The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (80 page)

 

 

Pat's look held consternation. He tried to keep his voice calm. "You mean
that you are going to hold up Downing for three million dollars . . . ?"

 

 

"Pat," Yale interrupted, "three million dollars may mean a lot to you.
I happen to know that Downing is worth at least thirty million. I know too
that he is fooling around in another situation, and he may he a little
tight for money. . . ." Yale shrugged his shoulders. "This speculating
is an interesting business . . . Downing will have to liquidate a few
things. He was really playing a desperate gamble with Latham stock."

 

 

"How much are you making on this deal?" Pat asked, unable to withhold
the astonishment in his voice.

 

 

"Challenge, I hope, will clear nearly a million dollars," Yale said.
"The foundation already has three million, but I may as well be frank
with you, Challenge needs much, much more. That is one of the reasons
that I was anxious to talk with you." Yale spoke with complete sincerity.

 

 

"Cynthia, Anne and I would like to have you as a director of Challenge.
Cynthia and I have consigned to the past what you did to us. Honestly,
Pat, we deeply feel that there is no room for hatred in the world. We feel
that we should be able to prove that in small things as well as big ones,
we can live together in a God-given humanity." Yale ignored the look of
utter amazement on Pat's face. "We'd like to have you 'in' with us, Pat."

 

 

"In with you?" Pat repeated the words with a snarl. "In with you?"

 

 

Yale nodded. "Wednesday, Agatha and I would like to elect you President
of the Latham Shipyards. As President we would work with you to merge
the Marratt Corporation and the Latham Yards into a new corporate
grouping with the over-all name of Marratt Industries. Eventually,
Marratt Industries would pick up other companies, not for speculation but
to run them as profitable businesses." Yale paused. He noted that Pat
was following him intently. He explained that Pat would have complete
managerial control, and alignment of any new corporate acquisitions
into a tight managed organization. He and Agatha would be responsible
for investments. He told Pat that he estimated that the initial merger
would create a setup worth at least seventy-five million dollars.

 

 

Then Yale dropped his bombshell. "The entire stock of the Marratt
Industries would be owned by Challenge Incorporated. . . ."

 

 

"What . . ." Pat roared. He jumped up, towering over Yale's desk. Anne
thought he was going to strike Yale. Cynthia blanched with fear. "I've
never listened to such rotten, cheap crap in my life. You must be out of
your mind! Do you think I condone your actions? Do you think I would be
so stupid as to be involved when this fool's paradise of yours tumbles
on top of you? Do you think that after working all my life to create
an estate and a nationally known and respected business, I would be so
insane as to jeopardize the name of Patrick Marratt by endorsing the
actions of a crackpot son and his two whores? You can go straight to hell.
. . ." Pat turned and stared coldly at Anne and Cynthia. "I warn you . . .
and if you have any sense you'll both get clear of this man. I'll do
everything in my power to discredit him. You have divorced yourself
from God-fearing people with your rotten orgiastic ideas." Pat strode
out of the office. They listened to his footsteps echoing in the empty
barn. The last words they heard him shout were: "He'll never get control
of the Marratt Corporation . . . not in two lifetimes."

 

 

Yale put his head in his hands. "Well," he said, and he sounded
discouraged, "I tried. I'm sorry, Anne. I'm sorry, Cindar. I apologize
for my father. . . ."

 

 

"He's a frightened man, Yale," Anne said. "I told you . . . when you
started to cross the mores of society . . . you'd cause an eruption.
We've only begun . . . you, and your two whores. . . ."

 

 

Yale winced.

 

 

"That's what we are in the eyes of society," Cynthia said sadly.
"Yale . . ." She looked at him, tears in her large brown eyes. "Yale,
I love you . . . but I think you should quit. I'm getting afraid." She
started to cry . . . "Oh, I'm sorry, Anne . . . but don't you see I want
the three of us to go on . . . to have a good life . . . I'm afraid that
Challenge is going to breed a more virulent hate than the hate it is trying
to destroy. Let's be content that we have found the secret of happiness.
Let's not try to change the world. I don't think I'm equal to it, Yale."

