Kane & Abel (1979) (39 page)

William took the train to Florida a week later. During the journey he had begun to wonder if his image of Mrs Brookes would turn out to be an illusion, and he stepped off the train with some apprehension, only to be overwhelmed by how much more beautiful she appeared in person than in his recollection. The slight wind blew her black dress against her body as she stood waiting on the platform, revealing a silhouette that ensured that every man except William would look at her a second time. William’s eyes never left her.

She was still in mourning, and her manner towards him was so reserved and correct that William initially despaired of making any impression. He spun out the negotiations with the farmer who was purchasing Buckhurst Park for as long as he could, and persuaded Katherine to retain one-third of the sale price while the bank took the other two-thirds. Finally, after the legal papers were signed, he could find no more excuses for not returning to Boston. He invited her to dinner at his hotel on the final evening, determined to reveal something of his feelings for her. Not for the first time, she took him by surprise. Before he had broached the subject she asked him, twirling her glass to avoid looking at him, if he would like to stay at Buckhurst Park for the weekend.

‘A chance for us to talk about something other than finance,’ she suggested. William remained silent.

Finally she found the courage to continue. ‘The strange thing is that I seem to have enjoyed the last few days more than any time I can remember.’ She blushed again. ‘I’ve expressed that badly, and you’ll think the worst of me.’

William’s pulse quickened. ‘Katherine, I’ve wanted to say something like that for the past eight months.’

‘Then you’ll stay for a few days?’

‘You bet I will,’ said William, taking her hand.

That night she installed him in a guest bedroom at Buck-hurst Park. William would always look back on those days as a golden interlude in his life. He rode with Katherine, and she out-jumped him. He swam with her, and she out-distanced him. He walked with her, and always needed to turn back first. Finally he resorted to playing poker with her, and won $3.5 million over the weekend.

‘Will you take a cheque?’ she said grandly.

‘You forget, I know what you’re worth, Mrs Brookes. But I’ll make a deal with you. You have to go on playing until you’ve won it all back.’

‘That may take some time.’

‘That’s fine by me,’ said William.

He found himself telling Kate of long-forgotten incidents from his past, things he had never discussed even with Matthew - his respect for his father, his love for his mother, his blind hatred of Henry Osborne, his ambitions for Kane and Cabot. She in turn told him of her childhood in Boston, her school days in Virginia and her early marriage to Max Brookes.

When they said goodbye at the station, he kissed her for the first time.

‘Kate, I’m going to say something very presumptuous. I hope one day you’ll feel the same about me as you did about Max.’

‘I already do,’ she said quietly.

William touched her cheek. ‘Don’t stay out of my life for another eight months.’

‘I can’t - you’ve sold my house.’

On the journey back to Boston, feeling happier and more settled than at any time since his father’s death, William drafted a report on the sale of Buckhurst Park, his mind returning continually to Kate and the past few days. Just before the train drew into South Station, he scribbled a quick note in his illegible handwriting.

He had just dropped the envelope into the mailbox on Charles Street when all thoughts of Kate were driven from his mind by the cry of a newsboy.

‘Wall Street Collapse!’

William seized a copy of the paper and rapidly skimmed the front page. The market had plummeted overnight. Some financiers were saying it was nothing more than a readjustment; William saw it as the beginning of the landslide he had been predicting for months. He hurried to the bank, and almost ran to the chairman’s office.

‘I’m confident that the market will recover during the next few weeks,’ Alan Lloyd said soothingly.

‘No it won’t,’ said William. ‘The market is stretched to its limit. Overloaded with small investors who thought they would make a quick buck and are now going to have to run for cover. Can’t you see the balloon is about to burst? I’m going to sell every stock in my possession. By the end of the year the bottom will have dropped out of the market. I did warn the board in February, Alan.’

‘I still don’t agree with you, William, but I’ll call a full board meeting immediately, so we can discuss your views in greater detail.’

‘Thank you,’ said William. He returned to his office, and immediately picked up the telephone on his desk.

‘I forgot to tell you, Alan. I’ve met the woman I’m going to marry.’

‘Does she know yet?’

‘No.’

‘I see,’ said Alan. ‘Then your marriage will closely resemble your banking career. Anyone directly involved will be informed after you’ve made your decision.’

William laughed, picked up the other phone and put in a sell order on the rest of his stock. Tony Simmons was standing in the doorway when he put the telephone down. From the expression on his face, it appeared that he thought William had gone quite mad.

‘You could lose your shirt if you dump all your stocks with the market in its present state.’

‘I’ll lose a lot more than my shirt if I hold onto them,’ replied William.

The loss he suffered during the following week was over $1 million, which would have buried a less confident man. William reinvested his capital in any material that had a sharp edge: gold, silver, nickel and tin.

At a board meeting the following day, he also lost - by 8 votes to 6 - his proposal to immediately liquidate the bank’s stocks. Tony Simmons convinced the board that it would be irresponsible not to hold out a little longer. The only small victory William notched up was persuading his fellow directors that the bank should not buy any more shares.

