoulder in a sudden surge of friendly feelings.
    â€œHere? What do you mean, here?”
    â€œI mean your chances of being a partner.”
    Barry’s smile exploded into one of his happy, boisterous laughs. “Are you kidding? Mrs. Schlide’s little boy from Queens amid all the Towers and Tilneys? Do I look like the Social Register type?”
    â€œAs a matter of fact, only five of the partners are in the Social Register.”
    â€œOh, only five?” Barry’s laugh might have been as good-natured as ever, but the hint of mockery in his eyes showed that he had noted the depth of information which Jake had allowed himself to uncover. “Well, I’m betting on you to make it six!”
    â€œI’m not in the Social Register.”
    â€œYou will be, old boy, don’t worry. And I’ll be rooting for you all the way!”
    â€œBut Barry,” Jake protested, in bewilderment, “if you felt that way about the firm, why did you come here in the first place?”
    â€œFor the resale, my friend, for the resale. And didn’t it work?”
    An hour and a seeming lifetime later, when Jake had received the long-awaited, the ceased-to-be anticipated, the altogether incredible summons to Clitus Tilney’s office, after the usual banter about his exhausted appearance, the usual orders to go home immediately to shave, to rest, to forget work, after the offer, premised with sudden seriousness and contracted brow on the expansion that would be required by the new legal work resulting from the merger, the offer that was simply what one had lived for—the offer that in its very making, carried the germ, already recognizable, of a lifetime of anticlimax—the offer to become a partner in Tower, Tilney & Webb, Jake, sitting back weakly in his chair and inhaling a cigarette that was dizzying at this time before sleep or food, heard himself asking: “And what, sir, if I may ask, about Barry?”
    â€œBarry? Barry Schlide? Well, I guess we needn’t worry about Barry. I’ve fixed him up with a fine job in the new bank.”
    â€œSo he told me. But did he have no chance here?”
    â€œBarry?” Tilney seemed to multiply his interrogation infinitely by his third query of the name, an interrogation that made him and Jake seem like two figures scampering down the long echoing corridor of all that had to be taken for granted, away from the poor capering clownish outline, dimmer and dimmer as they left it behind, of