by Emma Lathen
At this moment, the forbidding doors swung open. Instantly, all noise ceased. In the almost painful silence, Richard Simpson turned.
Hugh Waymark strode outdoors. Masterfully ignoring Simpson and his 8,495 followers, he sought the nearest high-ranking police official. His eye fell on a harassed captain, not 10 feet away.
“We need you in here,” he said in clear carrying tones. “We’ve got your killer!”
There was a moment, a brief one, during which Hugh Waymark’s second heart attack could have been averted. Then, he simply disappeared beneath the tidal wave.
A subsequent SEC investigation revealed the following facts:
1. 1,847 unauthorized personnel rushed into the sacred precincts of the New York Stock Exchange. 138 of them managed somehow to get onto the Floor. The uniformed forces caught up in the onslaught caused less distress than others.
“But, Madam!” shouted old Bartlett Sims shortly before she shoved him to his knees, “WOMEN ARE NOT ALLOWED ON THE FLOOR OF THE EXCHANGE!”
2. For three hours and twenty-eight minutes, no business, at all, was transacted.
In Iron Mountain, Michigan, Mr. Fred Lundeen called his broker. “What’s the latest on Bessy?” he asked, prepared he thought for the worst. The broker sounded drunk. “We haven’t had a single quote for the last fifty-eight minutes.”
“Oh, I see,” said Mr. Lundeen, hanging up. He reflected deeply, then sadly spoke to his son, who was in business with him: “Duane, those bastards have dropped the Bomb!”
3. Approximately $28,405 damage was done to the N.Y. Stock Exchange’s physical plant. “There he is!” shouted a policeman, carelessly propelling a tally clerk through a plate glass window. The murderer, after one comprehensive inspection, had ripped off his jacket and was moving toward the stairs leading to the balcony.
“What do we do now?” an enthralled Stanton Carruthers inquired.
“Remove ourselves,” Thatcher replied. This was only prudent; hard on the murderer’s heels was a motley crew, some bearing placards, some swinging nightsticks, all of them pounding along like stampeded buffaloes.
4. Almost one million dollars in commissions was lost during the period of the disturbance, see prorated transactions schedule, Appendix A. The murderer, realizing that he had inadvertently started a wild race that was only drawing attention to his own flight, ducked into a convenient cubicle where a statue was being replaced and let the mob surge past. Then, with a quick look for watchful eyes, he slowly began to sidle downstairs again. The Floor was a cauldron, but in its disrupted pandemonium he could be momentarily safe. He quickened his steps, past two policemen intent upon a short pugnacious order clerk. In so doing he cannoned into the U.S. Steel specialist who had, somehow, lost his tie and a portion of his shirt. He was also bleeding slightly from a small cut over his left eye.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded, breathing hard.
“God knows!” said the murderer. He sounded frightened and panicky, but so did the steel specialist.
“There he is!”
Incredibly, a policeman had sighted him again, a policeman who recognized him.
The steel specialist at that moment sustained a painful swipe in the neck from a fiercely brandished placard saying, CASH WANTS PEACE AND JUSTICE. He turned angrily and saw a new covey of police who were ignoring offenses in their immediate vicinity to struggle toward him.
“My boy, he said softly, “I don’t know why they want you, but . . .”
With that, he pivoted and landed a competent rabbit punch. He followed this up with a short, powerful jab. The murderer folded. He did not slump to the ground since he was held erect by the crushed tangle surrounding him. The U.S. Steel specialist might be sixtyish and overweight, but he had not boxed at Dartmouth for nothing.
Moreover, he looked around, shuddered, and moved aside to give a nearby fistfight decent room-this sort of thing was Letting the Exchange Down.
The SEC report, combining schoolteacher disapproval with maternal anguish, continued its list of outrages connected with the March on Wall Street for many pages. It did not, however, contain two interesting items:
First, at 10:32, approximately 18 minutes before Hugh Waymark disappeared, and some four minutes before the March reached the Exchange, the Board of Governors completed its formalities and approved the application of Schuyler & Schuyler to admit its newest partner to the Exchange with all the rights and duties of a full member.
