Banking on Death Read online

  He stopped for a moment and Thatcher waited for him to make inroads on his pie. He was curious enough about the felt business to alarm Robichaux slightly, he realized. Robichaux resumed his explanation, choosing his words with obvious care.

  “Now this is getting them some big contracts by itself but Ed says that the real money will come from a process they’re developing that is going to make it possible to replace the felt with a sort of synthetic or wire—I don’t understand these things—so that the replacing wouldn’t have to be undertaken so frequently. Doing a lot of research and all of that sort of thing. Apparently it isn’t just the cost, you see, but the nuisance of having to refit every few weeks. The boys in the paper industry are really very excited about this.”

  “Custom fitting the felt does seem a little out of date,” Thatcher remarked. “Tell me, what do you know about the Schneider Manufacturing Company? They produce felts, don’t they?”

  Robichaux frowned in concentration. “Schneider Manufacturing—oh, yes, of course; they’re up in Massachusetts. One of the old-line producers of the felts. What is all this interest in felts?”

  Thatcher beckoned the waiter for another cup of coffee; “Well, it really arises out of quite another matter.”

  “All right; if you are really interested in Buffalo Industrial Products, I’ll send you the red herring that we got up on it. As long as you don’t have any special axe to grind.”

  “Tom, you’re getting too suspicious. If Buffalo Industrial is as good as you say, I think you can count us in. I’ll have to talk to Bowman. But I would like to see that preliminary prospectus.” He sat thoughtfully for a while, and then roused himself to find Robichaux still watching him with a question in his eyes. “Let’s take our brandy inside, shall we?”

  In the library, they encountered friends, so that it was three o’clock by the time Thatcher and Robichaux left the Harvard Club. An early appointment for dinner guaranteed Thatcher against prolonged participation in the Sloan Christmas party, so that it was not the need for escape that prompted him to suggest accompanying Tom back to his office to collect the prospectus on Buffalo Industrial.

  Scrambling into the taxi, Robichaux settled himself comfortably then said, “We can send it over this afternoon.”

  Answering the unspoken inquiry, Thatcher said, “I’m just trying to get away from the office.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Robichaux declared bluntly.

  “You know, I don’t believe myself; I think I am getting nosier the older I get.”

  “I wish you would stop harping on age,” Robichaux said with a spasm of genuine irritation. Thatcher sat lost in his own thoughts. The trip downtown was impeded by crowds of package-laden pedestrians. When they were finally deposited at Four Broadway, Thatcher roused himself to notice once again that Robichaux and Devane had not found it necessary to surround the investment banking business with glass and chromium; it remained oaken and decently dark. It was the way an office should be, he thought, as he followed Robichaux into the third-floor waiting room, except for the sounds of strained revelry that drifted out of the inner offices.

  “They’re standing around looking guilty,” Robichaux grumbled, as he returned from his room. “Damnedest thing. Here’s the prospectus, Putt. Let us know as soon as you can if you want part of it.”

  “Thanks, Tom. I think you should count us in. Have a good holiday. My best to ... ah, Dorothy. Spending a quiet holiday at home, are you?”

  Since Robichaux’s home was a baronial Long Island estate with drafty halls, stables, and a large staff, the question might have been interpreted by a more perceptive intelligence as ironic, but Robichaux was unruffled. “Yes. Just a quiet few days. Drop in any time, for drinks.”

  Saying that he would try, which neither man believed for a minute, Thatcher made his farewells, and walked down the hall to the elevator. He knew that at this moment Tom was briskly interrupting the Christmas celebrations of—what was his name?—Fitzgerald—to catechize him about the Buffalo Industrial Products Corporation and its possible interest to the Sloan. Constant vigilance is the price of profitable banking. His interest would make Robichaux wonder. Not unnaturally. It made him wonder, himself.

  He stood for a moment by Bowling Green savoring the last light of a clean clear day. The snow, somewhat dirty now, still banked the streets and bustling crowds formed bright colored patterns in their last minute flurries of shopping. As he walked along he felt a mild satisfaction with winter in New York.

