“For a moment I almost forgot it was. Go greet the nice man. What does he drink? I’ll start fixing it.”
I was puddling the sugar in a teaspoon of water when Stanley Mottling came in. No one had described him to me. I had expected one of those hard-jawed, little terrier types, with nerves drawn tight and sharp and quick. Mottling ambled in and was introduced. He was vast and rangy, tweedy and shaggy. He looked sleepy... a young forty with mild, watchful eyes, and, in tweeds that looked slept in, there was an upper drawer flavor to the way he looked and handled himself. He was at least six-four, and his handshake was firm.
“Nice to know you, Mr. Dean. Damn shame it had to take a mess like this to bring you back here. Hope we can get along as well as Ken and I did.”
I said trite things while I tried to figure him out. The guy was likable. He had charm and ease of manner without seeming to be conscious of either. He also seemed very much at home. Though he had been in the room only a few moments, he had the air of host rather than guest.
I took the drinks over and he sat facing Niki and me on the other couch. The two couches were at right angles to the fireplace with a squat cocktail table between them.
We said pleasant nothings while I decided on one fast and definite gambit which might teach me something about the man.
“I was disturbed, Mr. Mottling, to learn Tom Garroway left us.”
He nodded. “It was a hell of a shame. A good man. The kind we ought to make a special effort to keep. If there’d been less pressure, I would have tried to re-educate him. He was spoiled.”
“Spoiled! For what?”
He smiled. “Mr. Dean, you’ve just let yourself in for a short lecture on one of my pet management theories. I feel that industrial techniques have advanced beyond the point where any one man can be given a production problem to work out in his own way. I believe in operation on a team basis. Suppose, for example, I have a tool-design problem, a tricky cutting edge for high-speed operation. I want to form a team consisting of a mechanical engineer, a metallurgist, and a practical shop man to lick it. It saves time because what they come up with will have a minimum of bugs. If it is a quantity situation, I want somebody from purchasing on the team too, so that they’ll specify something we can get without too much delay. Tom Garroway wouldn’t work that way. And I didn’t have time to re-educate him.”
It was one of those things that sounds perfectly plausible if you say it fast enough. A fine theory — and I didn’t like it. “Same problem with Fitz and Poulson?” I asked casually.
His eyes narrowed just a bit, and for a moment the real Mottling spoke. “I keep men around me who work with me, Dean, not against me.” The real Mottling was a most impressive organism. Cold, direct, tough, and ruthless. A deity who would countenance no atheism. Then the mask was back, and he was again, a big, shambling, tweedy guy, mild and amiable, pipe smoker, bird dog fancier.
“I understand you’ve made yourself quite a record, Mr. Mottling.”
He shrugged. “A lot of luck. I’ve managed to go into companies where they’ve been too close to some very obvious problems. Too close to them to be objective about them. And pointing out the obvious is no indication of genius.”
“Then we had an obvious problem too?”
“Very. Your grandfather set up certain organizational matters in accordance with his own theories of management. Your father left those unchanged and added more superstructure of his own. Then you and your brother glued on some more. As a result there were no clear-cut lines of responsibility and authority. The place was running by ear, or by tradition, I suppose you could say.”
It was a callous dismissal of everything my father had done, of the way he had held the firm together during the dark days when competitors were going into receivership with monotonous regularity. I felt annoyance and Niki made a half-gesture that caught my eye. I glanced at her and saw on her face a reflection of my own distaste for that approach. I felt close to her in that moment, then wondered if her annoyance was based on her desire to have Mottling make the very best of impressions on me. That made me feel cool toward her again, cool and wondering what her stake was — in Mottling.
“It may have been running by ear, as you say, but running as a successful and profitable enterprise,” I said. “You are aware of that.”
He smiled, patronizing me. “Of course. We can’t afford to continue on that basis. I’ve been clearing out the dead wood, redefining lines of responsibility and authority, setting up standard production controls and ratios of accomplishment. All under your brother, of course. Now, whether I follow through with the program is up to you. From what I’ve seen, you did an adequate job when you were here. Within, of course, the handicaps under which you had to work. I believe you should let me show you what I’ve done so far. Then you will have the facts. Facts which will be important to you in any decision you may make.”
It was very direct, a broadside with heavy weapons, yet it had gotten him neatly over the hurdle. Niki leaned back, her expression bland and interested. I sensed relief in her. A proprietary relief. It was possible she had succumbed to a virus which is rare among beautiful women — the power drive in an industrial sense. Obviously she could not go down there and head up the company. But if she had a capable alter ego, under full control — a man like Mottling — that would mean that her protestations of lack of knowledge about the firm and the work and the legal angles were a smoke screen to keep me from guessing her true purpose. If Mottling could be controlled, by the use of her obvious feminine weapons — and Ken had become relatively immune to them...
“Why did Ken bring you in here in the first place?” I demanded, trying to match his directness.
“He saw the expansion coming, saw how space age contracts would grow. And he sensed the job would outgrow him. He had given up trying to get you back here. He had to find someone. I was recommended to him. I happened to be relatively free. He gave me almost complete authority. It was a sound management decision on his part.”
“And I should do the same, I suppose?”
He grinned, spread his big hands in a quick gesture. “I didn’t say that. I said you should check the facts.”
The man was likable. “That seems fair enough. One thing bothers me, though. If you’re doing so well, why should you have so much opposition from one group of shareholders?”
Mottling frowned and loaded a pipe, slowly and carefully. “It’s a bit difficult to explain, Mr. Dean. In spite of the size of Dean Products, it has always had the flavor of a local concern. Local ownership. Local talent. And, forgive me, the usual low-pressure operation that invariably accrues from such background. I’ve been ruthless. I am an outsider. I keep the pressure on. Their response is emotional. To them I am a foreigner coming in here, pushing nice people around. Mr. Karch, who has been instrumental in organizing the minority stockholders, and getting the backing of your uncle with his block of stock, is annoyed because I fired his son, who was incompetent. Granby, I am afraid, is a symbol of the comfortable past. I’m a symbol of the uncomfortable future. The human animal resents change.”
He was so sweetly reasonable. He made it all fall into place. Then he proved his timing was excellent. He glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid I’ve got to go back to the office.”
“Oh, Stanley!” Niki said.
“Can’t be helped, Niki. Very nice to have seen you, Mr. Dean. And thanks for the chance of telling you, a little bluntly I’m afraid, exactly how I feel about the job. Can I expect to see you in the morning?”
“I’ll probably be over. I don’t want to get in your way. I’ll just poke around, if that’s all right with you.”