see it.
Then walk among your customers. Talk to them.
Assure them our bank is in excellent shape, despite what they've been reading, and ten them everyone will get their money.'
Alex hung up. On another phone he immediately caned Straughan. - 'Tom,' Alex said, 'the balloon's gone up at Tylersville. The branch there needs help and cash fast. Put Emergency Plan One in motion.'
16
The municipality of Tylersville, like many a human being, was engaged in 'finding itself.'
It was a neo-suburb a mixture of bustling market town and farmland now partially engulfed by the encroaching city, but with enough of its origins remaining to resist, for a while, ex-urban conformity.
Its populace was a hybrid assortment of the old and new conservative, deep-rooted farming and local business families, and freshly resident commuters, many of the latter disgusted with decaying moral values of the city they had left, and seeking to absorb for themselves and growing families something of peaceful, rustic mores before these disappeared.
The result was an unlikely alliance of real and would-be ruralists, mistrusting big business and city-style maneuverings, including those of banks. Unique, too, in the case of the Tylersville bank run, was one gossipy mail carrier.
All day Thursday, while deliverinB letters and packages, he had also handed out the rumor, 'Did you hear about First Mercantile American Bank going bust? They say anyone who has money in there and doesn't get it out by tomorrow is going to lose everything.'
Only a few who heard the mailman believed him implicitly. But the story spread, then was fueled by news reports, including those of evening television.
Overnight, among farm folk, trades people and the new migrants, anxiety grew so that by Friday morning the consensus was:
Why take a chance? Let's get our money now.
A small town has its own jungle telegraph. Word of people's decisions circulated rapidly and, by midmorning, more and more of the populace was heading for the FMA branch bank. So, out of small threads, are large tapestries woven.
At FMA Headquarters Tower, some who had scarcely heard of Tylersville were hearing of it now. They would hear more as the chain of events in Vandervoort's Emergency Plan One went forward quickly.
On instructions from Tom Straughan, the bank's computer was consulted first.
A programmer tapped the question on a keyboard:
What are the totals of savings and demand deposits at Tylersville Branch?
The answer was instantaneous and up to the minute since the branch was on-line to the computer.
SAVINGS ACCOUNTS.
$26,170,627.54
DEMAND DEPOSITS
$15,042,767.18
TOTAL…
$41,213,394.72
The computer was then instructed:
Deduct from this total an allowance for dormant accounts and municipal deposits.
(It was a safe assumption that neither of these would be disturbed, even in a run.)
The computer responded: DORMANT & MUNICIPAL.$21,430,964.61
BALANCE!
$19,782,430.11
Twenty million dollars more or less which depositors in the Tylersville area could, and might, demand. A subordinate of Straughan's had already alerted Central Cash Vault, a subterranean fortress below the FMA Tower.
Now the vault supervisor was ir formed,
'Twenty million dollars to Tylersville Branch rushI'
The amount was still more than might be needed, but an objective decided on during advance planning by Alex Vanderyoort's group was to make a show of strength like running up a flag.
Or, as Alex expressed it, 'When you fight a fire, make sure you have more water than you need.'
Within the past forty-eight hours anticipating exactly what was happening now the normal money supply in Central Cash Vault had been augmented by special drawings from the Federal Reservre.
The Fed had been informed of, and had approved, the FMA emergency plans. A Midas fortune in currency and coin, already counted and in labeled sacks, was loaded onto armored trucks while an array of armed guards patrolled the loading ramp.
There would be six armored trucks in all, several recalled by radio from other duties, and each would travel separately with police escort a precaution because of the unusual amount of cash involved. However, only three trucks would have money in them.
The others would be empty dummies an extra safeguard against holdup. Within twenty minutes of the branch manager's call, the first armored truck was ready to leave Headquarters and, soon after, was threading downtown traffic on its way to Tylersville.
Even before that, other bank personnel were en route by private car and limousine.
Edwina D'Orsey was in the lead.
She would be in charge of the support operation now under way. Edwina left her desk at the main downtown branch at once, pausing only to inform her senior assistant manager and to collect three staff members who would accompany her a loan officer, Cliff Castleman, and two tellers. One of the tellers was Juanita Nunez.
At the same time, small contingents of staff from two other city branches were being instructed to go directly to Tylersville where they would report to Edwina. Part of over-all strategy was not to deplete any branch seriously of staff in case another run should begin elsewhere.
In that event, other emergency plans were ready, though there wu a limit to how many could be managed at once. Not more than two or three. The quartet headed by Edwina moved at a brisk pace through the tunnel connecting the downtown branch with FMA Headquarters.
From the lobby of the parent building they took an elevator down to the bank's garage where a pool car had been assigned and was waiting. Cliff Castleman drove.
As they were getting in, Nolan Wainwright sprinted past, heading for his own parked Mustang. The security chief had been informed of the Tylersville operation and, with twenty million dollars cash involved, intended to oversee its protection personally.
Not far behind him would be a station wagon with a half-dozen armed security guards. Local and state police at Tylersville had been alerted.
Both Alex Vandervoort and Tom Straughan remained where they were, in FMA Headquarters Tower. Straughan's office near the Money Trading Center had become a command post.
On the 36th floor, Alex's concern was to keep close tab on the remainder of the branch system, and to know instantly if fresh trouble erupted.
Alex had kept Patterton informed and now the bank president waited tensely with Alex, each mulling the unspoken questions: Could they contain the run in Tylersville?
Would First Mercantile American make it through the business day without a rash of runs elsewhere? Fergus W. Gatwick, the Tylersville branch manager, had expected that his few remaining years until retirement would pass unhurriedly and uneventfully.
He was sixtyish, a chubby apple of a man, pink-checked, blueeyed, gray-haired, an affable Rotarian. In his youth he had known ambition but shed it long ago, deciding wisely that his role in life was supportive; he was a follower who would never blaze a trail.
Managing a small branch bank ideally suited his ability and limitations. He had been happy at Tylersville, where only one crisis had marred his tenure until now. A few years ago a woman with an imagined grudge against
