The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (84 page)

 

 

Barbara opened her pocketbook, and handed Yale a check. She studied
his face as he took it. Yale whistled his surprise, "Well, what do you
know? Downing came through." He passed the check to Anne and Cynthia.
It was made out to Challenge Inc. for three million dollars.

 

 

"You have no heart, have you?" Barbara said, tears running down her cheeks.
"It doesn't bother you a bit that you drove Paul to do it. You killed him!
But all that interests you is that money."

 

 

Yale nodded slowly. He wondered for a moment if he were really responsible
for Downing's death. The expression of doubt that he saw on Anne's and
Cynthia's faces bothered him. What would they think if he told them he
had very little sympathy for Downing? There were too many people in the
world with cancer eating at their vital organs or heart trouble or lost
limbs or eyes . . . people hanging desperately to life who would have
gladly traded problems with Downing.

 

 

"I guess my Hindu leanings have pre-conditioned me. I fear the willful
destruction of life. Downing killing himself is a form of inhumanity . . .
masochism. . . ."

 

 

Barbara started to sob. Anne murmured, "Yale, that's cruel. You don't know
what she has been through. Tell him, Bobby."

 

 

Barbara told them how Paul Downing had seen her Sunday evening at the
Midhaven Yacht Club. He had been friendly and talked with her. Barbara
admitted that she had been "feeling no pain."

 

 

"So when he asked me on his boat, I went with him." Barbara looked at Yale
defiantly. "Go ahead, say that I'm a tramp. Maybe we've both got bad blood
from some ancient ancestor. It's no worse than what you are doing. . . ."

 

 

"Except that I am doing it with responsibility," Yale said wryly.

 

 

Barbara shrugged. Downing had been very nice to her. Sunday night when
she had been very tipsy, he had just undressed her and put her in a bunk.
He didn't try any funny stuff. Monday they cruised in Long Island Sound.
It was a beautiful boat. Except for a cook and a crew of three they had
it to themselves. During the day, while Barbara sunbathed, Downing read
Spoken in My Manner.

 

 

"He seemed to be very much interested in it," Barbara recalled.
"I remember him discussing the Fifth Commandment: the one that says
that Challenge believes that no man is pre-conditioned to act by any
metaphysical fate or man-conceived determinism. Paul couldn't accept
that. He felt that his entire life had been pre-planned for him.
I remembered that we used to argue that 'free-will, or not free-will'
crap in college, so I egged him on." Barbara looked at Yale ruefully.
"It's too bad that you never met Downing. When you got to know him he
was really nice."

 

 

Yale listened as Barbara told him about her one-day idyll with Downing.
He wondered why, when people had discovered for a moment a little of
the magic and wonder of living, they didn't work harder to hold onto it.
Most people were so completely unaware when they were happy that they
abandoned the moment they had already discovered in search of something
better. That was what had happened to Downing and Bobby. After a day of
delight with each other's thoughts and the warm peacefulness of the wind
in their sails and the ocean gliding by underneath them, they docked at
a yacht club that Downing was a member of on Long Island Sound. They both
proceeded to get thoroughly drunk.

 

 

That was when Downing had telephoned Yale. "He didn't really think you
would go easy on him, Yale. He believed that you had no choice in the
matter. Anyway, he said that if he were in your shoes, he'd have done
the same thing."

 

 

Yale looked at her curiously. "I know," Barbara said, "you think that
leaves you off the hook. I don't believe it. . . ."

 

 

"After all," Yale said quietly, "he didn't tell me that he was in such
a desperate spot that the only solution would be to kill himself. . . ."

 

 

"You wouldn't have believed him," Barbara said.

 

 

They returned to Paul's boat about one in the morning. When they were
undressed and in bed together, Paul was too drunk to do anything. "He
said that it was predetermined that he could never screw me . . . then
he passed out. You see, even then he was thinking of killing himself,"
Barbara said sadly.