  It was dissipated soon enough. At his office, he found the sixth floor of the Sloan Guaranty Trust en fête. The inevitable crepe paper, incongruously Victorian, was draped over angular fixtures. Although the Christmas party was not scheduled to start until four o’clock, there were secretarial whispers and gigglings. The trust officers were standing around in small chatty groups; Charlie Trinkam was apparently telling one of his famous stories. Even Everett Gabler, looking ministerial as ever, had abandoned his work. John Putnam Thatcher strode through the waiting room and down the corridor, nodded curtly to Miss Corsa, then shut himself in his office. That would give them something to chat about.

  Pulling out the prospectus that Robichaux and Devane had prepared, he read that the Buffalo Industrial Products Corporation would, after securing approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission, offer to the public 100,000 shares of common stock, par five dollars, the offering to be underwritten by Robichaux and Devane, the Erie Company, Waymark-Simms and others. The capital would be used to finance extensive expansion of facilities, including the building of a new factory; capitalization accounts indicated that this was indeed the first step toward stable expansion. There was, he noted, no debt.

  Thatcher put the prospectus down and leaned back. A small company, starting from even smaller beginnings, just about to move into the big leagues. Now what was there? He snapped his fingers with sudden enlightenment. He knew what had been nagging at the back of his mind. Turning rapidly through the prospectus he found a list of Directors and Officers: Stanislas V. Michaels, President; Elroy C. Novak, Vice-President; Carl Robert Schneider, Vice-President; Jean M. Novak, Treasurer.

  Thatcher expelled a satisfied sigh. Carl Robert Schneider. In a firm producing felt for paper machines.

  “Mr. Thatcher,” said Miss Corsa, who had opened the door and now stood disapprovingly in the doorway, “they want to know if you care to come and help mix the punch.”

  “I would be delighted to, Miss Corsa, provided that you will drink some,” Thatcher replied mendaciously.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said before she fled down the hall to announce his coming. Christmas parties were greater ordeals for Rose Theresa Corsa than for John Putnam Thatcher. He was merely fastidious; she was well brought up. But Thatcher was in high good humor as he followed her down the hall. The only problem, he thought, as he greeted his staff nervously assembled around the improvised bar, was how to explain to young Nicolls that he had unearthed the missing heir.

  Telling him that it was a hunch would be setting a very bad example for junior members of the staff.

  Chapter 4

  Bank Holiday

  Every seven years Christmas falls on a Wednesday, and the world of employer-employee relations is shaken to its foundations. Every right-minded employee knows that one day is insufficient for a complete and proper celebration of Christmas. Every right-minded employer knows that a five-day weekend is an unthinkable violation of the entire concept of the working week. And so one day off is given; but the employer knows that he has been mean, and the employee knows that he has been victimized. A little friction is inevitable and even the personnel of so august an institution as the Sloan Guaranty Trust found their holiday unusually erratic and turbulent.

  For example, Rose Theresa Corsa was forced to sandwich into thirty hours an incredible number of activities. She participated in an office party, every detail of which had to be recounted to two younger sisters; she attended midnight Mass; she rendered prodigio
us culinary assistance to her mother; she sat down with a large group of relatives to a high holiday feast which stubbornly combined all the elements of classical Neapolitan cookery with those of a traditional American Christmas Day dinner; and she reviewed the day’s events with her closest friend, Maria Angelus. The result of this arduous round of activity was that she failed to prepare her wardrobe for the following day and arrived at her office one hour late for the first time in four years.

  For Charlie Trinkam, Christmas had been even more harrowing. The associate chief of the Trust Department was preparing to surrender his long-cherished status as perpetual bachelor and man about town. He accompanied his young and lovely affianced a recent graduate of Wellesley, into the wilds of Westchester for formal presentation to her family. Misled by a disjointed and enthusiastic phone call from their daughter, her parents were expecting a stripling recently emerged from Princeton. Upon being presented with a contemporary they exhibited symptoms of alarm which, Charlie realized, even his talents would require more than twenty-four hours to allay. And he had been right. After a day of painful civilities, he left a sobered fiancée, entrained for Grand Central, and spent the night wondering whether he would enjoy a lifetime of being mistaken for his wife’s father. By the time he arrived at the Sloan Guaranty Trust on December 26, he was ripe for murder and savagely demanding the instant attendance of his hapless juniors to review all troublesome portfolios.

