“Like a pair of sharks smelling the same blood,” Isher observed gloomily. “If Cleland was stupid Elliot Judd wouldn’t have put him in charge of the NCI board of directors.”
“We’ll handle him,” Villiers said, unworried.
Steve Wyatt said, “What about Dan Silverstein? Are you sure you can trust him?”
“I’m not sure I can trust anybody. I don’t expect loyalty from Silverstein, but we’ll get cooperation. He knows what to expect if he backs out.”
The limousine pulled up at the curb; the three men got out and walked across the sidewalk into the air- conditioned lobby of the fifty-story building that housed NCI’s executive offices.
The reception room on the forty-eighth floor was carpeted wall to wall, discreetly and indirectly lighted, furnished in cool Danish modern. The brunette at the reception desk was precisely groomed and tailored; her smile was impersonal. Wyatt muttered in Sidney Isher’s ear, “You could hang meat in here.”
Isher, disregarding him, identified himself and his companions to the receptionist, and said, “I assume the directors are caucusing now? Do you mind announcing us?”
The girl spoke into a phone, listened, and pointed to a leather-covered door. Isher and Wyatt affixed themselves to Villiers when he stepped toward the indicated door. By the time he reached it, it had swung open.
Cleland was big and lean, tanned, his face not unattractively lined; his hair was still a deep rich brown-dyed, perhaps, for his hands were veined and beginning to show age spots. He looked muscular and trim in a way that bespoke health clubs, steam rooms, barbells, and massages. His handshake, to Villiers and his companions, was perfunctory; perhaps he disliked being touched.
Six men stood in a knot just inside the door, not talking, looking at Villiers the way they might have looked at a prowling panther in the jungle-prepared to admire its grace and predatory strength, yet fearful and hostile lest it spring.
When Villiers strode inside, the group parted like the waters of the Red Sea. He went straight through, marching with a calculated display of arrogance down the length of the room to the head of the conference table. Only then did he turn to stare coolly at the others. The six men had been joined by Cleland, and when Villiers had gone right by them without shaking hands, they had burst into a low-voiced babble of talk. Villiers said, “All right, let’s hold it down.”
They gave him angry glares-all except one, a big apple-cheeked man with thin white hair combed carefully over his scalp-Dan Silverstein. The look that came onto Silverstein’s face when Villiers met his glance was like the sickly smile of a rural bank manager confronted with a surprise visit by the auditor, searching quickly and desperately through his mind for the details of his plan to cover up an embezzlement scheme, refusing to admit to himself that it was too late.
The talk subsided and Villiers made gestures. “My associates, Mr. Sidney Isher and Mr. Stephen Wyatt. I know you, Cleland, and Dan Silverstein. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the rest of you gentlemen?”
The board of directors was, in due course, identified and separated out as to names and faces. They distributed themselves around the table. Ansel Cleland took a pair of glasses out of a leather case, arranged papers before him, pushed his glasses higher on his nose, and said, “You’re the visiting team. You can have the first turn at bat.” He planted his elbows on the table and thrust his jaw forward stubbornly, striking the pose familiar to anyone who had seen him on the cover of Newsweek.
Villiers, on his feet, launched into a clipped speech, the length of which was not out of proportion to what he had to say. He spoke without animation in a hard, mechanical voice; his words, delivered in a pitchless monotone, fell equally, like bricks, as if he were uttering a ritual incantation. Speaking down the length of the conference table from a widespread stance, he took the NCI directors step by step along a carefully planned route. He spoke mainly to Ansel Cleland, because in the absence of the chairman Cleland was NCI’s top man, a Cincinnati-born businessman whose career in banking and corporate law had catapulted him onto the boards of directors of eleven corporations, but whose principal interest had lain with the affairs of NCI ever since he had been hired on in 1946 as Elliot Judd’s corporation counsel. Cleland’s facade-jutting jaw, shrewd eyes, alert seated posture-was no sham.