 

 

Anne sat on the arm of Cynthia's chair. She patted Cynthia's head. She
looked at Yale, who seemed to be staring at something beyond the walls
of the room. "She's probably right . . . Yale," Anne said softly. "Maybe
we should be glad to have accomplished this much . . . and stop, now."

 

 

Yale didn't answer. A fly buzzed around the room. He looked at them both
. . . tears in his eyes. "Don't you see . . . Anne . . . Cindar? I can't
stop. A month or two ago . . . yes, I could have tried to stop. . . even
then I wouldn't have succeeded . . . because you see . . ." Yale said
the words slowly: "I've come to believe that the sole purpose of my
existence is to fight hatred and prejudice with love. . . . ?"

 

 

"The trouble is . . ." Cynthia murmured, "you can't say what you really
mean without using the word fight."

 

 

 

 

 

 

10

 

 

There was no calm before the storm. That afternoon Liz Marratt called
Yale. She demanded to know where Barbara was. As Yale listened to Liz
talking excitedly on the telephone he suddenly realized that Barbara
hadn't come home since she had left his house. Liz told him that all
Barbara's clothes were still in her room. The reason that she was calling
Yale was that Pat remembered Yale had mentioned that Barbara had been
swimming with them Sunday.

 

 

"I'm not going to ask you whether it is true or not," Liz said. Her voice
sounded deeply disgusted. "But Pat said that you and your friends were
swimming naked!"

 

 

Yale made no comment. Liz asked him what in the world had come over him
anyway? Had he gone absolutely crazy? Did he have any idea what he was
doing to his father? Pat had gone to the doctor's this afternoon to have
his blood pressure checked. If anything happened to Pat, Liz sobbed on the
phone . . . she would put the blame right where it belonged. How had they
ever managed to bring such an ungrateful son into the world? How could
he behave this way to his father and mother. And Barbara . . . she was
almost as bad . . . divorced . . . travelling around with a wild crowd
and now she had disappeared. If only Barbara had sense enough to just
stay with her husband. It was obvious that the way she was acting now,
and the kind of people she was associating with, she would end up in had
trouble. Maybe she had been the victim of foul play. Liz hung up with
the admonition that after all Barbara was his sister . . . and Yale
was the one who had seen her last. During the entire conversation
whenever Yale tried to answer or comment, Liz proceeded to berate him
in an anguished tone, reciting a long catalogue of things he had done
to shame his father and mother.

 

 

Yale put the phone down, and stared at it blankly. Where in hell
could Barbara have gone, he wondered? Somewhere in the conversation,
he told Liz that he would try to find Barbara. He promised to call her
back. Yale decided to call Bob Coleman. Coleman had been attentive to
Barbara yesterday. Perhaps he would know.

 

 

"Sure, I followed her car when we left your place. We went to the
Midhaven Yacht Club," Coleman said, when Yale got him on the telephone,
"We had a few drinks there. She said that she was going to meet your folks
. . . they were supposed to have dinner together with Paul Downing. She
seemed all right to me, Yale." Coleman sounded a little peeved at Yale's
probing him. "She was reading Mat Chilling's book to anyone who would
listen . . . telling them that her baby brother was responsible.
I remember her reading the Eighth Commandment of Challenge to a couple
of characters . . . and telling them she really believed it. She was
a little slopped but I couldn't stop her drinking. She refused to go
home. I left her with a gang she had picked up. That was about six
o'clock Sunday evening."

 

 

Yale called the yacht club, and talked with the steward The steward
remembered that Barbara had still been there around eight o'clock but
had disappeared after that. He thought that she had gone off with a
group of her friends. A few minutes later he called Yale back with the
surprising news that Barbara's tan Cadillac was parked in the yacht club
parking lot. It had evidently been there all night.

 

 

Yale tried to conceal the alarm he felt from Cynthia and Anne. He wondered
if Barbara might have gone off on someone's boat. There were plenty of them
tied up at the yacht club floats every night in the summer. Mostly, they
stayed moored while their owners and friends used them as floating barrooms.
Maybe Barbara had gone off with some half-crocked gang? Maybe she was
spending the night with some of them on one of the islands in Midhaven
Harbor? She couldn't have fallen overboard . . . or drowned. They would
have known it by this time.