  At least one of them, Ken Nicolls was in no condition to placate an irate superior. The one-day holiday had caused him to forego his usual trip to San Francisco for a family reunion. Instead he had joined a group of Harvard classmates similarly isolated from far-flung homes. Their day, starting sedately enough at St. John the Divine’s, proceeded to a comprehensive tour of those spots in New York City with which every young banker, lawyer, and advertising man should be familiar. On the morning of December 26 he awoke with a knifing pain centered over his right eyebrow and a sense of impending doom.

  Even John Thatcher had not escaped unscathed from the festive season. While impartially fond of his three children, he had markedly variant reactions to the families with which they had allied themselves. Inevitably the set of in-laws he liked least was centered within easy reach of the city. He had successfully avoided the demands of a family Thanksgiving, momentarily forgetting that the shortened December holiday season would make a trip to one of his more distant children impracticable. He was left fair game for the delights of Christmas in Connecticut.

  He incautiously opened his visit with an inquiry about his daughter’s health and Laura, his oldest daughter nearing the end of her fourth pregnancy replied in detail, leaving her father with the gloomy conviction that her conversation over the last ten years had become largely obstetrical. Her husband, Ben Carlson, a pleasant and normally tactful young doctor, compounded his father-in-law’s irritation by cornering him in the game room and gently suggesting that he curtail his daily bout of tennis in the forthcoming season. Thatcher was convinced that the seeds of this remark had been germinated on a steaming August day when he had roundly trounced his son-in-law in three sets of Homeric length and was prepared to discuss the point; instead he had to endure a heavily saccharine reading of The Christmas Carol by Ben’s father. Tradition asserted that the children enjoyed this yearly feature enormously. As nearly as Thatcher could see, his eldest grandchild, an intelligent boy of eight, looked as if he would dearly love an anesthetizing slug of Scotch to carry him through the ordeal.

  What was denied to Timothy was not denied to him. He retreated to the dining room to mix himself a drink, only to be cornered by Mrs. Carlson, who wanted to discuss both her investments and the approach of her latest grandchild. Outraged at the idea of discussing his daughter’s Fallopian tubes with anybody, he escaped only to fall prey to a long and ill-informed analysis of the international situation by Cardwell Carlson, a professor of classics at Columbia.

  Release eventually came only with the early morning train to New York, which he rode with the dissatisfaction of any urbanite at being compelled to travel an hour and a half to reach the city. His cup of grievance overflowed when Miss Corsa’s absence made it impossible for him to deal with his mail. Quelling the impulse to start ringing up hospitals, he reminded himself that it was the day after Christmas and, just because she never had been late, it was unreasonable to suppose that she couldn’t be if she set her mind to it. Thatcher sat and waited, counting the things he couldn’t do until she arrived. He succeeded in working himself up into a very satisfying bad temper by the time Miss Corsa burst in.

  “That’s all right, Miss Corsa,” he snapped, breaking into her flow of apologies, “but please get Nicolls in here as fast as you can.” His tone implied that the affairs of the Sloan Guaranty Trust had reached a crisis during her unscheduled absence, which only the immediate production of Ken Nicolls could resolve. Rose Corsa still in her overcoat flew to the telephone, distressed and guilty but gratified that her presence was indispensable.

  Ken Nicolls, fresh from a grueling interview with Charlie Trinkam, was in his office wondering if the events of the previous evening had caused permanent injury to his right eyeball. He received the summons from Thatcher with a grimace of pain; he staggered to his feet and prepared to do his duty. He abandoned all hope of presenting to the world the picture of a rising young trust officer; his goal now was to appear conscious.

  “Good morning, Nicolls,” said Thatcher, in a brisk businesslike voice, “I think that you’d better try Buffalo Industrial Products for your Schneider.” He had decided not to tender any explanation with this information. Simple omniscience would be his line.

  “Sir?” said Nicolls weakly, wondering what in the world Thatcher was talking about.

