Lady of Fortune (83 page)

Robert's fury, as he was driven back to Manhattan, was fuelled not only by the disloyalty which he thought the whole family had shown to him; not even by Alisdair's defection to Dougal; but by the sheer frustration of watching two experienced bankers like Dougal and Effie throwing up the chance of being part of his dream. They could have chosen family unity; security; and fabulous wealth. Instead, they had chosen to persecute him, to treat him like a fraud and a criminal.

His father had given him a vision, and a duty. Solemnly, relentlessly he had tried to ensure throughout the thirty
years of his banking career that the vision was fulfilled, and the duty observed. Now, Dougal and Effie were threatening him, threatening his father's memory, and his father's mission. As far as Robert was concerned, they were
prima facie
guilty of heresy. They were his mother's children: frivolous and inconstant. Not to be trusted. His mother was lucky to have died at St Vigeans, instead of in gaol. He had been indulgent and understanding to them all. Hadn't he cared for them? For Prudence, and for Alisdair? And look how they had repaid him. He would rather have had no thanks at all than a repayment like this.

He went straight back to the Savoy-Plaza, to his five-roomed suite overlooking 58th Street. That night, he scarcely slept at all, and by six o'clock in the morning he was sitting at his desk in his dressing-gown, drinking whisky and talking to Dan Kress on the telephone. Dan Kress sounded sleeply and cautious.

‘You should be careful about selling yourself short,' he advised. The market's kind of sensitive at the moment.'

‘You listen to me, johnny,' snapped Robert. ‘We're going to bring down this bank and we're going to bring it down quickly. Sell Poind at 128
sell Unidexter at 91; sell everything else at the market.'

‘I hope you know what you're doing,' said Dan Kress.

‘I know that I'm paying you more than you're worth to do what you're told,' Robert retorted.

‘Yes, sir, Mr Watson. I'll unload these stocks just as soon as the market's open for business.'

Robert made two or three more telephone calls to business associates and brokers: then he picked up the phone and dialled a number on Long Island. It was Mariella's personal line, in her dressing-room. The phone rang for almost three minutes before it was picked up, but then Mariella said, ‘Yes? Who is this?'

‘Your friend,' said Robert.

‘Do you know what
time
it is?' Mariella asked him.

‘Of course I do, I've been up for most of the night.'

‘Well, can't you call me later?' Mariella asked him.

‘This is important.'

‘Dougal said that you had an argument yesterday.'

‘Mariella, this is it. This is the moment.'

‘You mean today?'

‘Today. Go down and do it as soon as you're dressed.'

‘But, Bobby –'

‘He won't be hurt, not seriously. But it
will
keep htm out of action for a day or so, which is all that I need. Now, will you do it?'

Mariella was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I didn't think that it would be so soon. I didn't really think that you wanted me to do it at all.'

‘Will you do it? If you don't, I'll find some other way. And some other lady.'

‘Bobby, don't say that.'

‘I mean it, Mariella. Will you do it?'

‘Another silence. Then, All right. But you're sure he won't be hurt?'

‘Not if you do what I told you.'

‘I hope I can remember it all.'

‘Damn it,' snapped Robert. ‘Of course you can.'

‘All right,' said Mariella, and hung up.

Robert stared at the telephone for a moment, and then hung up, too. He sat motionless at his desk for over ten minutes before getting up and walking across to the window. Beneath him, in the street, a huge truck was parked with the name LIFE ENGINEERING stencilled on its canvas top. It was October in New York: time for changes, time for his own kind of banking apocalypse. Time for London and Wall Street to realise that Robert Watson was here, and that he was here to stay.

On Monday, 21 October 1929, a huge block of shares in the Poind Corporation came on to the market as soon as it opened at 10 a.m., at what appeared to be bargain prices. They were quickly followed by cut-rate stocks in Unidexter, Scott, Milwaukee-Union, and five other major holding companies.

The stock market had gradually been sliding for weeks. Steel was down, as was American Can and General Electric; and Radio was right down from 114
to 88
. The wholesale
disposal of bargain-price stocks in Poind and Unidexter was enough to start the ticker chattering at high speed; and set off a murmur throughout the banking and investment community that by the close of business had become an hysterical babble. The market is breaking,' were the words that went from broker to broker, from broker to bank, from bank to investor. ‘Poind just sold at 115. Unidexter's down to 85
.' The response from investors was immediate: ‘When the market re-opens in the morning, sell.' ‘Sell.' ‘Sell at the market, get what you can.' ‘Sell.'

