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“Would you like to know why I remember that young Laird K. Russell so vividly, Agnes?” Esther was asking.
Ginger Horton sniffed to show unqualified disinterest and murmured something to her sleeping Bitsy.
“Esther, you can’t be serious,” said Agnes, turning to the others with a brilliant smile. “More tea, anyone?”
“I most certainly would like to know,” said Grand, actually coming forward a little on his chair.
“Well,” said Esther, “it was because he looked like my father.”
“Esther, really!” cried Agnes.
“I mean our father, of course,” Esther amended. “Yes, Agnes, he looked just like the photographs of Poppa as a young man. It struck me then, but I didn’t realize it at the time. So perhaps it’s not Laird K. Russell I’m remembering, you see, even now, but those photographs. You didn’t know him, of course, Guy—he was a truly remarkable man.”
“Young Russell do you mean, or Poppa?” asked Guy.
“Why Poppa, of course—surely you don’t know Laird K. Russell?”
“Esther, in the name of heaven!” cried Agnes. “He’s probably dead by now! How can you go on so about the man? Sometimes I wonder if you aren’t trying quite deliberately to upset me....”
** ***
Speaking of upsets though, Grand upset the equilibrium of a rather smart Madison Avenue advertising agency, Jonathan Reynolds, Ltd., by secretly buying it—en passant, so to speak—and putting in as president a pygmy.
At that time it was rare for a man of this skin-pigmentation or stature (much the less both) to hold down a top-power post in one of these swank agencies, and these two handicaps would have been difficult to overcome—though perhaps could have been overcome in due time had the chap shown a reasonable amount of savoir-faire and general ability, or the promise of developing it. In this case, however, Grand had apparently paid the man to behave in an eccentric manner—to scurry about the offices like a squirrel and to chatter raucously in his native tongue. It was more than a nuisance.
An account executive, for example, might be entertaining an extremely important client in his own office, a little tête-à-tête of the very first seriousness—perhaps with an emissary of one of the soap-flake kings—when the door would burst open and in would fly the president, scrambling across the room and under the desk, shrieking pure gibberish, and then out he’d go again, scuttling crabwise over the carpet, teeth and eyes blazing.
“What in God’s name was that?” the client would ask, looking slowly about, his face pocked with a terrible frown.
“Why, that ... that....” But the a.e. could not bring himself to tell, not after the first few times anyway. Evidently it was a matter of pride.
Later this a.e. might run into one of his friends from another agency, and the friend would greet him:
“Say, hear you’ve got a new number one over at J.R., Tommy—what’s the chap like?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, Bert....”
“You don’t mean the old boy’s got you on the mat already, Tommy. Ha-ha. That what you’re trying to say?”
“No, Bert, it’s ... well I don’t know, Bert, I just don’t know.”
It was a matter of pride, of course. As against it, salaries had been given a fairly stiff boost, and titles. If these dapper execs were to go to another agency now, it would be at a considerable loss of dollars and cents. Most of the old-timers—and the younger ones too, actually—had what it took to stick it out there at J.R.