  “Schneider. Robert Schneider. You are a bank officer in charge of the Schneider Trust and engaged in a search for Robert Schneider. There is one at Buffalo Industrial Products. See if he’s the right man,” he added tartly.

  “Where is it?”

  “What?” Thatcher looked at Nicolls with exasperation, then in dawning comprehension. “Buffalo Industrial Products is, curiously enough, located in Buffalo, New York,” he said acidly. “Go and call them up, and,” he concluded on a slightly more human note, “you’d better get yourself a Bromo Seltzer first.”

  Nicolls removed himself from Thatcher’s office in confusion, and decided to dispatch Sheldon, the office boy, to the corner drugstore. He did not feel equal to asking the employees’ dining room for assistance and, besides, he strongly doubted whether the Sloan Guaranty Trust recognized the need for stocking hangover remedies. In this, he did the Sloan an injustice.

  It was just as well that he secured maximum fortification before putting through his call. The long-distance operator treated him with a severity which indicated that, as far as the Bell Telephone Company was concerned, December 25th was just another working day. If they could maintain their standards of efficiency, then other people could too. There was a strong implication that Nicolls wasn’t really trying to be helpful. It was with a sense of relief that, after alarming clicks and buzzes, he was finally connected with Buffalo.

  “Good morning. Buffalo Industrial Products. Can I help you?”

  “Good morning. I would like to speak with Mr. Robert Schneider.”

  “Mr. Schneider?” said the voice suspiciously. “Who’s calling please?”

  “This is Mr. Nicolls of the Sloan Guaranty Trust in New York.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Nicolls, but you can’t talk with Mr. Schneider.”

  “Well, if he’s out, would you have him return my call as soon as he comes in,” said Nicolls patiently.

  “I think that you’d better talk with Mr. Michaels,” said the voice in some confusion.

  “About what?” said Nicolls in greater confusion, but the only answer was a series of clicks, followed by a man’s voice saying simply that this was not Mr. Michaels’ office, this was the shipping department. There were more clicks, then a dead
silence for a short interval.

  “Hello,” boomed a confident male voice that made Ken wince, “I understand that you want Robert Schneider.”

  “Yes,” said Nicolls with irritation, “I represent the Sloan Guaranty and I must speak with Mr. Schneider. The matter is urgent.”

  “I don’t give a damn how urgent it is,” replied the voice triumphantly, “you’re going to have a hell of a time doing it. He was murdered two weeks ago!”

  Two hours later Nicolls was reporting the results of his morning’s work to Thatcher. There was no doubt that it was the right Robert Schneider. His Social Security and military records in Buffalo listed him as born in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1918. He had come to Buffalo Industrial five years earlier from Rochester where he had worked for Eastman Kodak. On the night of December 13th, he had been murdered in his apartment where he had been found several days later. The police were searching for clues. Nothing conclusive had come to light yet, according to Michaels.

  “Did it sound as if they were just building up their case, or is it a genuine mystery?” asked Thatcher who had listened to the story with what Ken regarded as bloodless calm.

  “Apparently the police haven’t gotten anywhere. Michaels, of course, warned me that he just knows what he reads in the papers,” he replied.

  “Well, what about children? The trust is divided between grandchildren and their issue, isn’t it?”

  “Good Lord, I never even thought about children. But Michaels said that he was living alone.”

  “That does not preclude the possibility of children, you know. Get busy and find out if there are any. The trouble is that you’ve let this murder go to your head. Remember, it’s your job to get the trust distributed, even if the heirs are vaporized one after the other. You mustn’t let a little sensationalism throw you off the track.” With this fatherly lecture, Thatcher sent a chastened Nicolls back to work and tried to return to his own. But, even senior vice-presidents are not totally immune to a little sensationalism. Having fished the mysterious Robert Schneider up from the murk, he was slightly annoyed that the man should turn around and die still as much a mystery as ever. He gazed absently out of the window: Tom Robichaux must have someone around his office who had gone out to Buffalo to talk to the company before Robichaux and Devane had agreed to the underwriting. Probably that someone had met Robert Schneider. He reached for the telephone.