The market rose a few points the following day, which gave William the opportunity to sell most of what was left of his own stock. By the end of the week, when the index had risen steadily for four days in a row, William was even beginning to wonder if he had been over-reacting, but all his past experience and instinct told him he had made the right decision. Alan Lloyd said nothing; the money William was losing was not his business, and in any case, he was looking forward to a quiet retirement.

On October 22, the market suffered further heavy losses and William again begged Alan to get out while he still had a chance. This time Alan listened, and allowed William to place a sell order on some of the bank’s major stocks. The following day the market collapsed in an avalanche of selling, and it didn’t matter what the bank tried to dispose of, because there were no longer any buyers in the market. During the next week the dumping of stock turned into a stampede as every small investor in America put in a sell order as they tried to get out as quickly as possible. Such was the panic that the ticker tape machine could not keep pace with the transactions. Only when the Exchange opened the next morning, after the clerks had worked all through the night, did traders know how much the market had lost.

William had sold off nearly all the stock in his trust, and his personal loss was proportionately far smaller than the bank’s. After losing more than $3 million in four days, even Tony Simmons had taken to acting on William’s advice.

On October 29, Black Tuesday, as it came to be known, the market started to fall again. 16,610,030 shares were traded. The truth, though few would admit it, was that every financial establishment in America was insolvent. If every one of their customers had demanded cash - or if they in turn had tried to call in all their loans - the whole banking system would have collapsed overnight.

A board meeting held on November 9th opened with one minute’s silence in memory of John J. Riordan, president of the County Trust and a director of Kane and Cabot, who had shot himself the day before. It was the eleventh suicide in Boston banking circles in two weeks, and the dead man had been a close personal friend of Alan Lloyd’s. Alan went on to announce that Kane and Cabot had now lost nearly $4 million. Almost all the bank’s small investors had gone under, and most of the larger ones were having impossible cash flow problems.

Angry mobs had begun to gather outside banks in Wall Street, and the elderly guards had to be replaced by Pinkerton agents.

‘Another week of this,’ said Alan, ‘and every one of us will be wiped out.’ He offered his resignation, but the directors would not hear of it. His position was no different from that of any other chairman of any major American bank. Tony Simmons also offered his resignation, but once again his fellow directors didn’t even call for a vote. As Simmons no longer appeared to be the obvious candidate to succeed Alan Lloyd, William kept a magnanimous silence.

As a compromise, Simmons was dispatched to London to take overall charge of the bank’s operations in Europe. Out of harm’s way, thought William, after the board had appointed him as the new Investment Director. He immediately invited Matthew Lester to join him as his deputy. This time Alan Lloyd didn’t even raise an eyebrow, which made William wonder if he should have insisted that Matthew also be invited to join the board; but the moment had passed.

Matthew wasn’t able to join the bank until early in the spring, which was the earliest his father felt able to release him. Lester’s hadn’t been without its own troubles.

The winter of 1929 could not have been worse, and William tried to remain dispassionate as he watched small and large firms alike, run by Bostonians he had known all his life, go under. He even began to wonder if Kane and Cabot could survive.

At Christmas he spent a glorious week in Florida with Kate, helping her pack her belongings in trunks and tea chests - ‘The ones Kane and Cabot let me keep,’ she teased - for her return to Boston. William’s Christmas presents filled another tea chest, making her feel quite guilty about his generosity.

‘What can a penniless widow hope to give you in return?’ she mocked.

William returned to Boston in high spirits, hoping his time with Kate heralded the start of a better year.

A
BEL STROLLED INTO
the dining room of the hotel and was surprised to find Melanie sitting at her father’s table. She wasn’t looking her usual well-groomed self, and appeared tired and apprehensive. He nearly walked over to ask her if everything was all right but, remembering their last meeting, decided against it. On the way back to his office he found Davis Leroy standing by the reception desk. He had on the checked jacket he had been wearing the first time Abel had seen him at the Plaza.

‘Is Melanie in the dining room?’ Davis asked.

‘Yes, she is,’ said Abel. ‘I didn’t realize you were coming into town today, Davis. I’ll get the Presidential Suite ready for you immediately.’

‘Only for one night, Abel, and I’d like to have a private word with you later.’

‘Of course.’

Abel didn’t like the sound of ‘private’, wondering if Melanie had complained to her father about him. Was that why he had found it impossible to talk to Davis during the past few days?

Leroy hurried past him into the dining room, while Abel went over to the reception desk to check whether the Presidential Suite was available. Half the rooms in the hotel were unoccupied, so it came as no surprise that it was free. He booked Davis in, and then waited by the reception desk for over an hour. He saw Melanie leave the dining room, her face red, as if she’d been crying. Her father came out a few minutes later.

‘Get yourself a bottle of bourbon, Abel - don’t tell me we don’t have one - and then join me in my suite.’