Second, at 11:16, approximately 9 minutes after Hugh Waymark regained consciousness, but long before order was restored, another Schuyler & Schuyler partner was removed from the Floor by four burly policemen.
His name was Vincent McCullough.
Chapter 20
There Is a Line, By Us Unseen
“SO IT WAS Vin McCullough all along.” Edward Parry shook his head. “From the way Nat talked, I was almost sure it was Dean Caldwell. Seems incredible. But then everything has, this past week.”
He was not the only one finding it difficult to reemerge into a workaday world. The financial community, which had survived the threat of race riot and the reality of murder, suffered its greatest casualties in the termination of the great March on Wall Street. As the news had spread into every side street and alleyway that Edward Parry was now a member of the Stock Exchange and his would-be murderer under arrest, the March had mushroomed into a celebration. Wall Street, whose meanest resident was something of a connoisseur of ticker tape parades and welcomes for the returning hero, had never seen anything like it.
A mad, impromptu fiesta sprang up with dancing in the streets, confetti and, of course, music. Everywhere there were stirring marches, moving spirituals, and ribald folk songs. As catchy marimba bands on Broadway vied with devotional gatherings in Bowling Green, the scene resembled some enormous cross-breeding between a Latin American gala and a Salvation Army crusade. The infectious enthusiasm of clapping, laughing, stamping, sobbing proved too much for the denizens of the concrete barracks towering overhead. They poured forth into the streets, leaving behind companions to fling out the refuse of thousands of punch card machines, tickers and typewriters, until a blizzard in rainbow-colored hues floated down from the heavens.
Thatcher was to retain many hectic memories of that day, not the least of them being Miss Corsa and Everett Gabler, driven into temporary alliance, looking on in outrage as Ken Nicolls swung his secretary in a lusty square dance. Perverse thoughts inevitably germinated in this fertile soil. What would happen if he asked Miss Corsa to rhumba?
Unthinkable. After all, he had obligations to the unknown Mrs. Corsa in Queens. With such a carnival of merrymaking and revelry on Thursday, Friday reeled under the monumental after effects. Thatcher took in stride the Sloan’s massive list of absentees, and even his own brief notoriety as a leader in the civil rights movement. His composure was undiminished as he declined an invitation to address an investment club of Black women in New Rochelle, arranging for Nicolls to appear in his stead. What was really wanted, he reflected, was a special Lenten season for Wall Street. 40 days of fasting and shriving would set everybody to rights and had the further merit of historical tradition. Instead, he began to receive calls from Washington. It was these that brought him to the luncheon table looking like a veteran of street warfare.
“There is not the slightest justification for it. I have been willing to take a good deal, but this,” he announced incisively, “this is outrageous.”
The lunch was also a celebration. The three men were eating at the Stock Exchange Club, and Thatcher was present as the guest of its newest member, Edward Parry. The occasion was a gesture and, for the sake of the gesture, they were all prepared to put up with the food.
“What’s so outrageous?”
Thatcher explained that Washington wanted to appoint him ambassador to a small, new African country.
“There’ll be a lot of that sort of thing coming your way,” said Ed Parry wisely. “With me, they always tried to push the UN.�
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Nat Schuyler waved away these irrelevancies. He was displaying the resilience that had brought successive generations of Schuylers unscathed through every major American crisis. Five short months ago he had had three partners, his cousin Ambrose, Arthur Foote, and Vincent McCullough. All three were gone, and now he had one, the man across the table. But business was coming in as never before.
“Have you heard anything more about McCullough?”
Thatcher reported that Paul Jackson had undertaken the defense, but it seemed a hopeless task.
“The trouble is that once McCullough was suspected, the evidence was lying around, waiting to be picked up.”
“I never did understand why you and Nat raced away from Madison Square Garden that way,” interjected their host.
