build on.”
“Got capital enough of its own,” the old man said curtly. “How did you get involved in this, anyway?”
“They wanted someone who knew corporate finance,” Wyatt lied. “You see, the job I’ve been offered-it’s the presidency of Melbard, provided, of course, it can be bought by Nuart.”
The old man bridled immediately. His eyes narrowed; his face became hard and shrewd. He yanked open a desk drawer and took out an old meerschaum pipe with a badly chewed stem, and clenched it unlit between his teeth, supporting the bowl with one hand.
Wyatt said, “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t. I just use it to remind me to keep my mouth shut when I’m confronted by something I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t think it was hard to understand at all, sir.”
“Isn’t it? You tell me if I’m wrong, Steve, boy-it seems unconscionable to me. They’re trying to bulldoze me by using you as a lever against me. They must know it would go against my grain, against my family ties, to stand in your way. But it must have occurred to you that for me to sell out to your friends would go just as much against my grain. After all, if you become president of Melbard, what happens to James Melbard?”
“He moves up to board chairman. He’s ready to retire anyway-he’s said so. Nobody wants to buy all his stock-he’ll keep his seat on the board, and he’ll remain chairman as long as he chooses to.”
“A titular job, of course? You’d be in charge of operations, as president?”
“Well, yes. Of course, sir. Nuart would have a majority of the votes on the board. Naturally they’d be inclined to support me if a dispute came up between me and Mr. Melbard. But I assure you I’d be anxious to cooperate with him-after all, he knows this business better than I do.”
Rademacher closed his mouth around the pipestem; he leaned back in the high-backed leather chair and closed his eyes. Wyatt, after a little while, made an elaborate sweeping arc with his arm, and looked at his watch; finally the old man opened his eyes, straightened his chair up, and said bluntly, “No. I won’t do it. I’m sorry.”
Wyatt nodded slowly. The old man took down his meerschaum and tried to work his teeth into a comfortable position. It was not beyond probability that he would, any minute now, decide to take them out.
Wyatt’s eyes, which the old man could not see against the lamp behind him, expressed their contempt for Rademacher; in a quiet, slow way, his upper-crust voice slurring, Wyatt said, “Under the terms of the proposal I’m authorized to make, you’d receive stock options in the new corporation-you’d be granted the right, for ten years, to buy ten thousand shares of Nuart stock at ten dollars a share. We have every reason to believe it will be three or four times that price within a year, let alone ten years. On a cash investment of a hundred thousand dollars, you’ll be able to show a capital gain of anywhere from one to five hundred thousand within a very few years. And of course, if I’m wrong, if the stock declines in price during the option period, it will have cost you nothing, since you’re not required to exercise your option-you don’t have to buy the stock. Heads you win, tails you don’t lose. The option will be transferable to your heirs, of course.”
The pipe was back in Rademacher’s mouth. Around it, he said softly, “I told you not to bulldoze me. What makes you think I’d accept an underhanded chance to increase my own fortunes that way at my brother-in-law’s expense?”
“Not at his expense, sir. He’ll get the same stock option you get. Nobody stands to lose.”
“Nevertheless, it’s an effort to corrupt me-to bribe me with stock options. What must you think of me? An old fool, yes, perhaps-but a common chiseler?”
Wyatt’s voice began to harden. “Everybody chisels, Arthur. It’s only a question of need and time and motive. We all start out honest-we all see how easy it would be to give the suckers a shearing, but we’re too decent to take advantage of them. Our consciences hold us back. But then some of us get pushed into a corner-bills we’ve got to pay, or grandchildren who need money for medical care or university tuition, or a relative who needs an expensive lawyer. Am I getting warm, sir?”
Stiff in his chair, the old man muttered, “You’re a wretch, Steve boy. A scoundrel. How did you find out?”
“What does that matter? You need money, Arthur. You’re not nearly as rich as you want your family to think. You need it very fast, because you don’t know how long you’re going to live. You’ve been thinking about it for quite some time. And it won’t be the first time, will it? Forty years ago you saw a way to get money, and you must have explained very carefully to yourself how the suckers were just asking for it, just begging for it, and you might as well take it away from them, because if you didn’t, somebody else would.”
The old man’s jaws were bunched on the pipe; his eyes were closed. Wyatt bounced to his feet and spoke from a semicrouch; his voice clacked abruptly: “September, nineteen-twenty-nine-you were a member of the board of directors of the Merchants and Maritime Trust, and you were present at a company meeting where the board decided to pay a reduced dividend. While the secretary went out of the room to type up the notification to the Stock Exchange, you excused yourself by pleading a call of nature. Only instead of going down the hall to the men’s room you got to a telephone and sold all your stock in the company and sold more short. You got out just in time. Half an hour later the news hit the ticker, and the Exchange was swamped with sell orders-trading was suspended for two hours, and the stock reopened down several points. You made good your short sales and cleared a half-million dollars. Isn’t that how it happened, Arthur? And didn’t my grandfather, who was with you on that board of directors, cover up what you’d done?”
Rademacher, eyes shut, was dry-washing his clasped hands. Mottled veins stood out on his wrists. He drew in a long ragged breath, and his gaunt old frame shuddered when he let it out.
Slowly he opened his desk drawer and put the meerschaum away in it, closed the drawer deliberately, and looked up, his eyes devoid of expression. He said, “I won’t waste the energy it would take to call you names. What do you want of me?”
“Your quarter-million shares of Melbard, at the market price. And your affidavit relinquishing your option on James Melbard’s quarter-million shares.”
“Of course,” the old man muttered to himself. Without further discussion, he turned to the phone and dialed a number. He composed his face into a slack-muscled smile, so forced he looked as if he had been posing too long for a slow photographer.
Wyatt picked up his attache case and opened it on his lap. Rademacher began to talk into the phone in an exhausted, defeated voice: “Hello, James. I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but something’s come up… No, nothing like that. Look, James, I’ve done some questionable things in my lifetime, but I’ve never been a treacherous man, so I think I’m going to have to give you fair notice before I sell you out… Let me finish, please. Certain facts have come to my attention which have caused me to change my mind about the Nuart tender… Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. I’m going to sign my control over to them. I wanted you to know… No. I’m really quite tired, James, can’t we discuss it in daylight? Very well. I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Good night.”
Wyatt pushed the documents across the desk and handed the old man a pen.
“I am tempted,” Arthur Rademacher said, “to scrawl a big fat X on this dotted line, sir.”
But he signed. Wyatt slid the papers into his case, snapped it shut, went out of the office, and shut the door softly behind him.
23. Mason Villiers
Wednesday morning at ten, looking tired and confident and pouch-eyed in a slim mohair suit, Mason Villiers concluded his phone conversation with Montreal and went directly from the phone booth to the lobby doors. Crossing to the curb was like walking through a Turkish bath. He slid into the back seat of the limousine and slammed the door before the doorman could reach it.
Sanders, at the wheel, said, “Good morning, sir,” over his shoulder.
Villiers grunted. “Hackman’s. Don’t dawdle.”
The car slid out into traffic. Sanders said, “Sir, if you don’t mind, I-”
“Later,” Villiers said. “Not now.” He reached for a button on the armrest panel. The hard glass screen ascended from the top of the front seat and sealed itself shut with a click against the ceiling. Concealed from the world by tinted glass, he leaned back and closed his eyes. He had been on the move for seventy-two hours,