Just after lunch on Monday, Walter Kuntz rang Dougal from Watson's Banlç and told him that there could be serious trouble brewing. Poind and Unidexter had been selling short, and the brokers had been demanding more margin. Dougal tried to call Robert several times before he left Long Island, but there was no answer either from Robert's hotel or from Robert's office. The market was collapsing and Watson's New York were being pressed to take over loans that by the close of business would amount to nearly eight million dollars.

‘It's Robert,' said Effie, as Dougal shrugged himself into his overcoat and prepared to drive back to the city. ‘He's going to ruin us.'

‘Do you really think so?' asked Dougal. ‘Well, maybe he is. But maybe he's only trying to frighten us. Maybe he'll start buying back his own stock tomorrow, and calm the market down again.'

Effie walked out into the cold, dank afternoon air with him. His long green Cadillac tourer was waiting; its engine mumbling, its twill top tightly fastened. He usually drove himself into the city these days. He liked the solitary drive through the suburbs; through the neat doll's-house streets of Nassau and Queens; and he was always impressed by the skyline of downtown Manhattan. He kissed Effie on the cheek, and said, ‘I'll be back by nine o'clock. Let's have dinner and work out a plan of action.'

Effie watched the Cadillac burble away down the drive. Alisdair was standing by the door, his hands in his pocket, looking uncomfortable. ‘I seem to have caused something of a disturbance,' he said, as Effie climbed the steps again.

Effie took his arm. ‘It wasn't your fault. I admired what you said yesterday. None of us had any right to conceal your true
parentage from you; and if we're paying a price for it now, then it's all our fault. I can only plead that I thought I was doing it all for the best.'

They went back into the house. Mariella was in the living-room, by the fire, reading a copy of
Pride and Prejudice
.

‘You're looking tired, Mariella,' said Effie. ‘We're not proving too much for you, are we?'

Mariella, lips closed tight, gave Effie a quick shake of her head. The fire spat sparks and lurched in its wronght-iron basket.

Almost exactly half way between Riverhead and Ridge, only a few miles west of Dougal's mansion, there was a long downhill curve in the road, starting on the brow of a brush-covered hill, and ending deep between the pines of a shadowy wood. There had been a fine mist all day, and as Dougal reached the top of the hill, and started his descent, the tyres of his Cadillac tourer sizzled on the wet road-surface.

By the time he was a third of the distance down the hill, he had picked up an extra 20 m.p.h. and by the time he flashed past the first few trees of the woods, he was going at seventy. He enjoyed driving fast: it gave him a sense of daring and virility which he had lacked for years and years, especially since he had tried to mutilate himself. He steered the Cadillac around the left-hand bend with all the exaggerated flourish of a racing-driver in the movies, and he nudged the gas pedal once or twice until he was well past eighty.

He hummed, as he drove, ‘Yes! We
Have
No Bananas!'

The Highway Patrol, relying on the only eye-witness they could find, an elderly woman who had been walking back to her house after making a telephone call at the High Ridge General Store to her nephew in Teaneck, New Jersey, said that the indisputable cause of the accident was ‘excessive speed'. The elderly woman had told them, ‘That automobile whizzed right past me like something out of hell, and then it was gone into the trees. Then, whoomph.'

There was no way of proving different. The Cadillac had left the road on the tightest section of the downhill curve, flying sixty-two feet before it hit the first tree-trunk; then it had buried itself in a small tight growth of pines and exploded. The car itself was burned down to the framework; the driver had been found entangled in the frame of the windshield, roasted so fiercely by the fire that all the moisture in his body had evaporated and all his body fats had been reduced. He looked like a cinder-child, a little burned-up monkey.

At seven-after five that evening the Highway Patrol called at Dougal's mansion and informed Mariella that Dougal was dead.

At 10 a.m. the following morning, on a cool and cloudy Tuesday, the stock market began to slide in earnest. Twenty thousand shares of Kennecott Cooper were unloaded at 78; 20,000 shares in General Motors at 56
. US Streel fell from 261
to 193
;Radio fell to 44
. The small trickles of selling which Robert had started in his attempt to ruin Watson's New York became a Niagara.