by Emma Lathen
Schuyler & Schuyler’s reception for Edward Parry had not been a comfortable social event. Arthur Foote’s untimely collapse, however, had injected a new element of anxiety into the assemblage. For the moment, at least, the problem of racial attitudes was displaced by incipient hypochondria.
“But, my God, how old was Art?” Thatcher heard a hoarse voice ask.
Fully twenty per cent of the guests, he was prepared to wager, would present themselves for medical examination within the week. Heart attacks among one’s colleagues are always unsettling; among one’s younger colleagues, they can be downright apocalyptic.
He inclined his head to Watson Kingsley’s solemn banalities, while letting his attention range more widely. Across the room, he saw one member of the Board of Governors of the Stock Exchange deep in earnest converse with another. Sad a commentary as it was, he thought as Watson Kingsley mentioned the word “blessing,” the fact was inescapable; those of the late Arthur Foote’s friends and acquaintances not brooding about their own cardiac conditions were feeling the inconvenience, rather than the tragedy, of his method of going.
“Well, at least this should hold up Nat’s scheme about that Black man!”
The voice was suitably low; the sentiment, given the circumstances, was universally offensive. Involuntarily Thatcher and Watson Kingsley, who had moved on to “inscrutable designs of Providence”, turned to identify the author. Not surprisingly, it was Owen Abercrombie, still energetically scowling over his own grievances.
Abercrombie was talking to Lee Clark, who was embarrassed. His normally pallid countenance was slightly flushed as he registered the disapproval emanating from their neighbors. He said something inaudible to Abercrombie, who shook his head vigorously.
“No. Nat won’t have time to go on with this crackbrained foolishness, Lee. Our troubles are over.” He sounded quite reasonable, a man stating the facts as he saw them. That his way of looking at the facts was brutal had not occurred to him.
It had occurred to Clark, who again murmured something inaudible and moved away with more haste than courtesy. Abercrombie surveyed the room, then strolled through the crush to inflict his brand of reasonableness on other acquaintances.
Thatcher turned to find that Tom Robichaux had joined him. The bon vivant looked apprehensive. “Francis wants me to stand by,” he rumbled gloomily. “You know, there’s such a thing as carrying Christianity too far . . .” Thatcher felt a certain measure of sympathy. The high-minded, who gladly shoulder burdens themselves, have a fatal propensity to do so on behalf of their associates as well. However, this was not the time to criticize anyone willing to support Schuyler & Schuyler through the trying formalities surrounding sudden death, so he turned the subject to something that had been puzzling him mildly.
“What’s Lee Clark up to?” he asked.
Cooperatively, Robichaux abandoned his own trials and, in his own way, responded. “You’ve been away,” he said accusingly.
“So people keep reminding me,” Thatcher replied. You’d think I’d been on a desert island for two years.”
Robichaux pursued his train of thought to an interesting conclusion. “I’d like to get away myself,” he said with a glance at the funeral party. “But you can’t deny it. If you’re away from the Street, you lose touch.”
“Lee Clark,” Thatcher reminded him.
“Oh, that’s simple enough.”
As usual, once the question came within his professional orbit, Robichaux rose to heights of coherency bordering on the intelligent. He reminded Thatcher of Clovis Greene Bear & Spencer’s major coup of some ten years earlier—an expansion into Harlem with plush offices, massive advertising budgets and colored customer’s men. This move, for which Lee Clark had been mainly responsible, paid off. Clovis Greene began to enjoy a virtual monopoly of Black investment in the stock market and became Clovis Greene Bear Spencer & Clark.
“And nobody else ever moved into Harlem,” Robichaux continued. “Wasn’t worth it with Clovis Greene so big. But it Schuyler & Schuyler gets a Black partner, then Clovis Greene has had it. And so has Lee.”
Thatcher nodded. Really, there were no heights unworthy of Nat Schuyler. It would be a shame if fate had booby-trapped his enterprise by anything so fortuitous as Arthur Foote’s heart attack.