“It was McCullough telling me he sold his house to a Black doctor.”
Parry grinned. “So?” he challenged softly. “What’s so incriminating about that?”
“It certainly wouldn’t have alerted me,” Nat admitted. “I might have been furious, but I would have assumed he had gone crazy. Almost everybody else did, in one way or another.”
“But that’s the point. McCullough’s posture was that of a man who resisted Ed’s admission into the firm on perfectly businesslike grounds. Then, when the whole issue became fraught with racist ramifications, he began to cooperate with you, Nat. That was credible. He certainly wouldn’t do anything to hurt the firm. But selling his house to a Black family could have been disastrous, simply by distracting attention from the central issue. Anybody could have predicted you would be furious. You had all you could do the other day to keep quiet when Mrs. Parry said she was going to Lincoln Center. Every single person responsible for this Exchange seat transfer has been anxious to keep it simple, to keep it undistracted. The reason we objected to Richard Simpson was that he insisted on clouding the issue. And, in a different way, so did Owen Abercrombie. Now, Gloria Parry had a good reason to insist on Lincoln Center. But Vin McCullough didn’t have any apparent motive for introducing an additional complexity. Particularly at a time when he depended on you to make up for his lost clients. In anybody else, you would say that he sold that way because it was an easy, fast, profitable sale. Right?”
They both nodded.
“And then, when you started thinking in those terms, we had been hearing a lot about McCullough selling things. A house, a boat, a summer place, a car. What did it all add up to? Vin McCullough needed money desperately and quickly. His wife said that the rent they were going to pay was high. That meant he wasn’t making an investment in a cooperative. Nothing was being replaced, and a great many things were being converted into hard cash, under cover of a move into the city. It was clever of him to realize that so many sales could be made to appear normal that way. You expect a change in life when people move into an apartment. And what Carruthers said about faddists was true, also. If a man is moving downtown, you’re not surprised to have him change from an outdoor type to a city type. The theater and nightclubs quite naturally replace country clubs and yachts. But once you started to think of McCullough as a man in urgent need of money, a lot of things came floating to the surface. Most suspiciously, the slowness with which he was returning portfolios to his customers.”
“Now that I hadn’t heard about,” Schuyler broke in to say. “My ears would have pricked up if I had.”
“Exactly. Lee Clark got it from some of the customers themselves. He thought it was a departure from normalcy because of your newly acquired business.”
“Nonsense! The last thing in the world a brokerage house wants is a reputation for not delivering on request. It’s as if a bank couldn’t come up with funds to meet a legitimate withdrawal. The next thing would be a run on the bank. The same thing would happen to us. Let people once get edgy about whether they can withdraw, and they will.”
Even now, with all danger past, Nat Schuyler waxed indignant at the possibility of such a rumor spreading forth and undermining the house of Schuyler & Schuyler. It would take him several moments to recover his equanimity.
“And then there was something else.” Thatcher turned to Ed Parry. “Everybody accepted the fact that two tries had been made to murder you, as indeed they had. Well, why did they stop?”
“I was just grateful that they did,” Parry admitted. “I suppose, if I thought at all, I thought it was police protection, my isolation in Katonah, that sort of thing.”
“Yes, and there was a good deal of merit in that position. If you had come into the city within the next few days, something would have been tried. All right, so far as it goes. But after Lincoln Center, you did start coming in again. You were here when Nat threw out Caldwell, you came in before the Madison Square Garden rally. But nothing happened. It looked as if somebody had lost interest. Why?”
Parry frowned in thought. “You’re right. Not only did I come in, but all the most obvious suspects knew about it.”
