Lady of Fortune (76 page)

‘Perfect, thank you,' said Effie.

‘Can you comment on this, then?' asked another reporter, holding up a 72-pt headline which declared, SPLITS WITH BANKSTERETTE,
California Bank President Claims Life with Lady Chairman ‘Oppressive
'.

‘How can I comment on it when I haven't read it?' asked Effie.

‘It's true, then? Caldwell Brooks has really walked out on you?'

‘Give the lady a break, will you?' demanded Dan Kress, pushing the reporter aside.

Effie smiled her way through a fusillade of popping flashbulbs until she reached the station exit, where her Pierce-Arrow was waiting. Kosczinski steered the limousine quickly into the traffic of midtown Manhattan, and remained equable and calm, in spite of the Plymouths and Model A's which pursued them with their horns tooting, photographers hanging dangerously out of their windows, and reporters trying to scream questions across six or seven wavering yards of Park Avenue.

Dan Kress rolled the window up, so that the interior of the car was silent. ‘We hear good things about what you're doing in California,' he said. ‘Real good things.'

‘I'm glad,' said Effie. ‘We've worked very hard.'

‘You know, there really wasn't any need for you to come back here. Everything's completely under control.'

‘So you know why I've come back?'

‘I can guess,' Dan Kress told her. ‘You're worried about your share in Watson's New York. There wouldn't be any other reason, would there?'

‘Perhaps I'm simply paying a social visit,' suggested Effie.

Dan Kress adjusted his thin, steel-gray necktie. It matched the silvery prickles of his close-cropped hair. He said, ‘Nobody travels 3000 miles in forty-eight hours just to be sociable. You're concerned about your shares. You didn't travel 3000 miles in forty-eight hours just to pass the time of day.'

‘Dan,' said Effie, ‘you're not talking to me at all normally.'

‘Normally?' Dan backed up. ‘What do you mean by
normally?
You know me. I'm being normal.'

‘No, you're not. You're being too clever by half. In fact, you're being downright Machiavellian. You've never tried to hide anything from me before, but you are now, and let me tell you, deviousness doesn't suit you.'

‘You think I'm being devious?'

‘I don't
think
you are, I'm sure you are. You believe that I've come here because I'm suddenly concerned about my stake in the bank, do you? Well, that suggests to me that something is happening for me to be concerned about. You follow my meaning? Something's up, Dan, and you know what it is. That's why Robert sent you to pick me up, isn't it? Robert wants to know what I'm doing here, and just how much I know about what he's been up to.'

‘Robert did nothing more than ask me to collect you from Penn Station and drive you home. He knew you'd be tired.'

Effie slowly shook her head. ‘Don't try to take me for a fool, Dan. I'm not in the mood for it.'

Dan said, ‘I'm sorry, but you can believe whatever you like. All I know is that Robert's invested £24 million of British and European money into US stocks, using Watson's New York as his US headquarters, and that everybody's very happy about it. The market's still rising; everything's fine and dandy.'

‘Not everybody's happy.'

‘Like who?'

I'm not, for one. I want to see a complete list of your investments and the terms and conditions attached to their purchase.'

‘I can arrange that,' said Dan Kress. ‘I'll have the list sent around to your house this afternoon.'

‘No phoneys, either,' said Effie. I'm going to double-check everything.'

‘You're welcome to. This has all been strictly legal and above-board. A considerable quantity of British and European money has been used to buy stocks and bonds on the US stock market, and in a year or two we're expecting to be able to announce to our investors that they've all made themselves a healthy profit. Robert's already reciprocated by investing American money for us into a British wireless factory, and an Italian cooked-meat business, not to mention the Kabala dam. It's all pretty modest so far, but it's going well, and in a few years time we should be
rolling
in extra income.'

Effie gave Dan a vague smile, and then turned to look out of the window.

‘You don't believe me?' asked Dan. ‘I'll show you the books. Everything. It's all legitimate, and it's all sound.'

‘All right,' said Effie, ‘I didn't mean to upset you.'