“I remember. That’s why Clark is so edgy about Abercrombie, isn’t it?”
“Well I ask you,” Robichaux replied reasonably. “Would you want the Sloan mixed up with someone who wants to send Blacks back to Africa, abolish Social Security, and drop the hydrogen bomb on Cuba?”
Thatcher said that he saw Lee Clark’s point.
“And then,” Robichaux continued reflectively, “I don’t think people liked the sound of that trouble up in Katonah. Of course they tried to hush it up—but the story got around.”
“What trouble?”
“Abercrombie and Parry both live way up in Westchester, Katonah. When the Parrys built their place a couple of years ago, Owen tried to stir up trouble. Well, nasty letters to the local papers are one thing—but there was talk about pressuring the contractor, and paying off the building inspector and dumping garbage at night. I tell you, people are beginning to wonder if Abercrombie is respectable.”
Thatcher, who had been privileged to hear Abercrombie’s views on foreign policy, “Send in the Marines!”, and fiscal problems,”Abolish the income tax!”, tried to picture him slinking around at night with a truckload of garbage.
It was impossible.
It was not impossible, however, to visualize Abercrombie ordering some handyman to do it.
Owen Abercrombie must be causing saner heads at Dibbel Abercrombie considerable discomfort.
This thought reminded John Putnam Thatcher of his own responsibilities. He took leave of Robichaux and hurriedly began to search the room for Bradford Withers.
When he finally located him in a distant corner, however, he discovered his fears had been misplaced; death, like birth and marriage, found Withers at the top of his form. Impeccably formal, he stood exchanging unexceptionable commonplaces about morality with old Bartlett Sims.
As Thatcher approached, Withers eyed the Schuyler & Schuyler staff still standing guard over their fallen comrade.
“I want Nat to know he can count on us,” he said. “But this isn’t the time to disturb him.”
Thatcher was happy to be able to report that Francis Devane and his colleagues were taking care of that. As he spoke there was a stir in the doorway and a small clutch of men hurried into the room. Either Dean Caldwell had been too agitated to report the situation accurately, or the doctors felt it politic to hurry into so august a gathering of Wall Street dignitaries. In either event, their arrival clearly signaled release.
“Why are doctors always too late?” Withers mused. “Well, it’s a sad affair, but you know, I think we could slip away.”
In no other area did John Putnam Thatcher accept Bradford Withers as arbiter but, in matters like this, he was peerless. Thatcher followed him as he made his way, without unseemly haste, to the door. As others joined them, a general exodus began. Within minutes, only the Schuyler & Schuyler contingent, Francis Devane, and the luckless Tom Robichaux remained near the corpse.
The hallway was a relief.
“Thank God that’s over,” somebody near him said with feeling.
Wall Street being a conventional community, Bartlett Sims immediately replied, “Terrible thing.”
“Terrible,” everybody dutifully chorused, gratefully going their way.
Fortunately, it was not until they had reached the privacy of a taxi that Bradford Withers shed his public manner for confidences. “You know,” he said, “I can’t help feeling that this is a bad sign.”
Bradford Withers would not be alone in attributing symbolic importance to the recent catastrophe. Therefore, when they had adjourned to Luchow’s for an early dinner, Thatcher listened to his chief with more than usual interest. But, out of touch or no, he learned very litt
le about Wall Street thinking from Bradford Withers’ disjointed remarks. Arthur Foote’s death was profoundly significant, Withers felt, but he could not specify, to Thatcher’s satisfaction, precisely what it signified.
“Well, it’s tragic,” he concluded with his Linzer torte. “Of course, Nat Schuyler really needs new blood in the office now. Parry sounded very able to me. Did you hear what he said about those new megachrome hulls . . . ?”
“Owen Abercrombie doesn’t seem to think that he’ll be an addition to the financial community,” Thatcher remarked.
Withers put down his cup indignantly.
“You know, Owen is beginning to get positively eccentric. If he were a woman, I’d say . . .”
“What do you think the Board of Governors will do about Parry?” Thatcher intervened to inquire.