“And that takes us back to the original motive. McCullough didn’t want you in the firm for the very same reason he gave you. Because it would spark many of his customers into withdrawing. What he didn’t add, was that he was in no position to return their portfolios, because he had stolen them. And it didn’t make any difference to him whether the Stock Exchange ultimately denied you a seat, or deliberated about it for two years. Just let there be enough publicity about Schuyler & Schuyler wanting you, and the damage was done. His fraud would be revealed, and he would be discredited. And that would be the end for him, discovery, prison, no future. The thing that infuriated him the most was that it was all a question of timing. He had stolen to get the cash for a really big plunge. He had what he thought was a sure thing. Two months more and he would be in the clear. That’s why he started off by urging Nat to go slow, advising caution, trying to delay things. When that didn’t work, he took steps to end the threat to himself. He went to the reception with nicotine in his pocket and tried to poison you.”
“And instead got poor Art Foote,” said Schuyler with sad solemnity.
“And was just as badly off as ever,” added Parry. “Or even worse. Now he had to worry about exposure for murder as well as fraud.”
But Thatcher shook his head. “Things weren’t that simple. Although he thought so at first. That’s why he tried to shoot you first thing the next morning. He was in a desperate hurry. Already customers were backing out. Thanks to that sonic boom, he missed. You remember that the police were satisfied Caldwell could have been responsible for that attempt. But McCullough lived in Stamford, which hasn’t been troubled with sonic booms, by the way, next door to Caldwell in Connecticut. The geography was as easy for him. But that failure sent you into isolation up in Katonah, and McCullough had time to look around. Then he discovered a very odd fact.”
“What? I presume that’s what made him stop trying to kill me. Or was it that, by the time he had another chance, the damage had been done?”
“There was that of course,” agreed Thatcher. “But the real thing was that Nat, here, gave him Art Foote’s portfolios. After all, while he couldn’t easily get at you in person in the city, there was nothing to prevent his sending you poison packages or blowing up your house. He had already shown he was unscrupulous in his methods. No, the thing that did it was the discovery that Art Foote’s death was almost as good for his purposes as yours would have been. True, his customers withdrew, but he used Foote’s portfolios to make up the difference. Supplied the actual shares when they were the same, or sold off and converted when they weren’t. And in so doing left a damning record behind him.
Because all of these transactions were recorded on the books, if you knew what to look for, name of share, amount, date of purchase. Take Continental Can, for instance. One of his customers held two hundred shares which he had stolen. There were some in one of Foote’s accounts. So he supplied those. But the records show that he supplied shares purchased two years after those bought on his account. And it’s even easier where he wasn’t abl
e to make a replacement from Foote’s inventory.”
Parry nodded his comprehension. “So that’s why you and Nat rushed off to the office after the rally.”
“Yes. We spent most of the night going over the records, and we matched over 47 transactions.”
“He could never have kept it up,” said Schuyler. “We would have had the usual audit after a partner’s death.”
“That explains the need for cash, and that’s why I said the timing was so important. It’s one thing to have people howling for something you can’t deliver. It’s another to go out and raise money before a routine audit. He managed to accumulate well over a hundred thousand dollars in cash from his sales. With his credit standing and position, he probably could have borrowed another hundred thousand. That would have seen him through, even if he didn’t make his pile before the audit.”
“It’s a good solid motive, all right.”
“Oh yes. But the police have a good deal more than motive, you know. First, they found the rifle. His treatment of that was simple enough. Instead of making any attempt to destroy it, he let his wife send it into storage along with all their excess belongings, furniture that wouldn’t fit into the apartment, boating gear, and country clothes. He thought, and quite rightly, that as long as he wasn’t suspected, all he had to do was get it out of sight. If he was suspected, there was so much other evidence against him it wouldn’t matter much. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t plan suicide in the unlikely event of the police probing into his accounts. Of course everything happened too quickly in the end, and he just panicked.”
Schuyler looked worried. “Suicide? Do you really think so?”
“I don’t know. Not any longer, I expect. Paul Jackson has a way of heartening his clients. But I suspect that he’s just heartening this one into a good frame of mind for his prison sentence. He can never explain away the poison.”
“That was something to do with his brother-in-law, wasn’t it?”