Effie's apartment had been opened up for her by two maids from the DuLac Agency – the dust-sheets drawn off the chairs and tables, the fires lit, the beds made – and Dougal had arranged for one of Mariella‘s girls, a black upstairs-maid called Charlene, to take care of Effie while she was in New York. Charlene welcomed Effie into the house, and took her coat for her, and unpacked her cases while Effie had a shower.

At three o'clock that afternoon, a messenger came around with Dan Kress's list of investments. Effie sat on the ottoman by the living-room window, dressed in nothing but a fine silk wrap, smoking a Turkish cigarette and drinking black coffee. She went carefully through the list with her gold Cartier pencil, ticking the stocks which she thought were probably watertight, crossing those which she knew to be dubious, and placing questionmarks beside those which she had never heard of, or whose performance was questionable.

At four, the telephone rang. It was Dougal. He sounded breathless, as if he had been exercising, or making love. ‘Did you get in okay?' he asked her.

‘Precisely on time,' she told him. ‘It was a bit of an ordeal, but at least I'm here. That's a wonderful service, that rail-air link, if you need to cross the country in a hurry, and if you're blessed with the constitution of an Olympic runner, not to mention an indestructible stomach. If I eat at one more Fred Harvey railroad house, I think I'll collapse from a chronic lack of haute-cuisine.'

‘Well, I'm glad you could make it,' said Dougal. ‘Is everything all right with you at home? I read a couple of pretty unpleasant newspaper stories about you and Caldwell.'

‘It's nothing,' said Effie. ‘We've both been working too hard, building up the bank. Caldy felt like a weekend off on his own, that's all, and the newspapers took it all the wrong way.'

Dougal said, ‘I hope he wasn't upset that you had to come to New York at such short notice.'

‘He's all right,' Effie reassured him.

Dougal covered the mouthpiece for a moment, and Effie heard him say something like, ‘Close the door, will you? I have to have a few minutes on the phone.' Then he came back to Effie, and said, ‘Listen, I've been suspicious about this brokerage arrangement for a couple of months now, but up until last week – well, the week before last – I didn't have anything to go on. No real evidence. I still don't: not
hard
evidence. But there were two or three anomalies in the list of investments, and there was a smell to this whole thing that made me very unhappy.'

‘I thought you and Robert were friends again.'

‘We are. Well, I suppose we are. He came back to New York in May and he's been staying at the Savoy-Plaza; we see each other all the time. He comes down to Long Island almost every other weekend, and Mariella says she's really fond of him. But I'm still a banker, Effie, and however congenial I feel towards Robert these days, I can sense that something's wrong.'

‘Is there anything specific you can tell me about the investment list?'

‘Do you have a copy?' asked Dougal.

‘Certainly, I have it right here on my lap.'

‘Have you been through it?'

‘Superficially,' said Effie.

‘Well, if you've only been through it superficially,' Dougal told her, ‘you won't yet have realised what it took me several months to realise. This list of 51 different companies doesn't represent what it
appears
to represent. It
appears
to represent a broad-based investment in a wide diversity of key American industries. Osprey Automobiles, Duncannon Aviation, Wilbur & Schneider Meat-Packing. All viable companies, all with good commercial reputations, all quoted at good strong prices, and still rising. But purely by accident, I discovered the other day that Osprey Automobiles was taken over a year ago by a holding company in Delaware called Automotive Interests, Inc., which itself is a part of the Poind Corporation. And when I checked up on Duncannon Aviation, I discovered that Duncannon Aviation, too, had been taken over about a year ago, and re-financed by the Poind Corporation.'

‘Didn't you ask Dan Kress about it?' Effie wanted to know. ‘Surely he was in charge of all the investments?'

‘He was. He still is. But I haven't yet confronted him. First of all I wanted to find out exactly what's happening. I still have a lot of digging to do, although I do know that at least half of those fifty-one companies in which Robert's European clients have invested nearly £24 million are all ultimately owned by only four holding corporations. At least, I believe it's four. It may be fewer. The way those companies are tied together is a masterpiece of corporate jiggery-pokery.'