Bradford Withers’ chief virtue, as well as his most outstanding defect, was transparent truthfulness.
“I haven’t the remotest idea,” he said with enough hauteur in his voice to suggest that the Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange was not the sort of group that a Withers cared to understand. “You know, John, I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to see Jahoda. The maharajah could have given you some fine shooting . . .”
What Thatcher did want to see, after dinner, was his own office. A few hours spent dictating might bring him abreast of the arrears that the Schuyler & Schuyler reception had further delayed. This decision was received by his dinner companion with incomprehension. Going to the office in the morning was, under certain conditions, perfectly reasonable behavior to the president of the Sloan. Going there after dinner smacked of the bizarre.
Nevertheless, John Thatcher parted from Withers with less impatience than usual. The Sloan’s president was limited, to put it mildly. But he was not an Owen Abercrombie.
Thatcher rather suspected that in the days to come, this might be enough.
He was midway through a letter to a small Massachusetts electronics firm which had recently changed its name and corporate structure in the apparent belief that its stockholders would simply evaporate, when Walter Bowman, who did not share Withers’ views on after-hours work, appeared in the doorway.
“I thought I saw you go past. What’s this I hear about Art Foote?”
He listened to Thatcher’s account of the happenings at Pine Street without revealing how he had received such prompt news of the tragedy. Lost in thought, he lowered himself into the easy chair. “This might make a difference,” he said thoughtfully. “Foote was cooperating with Nat Schuyler to the hilt, you know. He told me he didn’t care if Parry was black, blue or green, he’d be worth a million dollars in commissions from Harlem within six months.”
With one of the first twinges of amusement he had felt in some hours, John Thatcher mentally saluted his chief researcher. Come typhoon, the return of the ice age, or an epidemic of cholera, Bowman’s interest would remain unfalteringly centered on profits and losses. Clearly, here was the man to fill in the lacunae in his own information.
Without regret, he abandoned the ingenuous electronics specialists on Route 128 and did what he guessed much of Wall Street must be doing: considered Schuyler & Schuyler, and Edward Parry.
“Nat did his picking carefully,” he observed. “Edward Parry is quite impressive. Did Gabler tell me he had money?”
Bowman grunted.
“Impressive is right. And money, too. I happen to know that Schuyler has been planning this move for months, but to tell you the truth, he couldn’t have done better if he’d been beating the bushes for ten years. Parry is the oldest son of Sylvanus Parry. You know, the Savings and Loan man. But he was a millionaire before that—made a fortune out of Atlanta real estate. The son is everything anybody could ask for; he rowed for Yale, he collected almost every medal the Army gives. Then he got a Rhodes Scholarship and spent two or three years in England. Absolutely brilliant, they tell me. Since then, he’s been running the family businesses with one of his brothers. And just about doubling the old man’s pile.”
Thatcher digested this no-doubt abbreviated, and possibly colloquial, but undoubtedly accurate version of the press release on Edward Parry that had not been distributed.
“Tell me, why hasn’t this paragon been in the public eye before?” he asked curiously. “God knows, I feel that I’ve read the life history of every Black lawyer on the East Coast in the past few years. And minister, too, of course.”
Bowman nodded understandingly.
“That’s what I wondered. Gus Townely, he’s one of our auditors, comes from Atlanta,” he said. Apparently he could not pass on detailed information about Georgia without citing authority. “He says that the Parry family is simply old money, no publicity, pretty conservative. They’re big in community good works, but no politics.”
In fact, Edward Parry, spiritually speaking, was another Bradford Withers—with brains, of course. John Thatcher did not say this aloud. What he did say was: “Really, I’ve never given Nat Schuyler his due. The one thing that can be said against Parry is that he’s a Black man. Is it going to be enough, Walter?”
Like Withers, Walter Bowman did not know.
Neither did Everett Gabler when he drifted in with regrets for having dispatched Thatcher to what had been, in effect, a deathbed. “It’s very hard to tell,” he said when Thatcher asked his opinion. “You see, until today, there have only been rumors. Some of them were unfortunate, I grant you, but everything remained vague. The climate of opinion won’t jell until Schuyler & Schuyler makes formal application. . . .”
