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The Spiked Heel

“I promise,” he said. He paused. “Listen, let us know where you relocate, won’t you? Marge and I would like to…”

And then he stopped because her eyes had become dead again, and she was not listening to him.

He was not for a moment fooled by McQuade’s strategy, nor was he annoyed with having been taken in by it. Actually, he’d had no choice. He knew that McQuade was wielding a double-edged sword, and he examined each razor-sharp edge dispassionately.

The first edge had been dipped in the oil of despair and then honed with subtlety, a last quiet attempt to force Griff into throwing up his hands in disgusted defeat. Searching back through an additional two years’ cost cards was nothing more than a tedious, back-breaking job. Compiling actual cost for the past year was another thankless task. The tedium and monotony itself would have been enough to discourage most men.

A lesser man, or perhaps even a smarter man, would have said to hell with it. A smarter man, or perhaps even a lesser man, would have conceded to McQuade and left Julien Kahn to plow its own insane road to certain disaster.

But there was still the other edge to McQuade’s weapon, and that edge was a sharp one, far sharper than the first.

Griff was fighting for his job.

McQuade had already made his senseless recommendation to Titanic. The recommendation, if acted upon, would eliminate the Cost Department. Griff did not want Cost eliminated.

If his figures showed McQuade to be wrong, McQuade and Titanic would undoubtedly concede, and the Cost Department would survive, but the flow of stupid requests would not end until Griff quit the job. If he refused to work up the figures, the Cost Department was doomed, and he’d be transferred God only knew where. In either case McQuade would win.

But suicide was not a cheerful prospect, nor was Raymond Griffin the type of man who could put a gun to his own head. And so, doggedly, wearily, almost vengefully, he got to work on the problem of fighting for his job, the job that was his life and his roots.

The idea was a curious one. In his mind, it took on an overwhelming enormity that went beyond the tangible aspects of the problem. He felt, somewhat foolishly, like the last bastion of defense against McQuade’s encroaching army. The picture of a hero standing alone sometimes made him want to laugh aloud, but, amusing or not, he accepted the picture.

McQuade was only one man, a representative of the machine which was Titanic Shoe. He had stepped into Julien Kahn, and he had sweet-talked and bludgeoned and oiled and pressured, but he was only a man, wasn’t he? He was only a man trying to do a job, that’s all. He was only a stationmaster trying to get those trains to run on time. Well, by God, he was succeeding. The trains were running jim-dandy now what with all the factory changes. There was just one funny thing: nobody liked riding the trains any more.

It was sure a funny thing, all right. Hadn’t Titanic done everything possible for the workers? Raises, sanitation, safety, comfort, leisure? Hadn’t Titanic magnanimously showered all these wonderful things on the populace of Julien Kahn?

But beneath the smooth running of the trains, beneath the slick, streamlined metal and the smoking cars and the shining new rails and the clean depots, there was an unspoken fear: no one wanted to get run down.

Griff was no exception. With calm, saddening resignation, he realized that he was no exception.

There was something frightening about that rushing sleek steel monster. He did not want to be run down.

But he did want his job.

Doggedly, wearily, almost vengefully, he got to work.

“Pattern number 73–41,” Davidoff said.

“Seven three dash four one,” Griff repeated.

“Last 601 J.”

“601 J.”

“Upper materials. Suede, .143. Pair, 1476. Unit, .90. Pair, 1.318.”

“Got it.”

“Calf, 134. Pair, .1474. Unit, .98. Pair, 1.445.”

“Check.”