Banking on Death

by Emma Lathen

“Any children?”

  “Two step-children,” Nicolls replied. “I really don’t know what she thought about the letter, because I have a feeling that the men in the family shut her up. The next thing that I knew, I got a letter from Arthur Schneider saying that he wanted to talk to me, and suggesting that I consult Martin Henderson about a convenient appointment for the three of us.”

  “When was this?” Thatcher asked.

  “Last month. We met at Mr. Henderson’s apartment. It’s on Waverly Place,” Nicolls added, somewhat defiantly.

  “Naturally,” Thatcher said. “Before you tell me about this meeting, let me ask you another question. What have we done about instituting a search for this Robert Schneider? I don’t like to think that we are going to let the heir to such a substantial amount just disappear. And are you completely convinced that the family really doesn’t know where he is?”

  Nicolls drummed idly on the desk, while he considered the possibility of interrupting this conference to call Joyce and warn her that he was going to be very late. Thatcher’s obscure amusement at the Pavilion and Waverly Place, however, left him strongly disinclined to hazard a conversation with a presumably irate young woman in his presence. And, he thought, he could scarcely ask him to leave the office. Resigning himself to an evening of apology and expiation, he addressed himself to the question that Thatcher had asked.

  “It’s extremely complicated. I gather that Robert Schneider’s father, Carl, fought bitterly with his brother Arthur; in fact, they had to part company, and Arthur Schneider bought his brother out. Shortly after that, Carl killed himself. That means, you see, that since he was a boy, Robert Schneider has had nothing to do with this branch of the family. It seems reasonable to believe them when they say they don’t know what’s become of him.”

  Thatcher inclined his head. “We’ll suspend judgment on that. Have we instituted any sort of inquiries?”

  Nicolls looked slightly shamefaced. “Only the most routine sort of search,” he said. “Robert was expelled from Dartmouth in 1939 and hasn’t kept up with any formal alumni activities. He never asked for a transcript of his college record, so presumably he never went to another college and didn’t use his educational background when he went job-hunting. I wrote to the men who roomed with him for three years, and they had all lost touch with him.”

  Thatcher nodded. “Did they expel him during his senior year? It must have been something serious. If they’ve kept them that long, the colleges usually try to get them through.”

  “Martin didn’t know the exact reason. Robert had left Framingham by that time, and was living with his aunt in Fitchburg. The rumor was that he had gotten some girl into trouble. He had a reputation for being a wild kid.”

  “Do we lose sight of him at this point?”

  “Not completely,” Nicolls replied. “He enlisted in the army, and was stationed at several points in the United States before being sent to England and North Africa. Camps at Texas, California, Ohio. And I’ve checked with army records in Galveston, Los Angeles and Cleveland. He never applied for a veteran’s bonus in these states. But,” Nicolls added with feeling, “a hell of a lot of other Robert Schneiders did, and it’s taken quite a lot of time to check them all out.”

  Thatcher smiled. “No Army Reserve connections, I take it.”

  Nicolls shook his head. “An honorable discharge in ‘forty-five, and only too glad to get out of the army. Who can blame him?”

  The two veterans—one of Korea, the other of the World War I American Expeditionary Forces—nodded knowledgeably. Thatcher thought aloud for a moment; “And he didn’t go back to Fitchburg?”

  “His aunt had died while he was in the service and she was his only real tie there.”

  “Would he have any money?”

  “Whatever he saved in the service,” said Nicolls who had found no difficulty in spending every cent of his army pay. “His father lost his shirt in the depression experimenting on new methods and machinery before he ultimately committed suicide. The aunt left Robert about $10,000 worth of securities. While he was in the army he arranged to have them held for him at the Irving Trust Company. When he was discharged in New York, he picked up the stocks and bonds.”

  Thatcher interrupted; “But if he’s still holding them, you might be able to get him through a stockholder list ....”

  “No, sir, I’ve tried that. They were mostly railroad preferreds and New England textile firms. He used his brain and sold out.”

  Thatcher again knitted his brows. “The telephone book,” he suggested. “If he was demobilized in New York, and held things at the Irving Trust, perhaps he was thinking ....”

  “There are five columns of Schneiders in the Manhattan directory alone. I have talked with every one of them. They all live in Yorkville, speak with thick German accents and have never heard of our man. The same thing holds for the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau and Westchester.” Nicolls’ voice held a note of gentle triumph.

