Travel Light and Travel Far

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The moment I walked into my office after three rugged days in Detroit, my secretary, Miss Nancy, told me Prentice Flannigan wanted to see me right away. I knew from her tone he wasn’t anxious to give me a bonus. I asked her if she had any clue.

“Lew Wales goofed up the Chem-Land contract,” she said.

I stared at her. “Completely?”

“Nobody seems to know yet.”

“But how the hell could he have even got close enough to it to have...”

“I honestly can’t tell you any more about it, Bill.”

After Flannigan’s girl told him I was waiting in the outer office, he took two minutes to wind up his conference with a couple of the engineers. When I went in and closed the door, he asked me, in a soft, funereal voice, to sit down. He tilted his chair back and closed his eyes, laced his big white fingers across his flat belly, and sighed a few times.

Prentice Flannigan, except for his prematurely white hair, looks a little like old photographs of Henry Wallace. He has cultivated vague, professorial mannerisms, and he dresses like a medical missionary. But, if any fat and ancient corporation in America should suddenly feel the need of a totally ruthless hatchet man to bring it back into a competitive position in the shortest possible time, and should make a list of the ten possible candidates for the job, Flannigan’s name wouldn’t be far down the list.

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