Chapter II
They reached the end of the street, where it turned and met Oak Street. They pulled up before 320 Sycamore, what the yokels used to call "the old Granville house", but which the rabble now called "George and Mary Bailey's house." A couple of cars, one with official tags in the window, stood outside, one in the drive, the other in street. He had to admit, that clerk's little wench had succeeded in turning an eyesore into something half presentable, but he cursed himself for not buying the property sooner and having the old pile torn down to make way for a high-class bordello. Yes, that would keep these yokels from breeding more…
But he couldn't waste time woolgathering. He started to reach out and poke Fletch and order him to get out and bring him to the door, but he stopped and looked up at the window.
A lamp stood on a table in the front room; George and that woman of his Mary and his fool of an uncle Billy lingered around it, counting money while Billy's hare-wit son, whatever his name was, clacked away at an adding machine. George stood talking to a youngish man, probably a reporter, who wrote rapidly on a pad of paper. A second man, wearing a slightly better cut suit stood nearby, shaking his head as if in amazement and talking. The two men shook hands with George, who led them out of the range of the window. A moment later and the door opened. The two men, joined by two others, emerged and walked down to their cars, laughing and talking excitedly among themselves. Potter rolled down his window.
"Hey, you! One of you come over and tell me what's going on?" he cried.
The more rumpled of the better-dressed men came to the side of Potter's car. "Mr. Potter, good evening."
"Is this way you conduct justice around here? Letting white-collar thieves run loose in our society? I'll have you disbarred!" Potter cried.
"You can't convict a man or put him on trial for mislaying money; perhaps there was a little negligence, but if that were a crime worthy of conviction, we'd all have to be locked up. He's lucky he has friends who could help him out; I wish to heaven there were more people like them."
"Even rats help each other. I want that conviction carried through!"
"You're forgetting something, Mr. Potter: It's Christmas; all the judges and juries are in recess, and unless you want to pull together a kangaroo court, there's no way they can do anything with it until after the New Year."
"Then I'll get Congress to override this Christmas nonsense and have it wiped from the calendar."
The lawyer smiled. "And lose a major economic asset? Be careful what you ask for, Mr. Potter, because sometimes you get it, and it's not what you really wanted."
With that, the lawyer walked away and rejoined his colleague near the other car. The younger man grinned and said something that sounded like, "I guess you told that money-grubbing buzzard a thing or three." Potter rolled the window up as fast as he could.
"Take me home!" he ordered.
Malloy stuffed his rosary back into his breast pocket and started the car.
A quarter of an hour later, they pulled into the drive of Potter's house. Unlike most people's impression of wealthy men, Potter chose not to live in a mansion, but in the same crooked old house where he had grown up. He had more than mere sentimentality in doing so: it cost less to maintain than a mansion. A mansion attracted dust and cobwebs more than most houses, and that required an army of maids to keep it clean, and that meant having women about. Women! Except that they usually had more expensive tastes and requirements than men and that meant heightened demand for consumer goods, they served no purpose to the economy…Oh he might have turned his office downtown into a showcase, but he did so only to impress the bumpkins.
When Fletch and Malloy carried him indoors, he found Gable, his personal accountant, sitting in an armchair in the front room, asleep, his white trench coat open about his too-thin frame. As Fletch wheeled Potter into the front room, the young man stirred and opened his dark eyes. He pulled himself to his feet and stepped out on his right foot to steady himself. His left leg had grown crooked following a failed operation to curb the osteomyelitis he'd developed as a child.
"Henry, do you wish me to stay, or shall I leave?" he asked in a deep sonorous voice touched with irony. "I would have gone over them myself, but I knew you'd want to double-check them with your own eyes."
"It's late, we'll go over the accounts in the morning, Joseph. You may go now; you must be tired waiting up," potter said with something approaching benevolence. For a moment, the image of George Bailey, free as a bird, faded from Potter's eye.
"Thank you, Henry. I'm hardly tired. May I be so bold as to ask…what took you so long?"
"Business, child, just some business with an old enemy.
He gathered up the sheaf of ledgers on the table beside his chair and hobbled out into the front hallway.
The thick envelope in Potter's breast pocket rubbed against his breastbone; his hand went to it almost of its own volition. He had to do something with it before anyone suspected... "Joseph?"
"Yes?" the young man turned on his good heel and turned his swarthy, saturnine visage toward him. In the shadows, it looked more skull-like than usual.
"Never mind, it can wait till the morning." Gable only nodded, his thin mouth gathered in a faint smile. He went on his way out.
Fletch wheeled Potter to the master bedroom in the rear of the ground floor and helped him settle in for the night.
Once he lay alone in bed with his thoughts, Potter let them run wild.
If only that young man were like Gable, who knows a good chance when he sees it! Ten years ago, Potter had offered George Bailey a chance to help manage his properties, but Bailey had refused to let go of that rattletrap Building and Loan. But then he had met Gable, a young man with a mind like an adding machine, working as a floorwalker in the Stock Exchange, and he saw someone who knew how to handle money. The youngster would lie down and roll over like a dog if he ordered him to, but he knew how to make a profit and how to build up his assets. Bailey has the stuff, the ambition, the know-how, but he feels too much and thinks too little! Men like that should never have been born, or they should be drowned at birth with their mothers, to keep more like that from being born…If you'd been smarter, George Bailey, you'd be in Joseph P. Gable's boots right now. In a lock box bolted to the floor of Potter's clothes-closet lay a sheaf of papers declaring Joseph Peter Gable to be the heir to Henry Flyte Potter, to come into effect December 25, 1945, his Christmas present to the best accountant he'd ever had. If he'd had a son, he wished he could have been like this capable young man, not a single nerve of sentiment or emotion in him. Potter allowed himself one moment of sentiment; besides having the most business sense in the state, they both had their handicaps: Potter had his paralysis which had struck him forty years ago, Gable had his gimpy leg, which thankfully had kept him Four-F. They'd both overcome the limits of nature and made themselves far more useful than many men in full use of their capabilities.
He caught himself feeling the same way about George Bailey and his bad ear, but he steeled himself. That youngster had brought it on himself, diving into that cold water, but it just showed how little sense he had. And that was just the beginning of his chuckle-headedness! If only he hadn't been born, this town would be far more productive….
He let himself drift off with these thoughts.