 

 

During the night, evidently following Paul's orders, the crew had sailed
the yacht back to Midhaven Harbor. This morning, when Barbara had awakened
she discovered they were at anchor a few hundred yards off the Midhaven
Yacht Club. After she had dressed, and staggered with her head pounding
into the sunlight, she found Paul sitting in the fantail. It had been
built so that part of it was permanently covered, and part of it covered
with a retractable canvas. Paul was slouched in a rattan chair, his feet
perched on a cocktail table. He called the steward and ordered breakfast
for Barbara. Then she realized that Paul was still drinking. A bottle
of Scotch and a half filled glass sat beside his chair within easy
reach. Barbara commented on it. He told her that he wasn't hungry.

 

 

"He seemed very distant and remote. I tried to talk with him, but he
didn't answer me."

 

 

After the steward had brought toast and coffee for Barbara, Downing pulled
a small revolver out of his coat pocket. "It's predetermined that I do this,
Barbara . . . this is the direction my life has been heading ever since
I was born. . . ."

 

 

She had looked at him astonished, and told him that it was no joke to
kid about taking your life. When he told her he wasn't kidding, that
within the next ten or fifteen minutes he was going to kill himself,
Barbara told him that he would look good with a hole in his head.

 

 

She asked him why wait? Do it now. She told him that he was just being
overdramatic, feeling sorry for himself because he had been impotent
last night. She told him that people who talked about such things never
did them.

 

 

"I'm sorry it has to be this way, Bobby," Paul told her mildly, not
taking offense at her bitter kidding. "You might say that this business
with Lathams is just the straw that broke that camel's back. Last night,
too. And maybe that damned book of your brother's has affected me. Anyway,
last night I saw myself as a sixty-year-old lecher trying to climb into
bed with a woman half my years." He told Barbara that she was too nice a
person to get herself mixed up with him. "I'm a bastard," he said. "I'd
have screwed you for a while, and then got sick of you. . . . As for your
brother . . . I don't know him, but anyone who has the nerve to do what
he is doing deserves help. I could kill myself, and Yale would find my
estate so fouled up he would never get his hold-up price on the Latham
stock . . . or if he did it would take years. I've been in town while you
were sleeping this morning. . . ." He gave Barbara the certified check.

 

 

Barbara was still kidding him, laughing at him, telling him that he was
just trying to make her feel sorry for him, when he held the revolver
up to his temple, and pulled the trigger.

 

 

Barbara shuddered. "God! What a horrible thing! There he was alive,
talking to me, and then a second later he was sprawled on the deck,
dead. Bleeding! I screamed and screamed and screamed." Barbara was silent,
sobbing in body-wracking heaves. Cynthia suggested that they give her
a sedative. She and Anne took Barbara upstairs, telling her that she
could stay with them as long as she wished.

 

 

"Reminds me of a poem by a young poet I used to know, years ago,"
Agatha said, bemused. "When I lived in Cambridge . . . Eddy Robinson
. . . people don't read him much today.

 

 

So on he worked, and waited for the light,
and went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night
went home and put a bullet through his head.

 

 

I used to ask Eddy what he meant by meat and the bread. Do you know,
Yale Marratt?"

 

 

 

 

Alfred Latham wasted no time in bending the story of Downing's suicide to
fit his purpose. Peoples McGroaty called Yale and told him that he felt as
if he were an unarmed neutral caught between opposing armies. "They are
playing the whole deal for all it is worth, Yale. I got a release this
morning from Alfred that has been given out to all the news services."

 

 

He read parts of it to Yale:

 

 

"Yale Marratt, a young, wet-behind-the-ears speculator, and Agatha
Latham, a woman approaching eighty-one years of age, today voted
themselves as Director and Chairman of the Board respectively of the
Latham Shipyards . . ."