‘Have you talked to Robert? I suppose not.'

‘No, not yet. I don't have any proof, and I don't want to upset Robert until I have proof. The point is that Watson's New York have guaranteed the £24 million loan to the Wall Street brokers on behalf of Watson's Edinburgh; on the strength of Robert's note. If those stocks start to slide and the brokers need more margin, then I'm going to be obliged to give it to them, whether Robert honours his note or not.'

‘He must honour his note.'

‘He could default long enough to ruin me. It would only take one tiny rumour, one or two major depositors to take out their money, and Watson's New York could be facing collapse. There's a lot of nervousness in the air at the moment.'

Effie sipped her coffee. Then she said, ‘The Federal Reserve Board would help you, wouldn't it?'

‘After all the bootleg loans we've been making to brokers? I'm not so sure.'

Effie was quiet for a moment, thinking. Outside, on Fifth Avenue, a firetruck went by with its siren warbling through the hot afternoon streets. Dougal said, ‘I don't have any actual evidence that Robert and Dan are planning anything criminal, or fraudulent, or even unethical. But this whole holding-company business is too suspicious for me to let it go by.'

Effie said, ‘How quickly can you come up with some concrete evidence? Some papers – something you can thrust under Robert's nose and challenge him with?'

‘I don't know. I have two young bank officials working on it right now: Kooger and Willis. They're keen young men, but this whole thing has been very intricately done. It won't be enough just to prove that half of the fifty-one companies are owned by four holding corporations, either. That's suspicious, but not actually illegal. As long as the companies are all sound, and are all quoted at good prices on the ticker, we
can't establish that anybody intended to deceive or defraud. I've looked through the prospectuses which the brokers prepared for Robert's investors, and there's nothing in any of them which is misleading or inaccurate. All they talk about is ‘exciting, forward looking investment opportunities' and ‘a portfolio of American shares that any European can be proud of … the old world investing its faith in the new.' That kind of stuff.'

‘You don't think you've misunderstood what's going on?' asked Effie. ‘I mean you're not seeing bogeymen under the bed, or anything like that? You know you've been sick lately.'

‘There's only one bogeyman under my bed,' said Dougal, sourly, ‘and that's Robert. He's been down on me all my life, ever since we were boys. He broke my kite when we went out kite-flying on Calton Hill, you remember that? He tricked me out of my allowance when I was four by pretending he had the real magic bean from Jack and the Beanstalk. I still haven't worked out what happened in London, when I had to leave with Henry Baeklander; but it wouldn't surprise me if Robert had had, his finger in
that
business somewhere. I should kick myself for inviting him to work through Watson's New York. The trouble is, he's my older brother and for some ridiculous reason I always secretly think that I ought to look up to him; and that we ought to get on together. The stupid part about it is that I actually love him.'

‘Perhaps we can meet tomorrow morning,' suggested Effie.

‘Not in the office,' said Dougal. ‘Make it at The Curb House, for coffee. Robert's been coming into the office almost every day lately, and walking about as if he owns the place. He treats my house on Long Island as if it's his, too.'

And Mariella, thought Effie, with a sharp prickle of sympathy.

‘There's one thing that makes me sure that I'm right,' Dougal added. ‘Even if I can prove what's going on, I'll always know that I was right. Robert couldn't resist a nasty little joke when he set this arrangement up. The Poind Corporation – do you happen to know what that actually means? ‘Poind' is the Scottish word for impounding somebody's property to pay for their debts.'

Effie put down her coffee cup. ‘That's Robert all right,' she said, in an acknowledging whisper.

That night, Effie called home. Kitty answered the phone, and although her voice was crackly and tiny, almost inaudible, she managed to tell Effie that Caldwell had been back only once, to collect a suitcase and some clean shirts. Then he had driven off without leaving a message, and without leaving a telephone number. Effie listened to the telephone wire singing and echoing all the way across America, from the darkness of New York's evening to the sunshine of California's afternoon; and for the first time since she had heard that Karl von Ahlbeck had been killed, she felt utterly hopeless.