  “Well, well, you mustn’t be disheartened,” Thatcher said bracingly; his august position spared him this sort of chore any more, thank goodness. “If we can’t get him from that angle, we’ll have to try another. What about organizations? Was he an Elk—or a birdwatcher?”

  “The trouble is that he disappeared at the wrong age for us to trace that sort of thing. He hadn’t really started an adult life or created any settled habits before he left for the army. He left Framingham when he was seventeen; people just remember a sulky kid with no identifiable characteristics. And a general search is going to be a very expensive proposition.”

  Thatcher nodded approvingly. “Yes, and possibly time-consuming.” He thought for a moment, and then added, “Now when this remarkable Arthur Schneider was ranting in my office this afternoon, he did mention his hopes for a partial distribution when Hilda Henderson dies. I’m interested in hearing what you said to him.”

  Nicolls permitted himself a frank shrug. “Well, you’ve met him, sir. We met in Martin Henderson’s apartment, and the fact of the matter was that he did most of the talking.”

  “I can understand that,” Thatcher said, with feeling.

  “He wanted to be sure that we really did have to find Robert before any money was distributed ....”

  “And you said that it was necessary, I trust.”

  “Yes, Mr. Thatcher. I had already had a long talk about it with Mr. Trinkam, so that we were quite clear with them.”

  “You didn’t bring up a partial distribution?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Good,” Thatcher said heartily.

  Nicolls frowned in recollection, then, a shade uneasily said, “I think that I remember Arthur Schneider’s saying that something would have to be done.”

  “What did you say to that?”

  “Nothing,” Nicolls said.

  “Excellent,” Thatcher said. “The best thing a banker can do is cultivate silence.” He looked at his watch. “Good Lord, I’ve kept you from your evening far too long. I’ll be going,” he said as he rose, “but I think that we’d better step up our inquiries about Robert. Have you done anything about our bank connections?”

  Nicolls also rose, puzzled by Thatcher’s obvious satisfaction in what appeared to be a totally confusing situation. Unconscious now, of his exposed shirttails he said, “I’ve checked all the banks in all of the areas where Robert was stationed, with no results. But I haven’t made any attempt to circularize banks and credit agencies on a national basis, and I’ve kept our advertisements local. It’s a question of how much we can ...”

  “If worse comes to worst, I want to trace every Schneider in the country,” Thatcher said heartily. He turned to go saying, “I think that your idea about veteran’s bonuses is the right one, you know. It restricts us to the right age group, at any rate. You might push a check on all the states that you haven’t already tried.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nicolls replied.

  “You’ve done very well in a difficult
situation, Nicolls.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Nicolls said fervently—to an empty office.

  Thatcher had gone. Nicolls sat down, expelling a breath of relief.

  “Yes, the boss is always a burden, isn’t he?” a grave voice remarked. Thatcher had reappeared in the doorway. “Just out of curiosity, do you have any idea of how big the Schneider Manufacturing Company is?”

  “About five million gross, sir,” Nicolls said mechanically.

  Thatcher appeared to do some calculating. “And if we don’t find Robert, his $100,000 is split up among the other heirs?”

  “Right,” said Ken.

  “Splendid! We want to find him then. The Schneiders don’t seem to need the money, and I am not altogether sure that they deserve any windfalls. Good evening.”

  Chapter 3

  Research & Development

  In the end, finding Robert Schneider cost no more than the price of lunch at the Harvard Club two weeks after Arthur Schneider’s descent on the Sloan Guaranty Trust.

  John Thatcher invariably dined there on the day before the Christmas holiday, usually with Tom Robichaux, whom he had first met forty years earlier, in Harvard Yard. Robichaux had subsequently surprised his friends and relations by becoming an astute and competent investment banker when an unusually high mortality rate among his more sedate cousins propelled him from a promising career as a playboy into the family firm. Now, looking like a somewhat disreputable British colonel, he was the only Robichaux of his generation at Robichaux and Devane. John Thatcher and the Sloan had been doing business with him for years.

  Neither sentiment nor business prompted Thatcher and Robichaux to eat a protracted lunch at the Harvard Club each December twenty-fourth. They were merely avoiding the dislocations that the preparation of inevitable Christmas festivities at their respective institutions entailed. And, if possible, parts of the festivities themselves; Robichaux because he preferred to conduct a strenuous social life in more appropriate surroundings, Thatcher because he found office parties embarrassing and somehow pathetic.

  “Among other things,” said Robichaux, gesturing for a refill of their drinks, “I don’t approve of drinking in the office.”

