Chapter 9

“Say, old man, what happened to your hand?” Graham Wasson, plump, dark and fortyish, but very clean-cut and with a Dewey dab on his upper lip, was my questioner. He sat across the glass-topped desk in my Wall Street Office, while Arthurjean Briggs typed demurely in the adjoining office.

“Changing razor-blades,” I confessed. “The damn thing slipped and before I knew it I made a grab for it. Lucky it didn’t go deep. Hence the surgical gauze and the lousy signature. Do you think you can get my check cleared through the bank or should I write Winnie ‘X’ Tompkins, his mark?”

Wasson chuckled like a well-fed broker. “We’ll get enough witnesses to your John Hancock to make it legal,” he promised. “Now what you’ve got to do is to ease old lady Fynch into the trustee’s delight and take a gander at her former investments. I’ve brought the list with me. As you know, she insisted that you okay the deal.”

I glanced at the typed list. “This stuff looks pretty good to me, Graham,” I said. “Detroit Edison’s safe as the Washington Monument, A.T.&T. is solid, and G.E. ought to do all right with this new electronic stuff.”

“And how!” My partner agreed. “Boy! what a windfall! Stuff like that is scarcer than hen’s teeth on the open market. With close to a million bucks to turn over, we ought to do pretty well on this. Here’s what we’re buying for her.”

Wasson passed me a slip of paper. “The trustee’s delight,” he said. “G-Bonds. You buy ‘em, we should worry. No money back for ten years. Morgenthau’s dream-child.”

The slip was attached to a printed Treasury form. “See here,” I pointed out. “These damn bonds depreciate 2.2% a year for the first five years and then start climbing up the ladder again, and they’re non-transferable.”

“That’s it, Winnie. The trustee’s delight,” Wasson agreed. “They pay 2-1/2% a year if you hold them but if you try to sell them within five years the discount means you only get about .03% on your money. Once a trustee has put you aboard this roller-coaster, he can’t conscientiously advise you to get out.”

“Who dreamed up that swindle?”

“Oh, a couple of dollar-a-year bankers we sent down to help the Treasury win the war. It’s a natural. It’s patriotic to invest in war-bonds. The yield’s conservative as hell and you get it all back if you wait long enough.”

“But what if the old girl dies within the next five years? Won’t the estate be liquidated? How will the heirs feel when they have to take a loss of $60,000?”

“That’s their worry, Winnie,” Wasson pointed out. “All we have to do is sign the papers and la Fynch gets about $25,000 a year for the rest of her life.”

“Instead of the $40,000 a year she’s getting out of her present investments now.”

“Sure, Winnie. We’re not in business for our health. Industrials are risky and Miss Fynch is awful set on beating Hitler. We take over her present portfolio and take our chances on the market. If values shift we’re in a position to unload--but fast. She isn’t. She only gets to town twice a year, once between Bar Harbor and Long Island, and then next time from Palm Beach to Long Island. Come on, Winnie, stick your fist on these papers and I’ll handle the transfers.”

I shook my head. “I’d like to think this over,” I said. “If I was an old woman and expected only five or ten more years of life, I’d be hanged if I’d tie myself down to these financial mustard-plasters. It sounds okay to be patriotic, but I think I’d stick to the greater risks and higher yields and get a run for my money. Tell you what, Graham, you phone and tell her I’d like to have a talk with her before she makes up her mind.”

Wasson shoved back his chair and faced me, bristling. “I’ll be damned if I will. This is a natural and, handled right, is worth $100,000 to the firm. You talked her into it and now if you’re getting cold feet you can talk her out of it. All I know is that you’ve gone nuts.”

“We aren’t so hard up that we have to swindle old ladies.”

“Swindle my eye! What’s wrong about $25,000 a year guaranteed by your Uncle Sam?”

“Less income tax,” I reminded him.

“Oh, sure--that--”

“Well, it’s about $15,000 a year less than she’s getting now. If she sold out and invested in an annuity she could get about $70,000 a year, tax-free. No, I don’t want to rush her into this.”

“Then you’ve forgotten how we made our pile in the first place,” my partner growled. “Phil Cone and I will have to talk this over. This is a fine time to go soft on us.”

I grinned at him. “Go on, talk it over. If you want out, you’re welcome. I’d rather like you to stick around, as I’m on to something really big and I don’t want the Street to say we fleeced our clients.”

“I resent that, Winnie,” Wasson snapped.

“What else would you call it? Reinvesting?”

“Listen,” he exploded. “You built up this business. You invented the methods. I’m damned if I let you call me a swindler for following your lead!” And he stormed out, slamming the door. A moment later, he stuck his head in again. “Forget it, Winnie. If you’re working on a big operation, count me in!”

I studied the list of the Fynch investments again and the more I saw it the more I wondered how anybody but a fool would fall for the proposition of putting money in the government bonds for ten years, when you could clean up outside government.

There was a tap on the edge of my desk. I looked up to see Arthurjean. “Mr. Harcourt is back to see you,” she said. “I’ll get set with the stenotype. And don’t worry about that Fynch dame. I’ll give you a fill-in later. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Fine!” I told her. “Now you show Mr. Harcourt in and make with the stenotype. Did you finish copying what we said yesterday?”

Her mouth dropped open and her sweater quivered eloquently. “Omigawd! baby! I clean forgot.”

Mr. Harcourt seemed much more vital and self-possessed than on the previous afternoon--perhaps because he had obviously had a sleep, a shower and a hearty breakfast, presumably prefaced by ten minutes of vigorous push-ups and toe-touching in bathroom calisthenics. At any rate he looked fit.

“Morning, Harcourt,” I said casually. “Sorry to tell you that Miss Briggs was home with a bad headache last night and wasn’t able to make that copy of our talk yesterday.”

G-Men on duty are not supposed to smile without written permission from their immediate superior but Harcourt must have had an extra helping of Wheaties for breakfast. “Call yourself a headache, Mr. Tompkins?” he asked. “That’s who our man reported Miss Briggs had last night at 157 East 51st Street, third floor front. Can I get her some aspirin?”

“There are no secrets from the Gestapo,” I observed, “and I have no comment to offer except to say next time come on up and have a drink with us instead of doing the G-Man in a cold and drafty doorway across the street.”

The Special Agent gave an entirely unofficial wink at Arthurjean. “Oh, hell,” he remarked. “What’s the use of all this coy stuff? The Bureau isn’t interested in your private life. What I wanted to say, Mr. Tompkins, is that I reported our talk to my chief and he teletyped my report down to Washington. We’re not going to fool around with Church Street on this one. The Director’s going to take it up direct with Admiral Ballister at the Navy Department. For my part, I told him I thought it was all a pipe-dream but like I said the F.B.I. doesn’t believe in dreams that come true.”