through the okay signal for the cider fetchers to come and get it. So the foreman decided after a while that he’d better go see what the story was because they needed the cider, you see. What the foreman found was Fred sprawled out on the storeroom floor in his shirtsleeves, drunk as a boiled owl, singing ‘The Maple Leaf Forever.’ ”
“No!” cried Dittany.
“Yup,” said Mother Matilda, “the jug he’d been testing turned out to be pure applejack. And there was Fred—a strict teetotaler, a thirty-third, degree Mason, a Sunday school superintendent, and a high-ranking company official—the butt of opprobrium and coarse ribaldry. We naturally assumed the incident was meant as an extremely ill-conceived practical joke, but it certainly wasn’t funny. Furthermore, we had to hold up production till Fred’s mouth quit tasting like the bottom of a bird cage and he could get on with the job he’s paid to do.”
“And there were other incidents?” Osbert prompted.
“Too many. The most outrageous of all was VP Lemon Peel’s getting debagged by masked marauders in his own office while his secretary was out collecting her afternoon tea. They just rushed in, pulled a typewriter cover over his head, hauled down his britches, lashed him to his swivel chair with his own suspenders, and dashed out again. Miss Flaubert dropped the tea and fainted when she came in and found him sitting there in a pair of lemon-colored boxer shorts. Another tasteless and pointless prank was the consensus, but then Charles began putting two and two together. And he saw!”
Chapter 5
“WHAT WAS IT HE saw, Mother Matilda?” asked Dittany.
“Well, first I should explain that in our zeal for perfection, we at Mother Matilda’s never trust to memory. Each of the VPs has his own segment of the mincemeat recipe on a separate card, which he’s required to keep on his person at all times during working hours. I use ‘his’ in the impersonal sense, of course; several of our VPs are women. Right now I wish they all were, since the men seem so much more vulnerable to attack. But anyway, these cards are never taken off the premises except when the VPs carry them to the bank at night and pick them up again in the morning. Each card is kept in a separate safe deposit box, to which only the particular VP and I have keys.”
“How far is the bank from the factory?” said Osbert.
“It’s directly across the street. What our VPs generally do is drive up to the bank and park outside long enough to run in and get their cards, then swing across and drive into the parking lot, where our security guard lets them in through the side door, takes the car, and parks it. Then of course, the VPs are inside the factory and theoretically safe from molestation.”
Osbert started to say something, but Mother Matilda held up an imperious hand. High-powered executives couldn’t help it, Dittany supposed.
“Let me finish, Deputy. As I said, these disgusting incidents went on until it suddenly occurred to Charles that, while the formula cards were always found exactly where the VP had put them, they were always in a part of the clothing that had been vulnerable to search. Fred Perkins kept his card in his inside coat pocket, for instance, and when they found him he had his coat off. He was too befuddled, poor fellow, to remember whether or not he’d taken it off himself, but there it was.”
“And VP Lemon Peel carried his card in his trousers?”
“Precisely. And while the entire recipe is quite lengthy, the information required for each individual ingredient doesn’t amount to more than a few lines. You could copy it off in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, slip the card back where you found it, and nobody would be the wiser. That’s what Charles decided they must be doing. We’d been infiltrated! The recipe was being stolen under our very noses, one ingredient at a time.”
“When did your husband come to that conclusion, Mother Matilda?” asked
“No!” cried Dittany.
“Yup,” said Mother Matilda, “the jug he’d been testing turned out to be pure applejack. And there was Fred—a strict teetotaler, a thirty-third, degree Mason, a Sunday school superintendent, and a high-ranking company official—the butt of opprobrium and coarse ribaldry. We naturally assumed the incident was meant as an extremely ill-conceived practical joke, but it certainly wasn’t funny. Furthermore, we had to hold up production till Fred’s mouth quit tasting like the bottom of a bird cage and he could get on with the job he’s paid to do.”
“And there were other incidents?” Osbert prompted.
“Too many. The most outrageous of all was VP Lemon Peel’s getting debagged by masked marauders in his own office while his secretary was out collecting her afternoon tea. They just rushed in, pulled a typewriter cover over his head, hauled down his britches, lashed him to his swivel chair with his own suspenders, and dashed out again. Miss Flaubert dropped the tea and fainted when she came in and found him sitting there in a pair of lemon-colored boxer shorts. Another tasteless and pointless prank was the consensus, but then Charles began putting two and two together. And he saw!”
Chapter 5
“WHAT WAS IT HE saw, Mother Matilda?” asked Dittany.
“Well, first I should explain that in our zeal for perfection, we at Mother Matilda’s never trust to memory. Each of the VPs has his own segment of the mincemeat recipe on a separate card, which he’s required to keep on his person at all times during working hours. I use ‘his’ in the impersonal sense, of course; several of our VPs are women. Right now I wish they all were, since the men seem so much more vulnerable to attack. But anyway, these cards are never taken off the premises except when the VPs carry them to the bank at night and pick them up again in the morning. Each card is kept in a separate safe deposit box, to which only the particular VP and I have keys.”
“How far is the bank from the factory?” said Osbert.
“It’s directly across the street. What our VPs generally do is drive up to the bank and park outside long enough to run in and get their cards, then swing across and drive into the parking lot, where our security guard lets them in through the side door, takes the car, and parks it. Then of course, the VPs are inside the factory and theoretically safe from molestation.”
Osbert started to say something, but Mother Matilda held up an imperious hand. High-powered executives couldn’t help it, Dittany supposed.
“Let me finish, Deputy. As I said, these disgusting incidents went on until it suddenly occurred to Charles that, while the formula cards were always found exactly where the VP had put them, they were always in a part of the clothing that had been vulnerable to search. Fred Perkins kept his card in his inside coat pocket, for instance, and when they found him he had his coat off. He was too befuddled, poor fellow, to remember whether or not he’d taken it off himself, but there it was.”
“And VP Lemon Peel carried his card in his trousers?”
“Precisely. And while the entire recipe is quite lengthy, the information required for each individual ingredient doesn’t amount to more than a few lines. You could copy it off in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, slip the card back where you found it, and nobody would be the wiser. That’s what Charles decided they must be doing. We’d been infiltrated! The recipe was being stolen under our very noses, one ingredient at a time.”
“When did your husband come to that conclusion, Mother Matilda?” asked
Similar Books
