Powers of Attorney by Louis Auchincloss

“real money,” and for whom Rutherford had drawn some dozen wills without fee, died leaving her affairs, including the management of her estate, in the hands of an uptown practitioner who had persuaded her that Wall Street lawyers were a pack of wolves. The next morning, when Rutherford happened to meet the senior partner in the subway, Tilney clapped a heavy hand on his shrinking shoulder.
    â€œTell me, Rutherford,” he boomed over the roar of the train. “Have you ever thought of turning yourself into a securities lawyer? We could use another hand on this Smilax deal.”
    â€œWell, it’s not a field I know much about,” Rutherford said miserably.
    â€œBut, man, you’re not forty yet! You can learn. Quite frankly, this Halleck fiasco is the last straw. I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault, but the family business isn’t carrying its share of the load. Think it over.”
    Rutherford sat later in his office, staring out the window at a dark brick wall six feet away, and thought gloomily of working night and day on one of Tilney’s securities “teams,” with bright, intolerant younger men who had been on the
Harvard Law Review.
The telephone rang, startling him. He picked it up. “What is it?” he snapped.
    It was the receptionist. “There’s a Colonel Hubert here,” she said. “He wants to see Mr. Tower. Do you know him, or shall I see if Mr. Tilney can see him?”
    It was not unusual for prospective clients to ask for “Mr. Tower,” assuming that they were asking for the senior partner. Rutherford, however, was too jostled to answer with his usual self-depreciation. “If I were the receptionist,” he said with an edge to his voice, “and somebody asked for Mr. Tower, I think I’d send him to Mr. Tower. But then, I suppose, I have a simple mind.”
    There was a surprised silence. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tower. I only meant—”
    â€œI know,” he said firmly. “It’s quite all right. Tell Colonel Hubert I’ll be glad to see him.”
    Sitting back in his chair, Rutherford immediately felt better.
That
was the way to deal with people. And, looking around, he tried to picture his room as it might appear to a client. It was the smallest of the partners’ offices, true, but it was not entirely hopeless. If his uncle’s best things, including the Sheraton desk, had been taken over by Mr. Tilney, he at least had a couple of relics of that more solid past: the large framed signed photograph of Judge Cardozo in robes, and his uncle’s safe, a mammoth green box on wheels with Reginald Tower painted on the door in thick gold letters. The safe, of course, would have been more of an asset if Tilney had not insisted that it be used for keeping real estate papers and if young men from that department were not always bursting into Rutherford’s office to bang it open and shut. Sometimes they even left papers unceremoniously on his desk, marked simply “For Safe.” Still, he felt, it gave his room some of the flavor of an old-fashioned office, just a touch of Ephraim Tutt.
    An office boy appeared at the doorway, saying “This way, sir,” and a handsome, sporty old gentleman of certainly more than eighty years walked briskly into the office.
    â€œMr. Tower?”
    Rutherford jumped to his feet to get him a chair, and the old man nodded vigorously as he took his seat. “Thank you, sir. Thank you, indeed,” he said.
    He was really magnificent, Rutherford decided as he sat down again and looked him over. He had thick white hair and long white mustaches, a straight, large, firm, aristocratic nose, and eyes that at least tried to be piercing. His dark, sharply pressed suit covered a figure whose only fault was a small, neat protruding stomach, and he wore a carnation in his buttonhole and a red tie with a hug knot.
    â€œYou are in the business of making