Villiers took them through a swift course, twice deferring to Sidney Isher, who put in legal niceties, and to Steve Wyatt, who had come armed with a briefcase full of statistics and corporate figures.
He watched them while he spoke, gauging the temper of the group with hair-fine care; afterward he paused, and in a room whose silence was disturbed only by the thrumming of air-conditioning, he moved his eyes from face to face with an expression like that of a man who, drawing back his whip, hesitates just briefly to select the most painful spot on his victim’s naked back. And then he said, “My terms and conditions should be easy enough to understand. Either you support my campaign to persuade stockholders to trade their NCI shares for Heggins debentures, or I’ll proceed with moves to raise patent royalties and drive NCI out of the competitive marketplace. I’ve accumulated enough of a position and enough voting proxies to make a strong bid for control in a stockholders’ meeting, but if you force me to that extreme you’re only hurting yourselves and the company. Your best choice is to go along with the Heggins exchange and afterward dissolve the present board of directors so that I can replace it with my people.”
There were no outraged cries; most of them steepled their fingers and squinted at him, making it clear they were not ready to jump for the lifeboats yet, not prepared to be easily swayed. Ansel Cleland just watched Villiers as if he were slightly crazy. Silverstein looked uncomfortable and sick; he was toying with a mechanical pencil and not meeting anyone’s glance. There were looks of stunned fascination, pained looks of indignation, dazed looks of shock. Finally Ansel Cleland spoke: “You ought to be shot,” he said, filling with red-faced anger. “I won’t let you get near it.”
“I’m afraid you can’t stop me.”
“You’ll never pull it off, Villiers. We’ll line up proxy-soliciting firms. We’ll form a protective stockholders’ committee. This firm will not be bled by a common raider!”
“Go ahead. Insist on a proxy war. You’ll have trouble, Cleland. When I raise the patent royalties on Melbard and the others, your market picture will go sour. The big fund managers will dump NCI from their portfolios. Your own employees will get shaky and your customers will be frightened off. The competition will get brave, and you’ll get squeezed out of your outlets. You’ll destroy the confidence of your stockholders and wreck the entire company. Is that what you want?”
“Don’t try to put words in my mouth,” Cleland said. “You know what we want. The question is, what do you want?”
“I thought it was obvious by now. I want NCI.”
“No. You won’t get it, and you know that. So the question becomes, what will you settle for?”
Villiers shook his head. “You misunderstand me. I didn’t come here to bargain and negotiate and reach a compromise. There’s no middle ground here. You go along or you go under, that’s all there is.”
“You’re playing poker-running a bluff. Don’t you think we can see that?”
Villiers’ reply was the slightest of smiles. It had no visible effect on Cleland, but some of the others were visibly chilled; shaken, they looked away and fidgeted. Villiers nodded to Isher and Wyatt, who dragged on his cigarette and poured thick, slow rivers of smoke from his nostrils while he packed up his briefcase. Villiers walked down the length of the room to the door, turned, caught Dan Silverstein’s eye for a moment, and said to Cleland, “Our newspaper ads will be on the street Monday morning. You’ll have to make up your minds between now and then. If you’re smart, you won’t make a fight of it.”
Isher opened the door. They filed put; and Isher, with exaggerated propriety, closed the door firmly behind him.
They waited for the elevator-Villiers calm and steady, the others breathing hard. Steve Wyatt’s grin jerked, and he said nervously, “Prosperity is just around the corner.”
“Objection,” said Isher. “Assuming facts not in evidence. They haven’t capitulated yet.”
“They will,” Wyatt said. “Hell, four of them sold Heggins short on information we got leaked to them-those four are in a hell of a tight spot, and the only way they can get out of it with their scalps whole is accept our deal and trade their NCI shares for Heggins convertibles.”
The elevator came; they stepped in. Sidney Isher said, “If they’re inclined to play dirty pool, they may stop us yet.”