Authoritatively, Walter Bowman corrected him.
“You’re wrong, Ev. This is just between the three of us, but I happen to know that Owen Abercrombie has begun circulating a petition. He’s just approaching people he’s sure of, but they tell me that he’s got some important signatures. Including one from Schuyler & Schuyler.”
Everett Gabler looked horrified.
“You don’t mean McCullough, do you?” Thatcher said. Who had told him that Vin McCullough opposed Nat Schuyler’s plan? He forgot. But surely McCullough was too sound to involve himself with Owen Abercrombie.
Bowman lowered his voice while Gabler looked frankly enthralled. “No, although I know Vin is burned up. He’s got a big Southern clientele. Scared to death that a Black partner will blow his accounts to hell! But basically Vin is decent. He wouldn’t get involved in anything ugly. No, it’s that Caldwell kid—I don’t know if you met him?”
“Briefly,” Thatcher said. “Do you mean to tell me that nonentity has been fool enough to ally himself publicly with Owen Abercrombie—against the head of his own firm?”
Walter Bowman’s normally good-natured expression gave way to a singularly disagreeable smile.
“He’s the last fading flower of the Confederacy. He’s . . .” Bowman continued his definition in emphatic terms, finally ending, “He’s the kind who likes to call Parry a ‘nigra.’ Behind his back, of course. The little rat! They tell me Art Foote gave him hell! But I don’t think Nat knows about it—yet!”
“Disgusting,” Everett Gabler said. “Absolutely disgusting.”
There was a moment of silence, then Walter Bowman said, “And I can’t help thinking that Art Foote’s death is a bad sign.”
Suddenly, John Putnam Thatcher felt a surge of impatience.
“Well, this is one bank that’s not going to get drawn into somebody else’s Roman Circus!” he declared emphatically. “I can see that we can all spend hours on this, but we’re not going to. I think we’ll have a review meeting of the trust officers tomorrow. At nine o’clock! That should remind the staff of precisely what our business is!”
Chapter 4
There Is a Balm in Gilead
THE NEXT MORNING, while John Putnam Thatcher was bringing the Trust Department to its senses, Edward Parry was explaining to his wife how Arthur Foote’s death might affect the immediate plans of the Parry family.
“Do you mean Nathaniel Schuyler may back out
now?” asked Gloria Parry.
“Oh, no. But I wonder whether he might not want to delay things. That’s two partners gone in less than four months. The work load will have more than doubled in the firm. He’d have some justification if he decides that he just can’t afford to spend all his time politicking up and down the Street right now.”
His wife frowned thoughtfully into her coffee cup.
“And what would a delay mean?”
“It’s hard to tell. The whole point of Nat’s bulldozer approach was to take everyone by surprise. A delay would give the opposition time to organize. And in the end,” he paused a moment, reluctant to continue, “it might mean a face-saving way for Nat to withdraw.”
At this ominous conclusion, his wife’s frown cleared and she laughed softly.
“You’re up to your old games, Ed. Trying to prepare for the worst. But I’ve met your Mr. Schuyler, and I’ve seen the two of you together. So it’s no use trotting out a lot of rational excuses for him to back out, or for you to back out. The fact is, both of you decided to be thoroughly irrational more than two months ago.”
Ed Parry looked up in sudden protest. “Now, Gloria, I know you haven’t been very enthusiastic about all this—”
“No, I wasn’t,” she interrupted. “But now—I wouldn’t have you stop for anything. What’s more, Nat Schuyler isn’t used to losing battles, and, in your own quiet way, honey, neither are you. More coffee?”
With a profound sigh of relief, her husband shook his head. “No, I’ve got to catch the 9:42. I told them I’d be in to see how we stand. You’re right, I’ve just been trying to anticipate the worst. I wouldn’t back out for anything now. And while I’m doing battle with Wall Street, how are you going to pass the time?”
