Powers of Attorney by Louis Auchincloss Page A

and he let her go. For a moment he stood there, dazed, stock-still by the checkroom, until the headwaiter asked him if he wished to dine alone. He shook his head quickly and went out to the street to hail a taxi. It was only seven-thirty; he had still time to dine at the Century Club. When he got there, he hurried to the third floor and glanced, as he always did, through the oval window to see who was sitting at the members’ table. There was an empty seat between Raymond Massey and Ed Murrow. Opposite he noted the great square noble face and shaggy head of Learned Hand. He must have just finished one of his famous anecdotes, for Madison heard the sputter of laughter around his end of the table. It would be a good night. As he glided forward to take that empty seat he knew that he was a perfectly happy man again.

The Revenges of Mrs. Abercrombie
    M RS . A BERCROMBIE would have been with Tower Tilney & Webb, come December, a grand total of forty years and was scheduled to be retired in the spring on her sixty-fifth birthday, when she and Mr. Abercrombie, an already pensioned accountant, planned to move to a new ranch house at a prudent distance from the beach in Montauk. Mr. Abercrombie, who found his rambles in Prospect Park, even with the zoo, inadequate to fill the long Brooklyn mornings and afternoons, looked forward to the change, but his wife was less enthusiastic. Where would she find, along the windy dunes of Long Island, the special consideration, the almost awesome isolation, which she enjoyed as secretary of the Tower Estates and treasurer of the Tower Foundation, known to all the office staff as the amanuensis of the late senior partner and surrogate, Reginald Tower?
    Mrs. Abercrombie liked to think that she looked the part that she liked to play, and to some extent she did. Her slow, rolling gait gave to her broad figure, as it progressed down the corridors, and to her square chin, her high, broad brow, her crowning pompadour of silky grey, some of the dignity of a capital ship proceeding into harbor on a choppy sea but nonetheless ready, with sailors in white manning the rail, to render honors to the local commander. Her small office contained only a desk, two chairs and a large, mahogany framed photograph of Surrogate Tower in his robes, but she had it all to herself, and on the opaque glass door appeared, in gold lettering, the words “Tower Estates,” followed by “Mrs. Abercrombie, Secretary.” The next office was occupied by Rutherford Tower, whose nervous manner and furtive eyes seemed constantly to apologize for any presumption in sharing the last name of his deceased uncle. Mrs. Abercrombie could see only a parody of the Surrogate in his long, sallow features, and she particularly minded his habit of setting his teeth, because he did so only when he was frightened and not, like his uncle, when he was crossed. His teeth were set with a particular rigidity one morning, a month before Christmas, when he called her in to discuss tax returns.
    â€œMr. Tilney’s on one of his efficiency rampages,” he began gloomily. “He seems to think all the income tax returns should be prepared by the tax department.”
    â€œSurely not mine?”
    By “mine” Mrs. Abercrombie meant those of Rutherford Tower’s uncle’s family. Indeed, the preparation of these, plus the processing of law students’ applications for Tower Foundation grants, constituted her principal activities in the firm.
    â€œEven yours, I’m afraid.” He looked up at her with the abrupt, sullen defiance of the timid. “Even Aunt Mildred’s.”
    â€œI don’t think Mrs. Tower would want anyone else prying into her personal affairs. I have
always
done her returns.”
    â€œWell, it seems she was at dinner at the Tilneys’ the other night and agreed to the whole thing. Tilney told her you couldn’t be expected to keep up to date on every last tax