 

 

He remembered that Coleman said that Barbara was supposed to have dined
with Paul Downing and his family. He called Liz back. "No," Liz told him,
"by the time Pat and Alfred and Jim Latham finished eighteen holes with
Paul Downing and got cleaned up and had a few drinks . . . it was
seven-thirty. We all decided to eat at the 'Hare and Hounds' rather than
go on Paul's boat."

 

 

It was a dead end. Cynthia wondered if they were responsible. Had Barbara
been affected in some way by seeing everyone naked, and reading Mat
Chilling's book? Bob Coleman had said that Barbara kept repeating the
Eighth Commnandment.

 

 

"If you read that out of context," Anne said, quoting from memory,
"'Challenge believes that in the sexual union of man and woman, all men,
regardless of race, color or creed, have moments of awareness of the
Beauty and the Goodness inherent in every man and woman; and Challenge
believes that through proper instruction from childhood, men can learn
to transfer this Ultimate Insight into their daily commerce with each
other.'" Anne smiled. "You see, without Mat's book . . . and coming on
you unexpectedly . . . it sounds kind of wild."

 

 

"How could that affect Barbara?" Yale asked her. "It means exactly what
it says."

 

 

Cynthia shook her head. "You are analyzing only in relation to your little
world, Yale. Barbara is divorced. She reads something like that. Does
she admit that is true? Maybe. Maybe deep inside her she knows it is
true . . . but she has lost that kind of love. So I ask you? Does she
say that's a lot of tripe . . . and go out and tie one on . . . ?"

 

 

"I think she 'ties one on,'" Anne said before Yale could answer. "I don't
think that she feels that copulation is nice or pretty or good at all.
She thinks . . . to hell with that stuff . . . screw the world!"

 

 

"Would you think that way?" Yale asked incredulously. "Would you, Cindar?"

 

 

"I did once," Cynthia said quietly. "I knew in my heart that you loved me
. . . yet I acted just as crazily as that."

 

 

Yale frowned at both of them. "Ye gods, women are too much for me,"
he sighed. "How do I manage to get so involved? Whatever Barbara is
doing is not my red wagon."

 

 

He tried to tell himself that Barbara wasn't his problem, that his sister
had never paid much attention to him one way or the other, that she would
do what she wanted to do anyway. But he knew that in some strange way
he was his sister's keeper, too. Was it some kind of curse to become so
involved with people?

 

 

He asked Anne. She recited a part of Edna St. Vincent
Millay's poem for him. As she spoke her eyes twinkled at
the amazed expression on his face.

 

 

A man was starving in Capri.
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze.
I heard his moan,
and knew his hunger as my own."

 

 

Anne was sticking her tongue out at him, and wiggling her feet in the
air when the telephone rang. Yale answered it, appreciating the long,
clean view of Anne's legs and calves under her cotton dress. Neither Anne
nor Cynthia wore panties. Sometimes Yale found it difficult to keep his
mind on what he was doing.

 

 

Yale had answered the phone abruptly. A polished male voice with a New York
accent told him that he was speaking with Paul Downing.

 

 

"Oh, yes . . . Paul Downing. . . ." Yale repeated in a loud voice so
that Anne and Cynthia could hear him. They scurried across the room,
picked up the extension phone and listened.

 

 

"We haven't met, Mr. Marratt . . . but we have mutual acquaintances,"
Downing said. "Now I'm afraid that we must meet under circumstances
somewhat less than happy. I think it is about time we straightened out
our problems with the Latham stock."

 

 

"My broker is announcing tomorrow that Challenge will sell forty or
fifty thousand shares at $75.00 a share . . . first come first served,"
Yale replied. "You can appreciate that I can't offer sufficient stock to
cover all the 'shorts' without making my own position too thin. If you
would like to give me your certified cheek for three million dollars,
I will have the stock transferred."