 

 

Yale heard Peoples cluck unhappily on his end of the phone. "Listen to
this," he read: "There is no coincidence in the suicide of Paul Downing
this morning, and this despicable raiding of a strong, well-established
business. Young Marratt, a ruthless, irresponsible, new breed of
businessman, better known as a corporate pirate; a man who is a disgrace
to the investment and business world, is directly responsible for the
suicide of Paul Downing. The tax-dodge outfit that is controlled by
Marratt and two women who parade under the Marratt name . . . called
Challenge Incorporated . . . deliberately put Downing on the spot just
as truly as modern gangsters put their victims on the spot."

 

 

"I don't like it, Yale," Peoples said, and his voice sounded doubtful.
"Listen to this, and don't forget that this stuff is going to get a
coast-to-coast play. It has the kind of drama that sells newspapers."
Peoples continued to read to him. "How this young Marratt obtained his
start in amassing a fortune estimated at three or four million dollars
is a complete mystery. Alfred Latham declared today that he had it on
responsible authority from young Marratt's father, who is well known
in Midhaven and respected throughout the business world, that other
than his pay as Lieutenant in the Finance Department of the U.S. Army
and ten thousand dollars that Patrick Marratt had given him in 1939,
young Marratt had no honest source of funds . . . that other than the
time spent in the Army, Yale Marratt has never worked in his life."

 

 

Peoples sighed, "Don't you see what they are trying to do, Yale? They
are intimating that you might have been robbing the Government."

 

 

"Don't worry," Yale chuckled. "If the General Accounting Office reviews
my Army transactions, they'll find them clean as a whistle."

 

 

"It won't be the General Accounting Office. . . ." Peoples warned him,
"it will be the Internal Revenue."

 

 

Yale told him that he had a splendid tax lawyer and accountant. Challenge
was in excellent shape.

 

 

"You don't understand," Peoples said. "I admire what you are trying to
do with Challenge. But your father and Alfred Latham will try to cast
doubts as to your honesty . . . maybe even your sanity. When a respected,
influential citizen calls you a thief, the general public begins to think
you are one. I'm afraid that when they get through, your name will be mud
in this city. You won't be able to change the impression later even if you
manage to prove your honesty. Listen to this: 'Although the stockholders'
meeting was interrupted by the announcement of the death of Paul Downing,
Alfred Latham stated today that it was reliably reported to him that young
Marratt and Agatha Latham were considering the possible liquidation of
the Latham Shipyards. This would be necessary, Alfred Latham stated,
in any event, since the new controlling interest had been unable to
elect a President from the present employees or directors. Since it
is impossible to run the Latham Shipyards without intimate knowledge
of local conditions, it is apparent that the people of Midhaven, and
the businesses in this city that depend on Latham for their livelihood,
will face the future without a Latham Shipyards.'" Peoples was silent,
and then he asked Yale if it were true that he and Agatha would liquidate
the Yards.

 

 

"Look, Peoples, I sense throughout this one-sided conversation that you,
too, are a victim of Alfred Latham's nonsense. That disturbs me more than
anything. Let me tell you that Agatha and I have absolutely no intention
of liquidating the Latham Shipyards. I'm demanding that you print that."

 

 

Before the evening was over Yale wearily told the telephone operator
that he couldn't take any more telephone calls, but before he managed
to call a halt to them, he had patiently explained his position to the
owners of several of the larger stores in Midhaven, as well as a number
of small businessmen who assured him that the collapse of the Latham
Shipyards would mean the end of their enterprises. One anonymous caller
shouted at him angrily and accused him of not only planning to ruin the
city of Midhaven, but the entire Christian world with his vile book.
To dare to call his cheap and orgiastic ideas Commandments was a crime
against God. He would be punished everlastingly. The last call that
he accepted was a menacing voice that abruptly warned him that if the
Latham Shipyards were closed down, his life wouldn't be "worth a cent"
in the city of Midhaven. The voice was calling him a dirty son-of-a-bitch
when he hung up.

 

 

Cynthia and Anne listened silently to some of the calls on the extension
telephone. When Yale finally refused to take any further telephone calls,
he noticed that Cynthia had walked away from the phone, and was sitting
on the sofa with her head in her hands. He lifted her face and looked
at her tear-stained cheeks.