  “Agreed,” said Thatcher.

  “Especially eggnog out of cartons with good whisky poured into it. Waste of liquor.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then last year—no, it was two years ago, I guess—my secretary threw her arms around me and kissed me. For Lord’s sake! Made it harder than hell to go back to work on Monday. She burst into tears and apologized.”

  John Thatcher toasted him in silence: Tom, he thought, showed surprising diffidence for a man who had been through two spectacular divorces, and an even more spectacular alienation-of-affections suit.

  “I know what you’re thinking, John, and let me tell you that that’s a different thing entirely,” Robichaux said with mild indignation.

  “I know it must be,” Thatcher replied. “Come on, Tom, finish up. I think they have a table ready for us.”

  In the dining room, both men applied themselves to the menu in serious silence; only after soup, roast beef, baked potato—”For Lord’s sake, no sour cream!”—and salad had been ordered could Tom Robichaux, who took food and drink seriously, be expected to turn his attention to conversation. This consisted, invariably, of a series of vigorous descriptions of the various inconveniences to which he had been subject since their last meeting. Thatcher, who knew how well he enjoyed life, listened to the catalogue of grievance: the airlines had cravenly allowed themselves to be cowed by a snowstorm, which reached blizzard proportions, two weeks earlier and disrupted Tom’s complicated plans for a business trip to Detroit; Dorothy Robichaux, a statuesque blonde some thirty years her husband’s junior, was demanding and apparently getting an extraordinarily expensive pearl necklace. One of Robichaux and Devane’s security analysts was leaving the firm.

  “I tell you, John,” he said, pushing away the soup plate, “I don’t know what these boys think they’re doing. Blaine wanted $25,000 a year.”

  “Where’s he going?” Thatcher asked idly.

  “To Brewer and Collings.” Robichaux inspected the beef, nodded approval to the hovering waiter, then added, “and if they’re giving him more than seventeen-five, I’ll eat it.”

  Tom’s lament, Thatcher knew, required no reply from him; beyond grunting encouragingly occasionally, he confined himself to eating. He felt for his companion the tolerant affection that forty years induces; amused by his picaresque private life, he knew that Tom’s monologues were occasionally salted with shrewd and useful observations about business. At the moment, however, he was embarked upon a familiar refrain:

  “... and the way business has been for the last year, I tell you I can’t sleep nights. Not a damned thing worth anything. I’m paying some of the fanciest salaries on the street, and nobody comes up with a thing.” He put knife and fork down, and peered accusingly across the table at Thatcher.

  “And you know that I’m right. When was the last time we did anything for you people at the Sloan?”

  “I don’t know,” Thatcher answered. “It must have been ...”

  “I’ll tell you,” interrupted Robichaux. “Last February. You took part of the Wilkinson Steel offering.”

  “Been doing research on the Sloan before you came to lunch, have you?” Thatcher said provocatively.

  With his fork halfway to his mouth, Robichaux was moved to expostulate; “Now you know better than that, Putt!”

  His earnestness, coupled with the now rarely-used schoolboy nickname made Thatcher laugh aloud; Robichaux interpreted this as lingering skepticism to be dispelled by a show of frankness. “I don’t deny that we’d like more of your business, but that’s just the point I’m making. I’d like more of a lot of people’s business.”

  “Who wouldn’t, Tom? Now that you’ve got all your complaints out of your system, do you feel better?”

  Robichaux forked his salad, and replied in a good-humored voice, “You know, Putt, someday I am going to knock your block off. You’re too damn superior.”

  “And too virtuous, you usually add,” Thatcher interpolated. “Since you couldn’t lay a glove on me thirty years ago, I don’t know why you should think that you can do it now.”

  Robichaux looked at him appraisingly. “We’re both in pretty good shape, aren’t we?”

  The judicial tone again made Thatcher laugh; “For men of our age, Tom.”

  “Our age, hell!” Robichaux said. “Listen, seriously we have turned up a special situation that you people may be interested in.” He leaned back, and watched the busboy clear away the empty plates with a critical eye.

  “Coffee? And apple pie? That’ll be two,” he told the waiter. “And cheese with that pie. Now what was I saying?” he asked Thatcher innocently.

  “Something about a situation we’d be interested in,” Thatcher prompted. “Come on, Tom, start selling me.”

  “We’re underwriting a small new issue sometime next month. Buffalo Industrial Products.

  They’ve doubled their earnings in one year, and they’re going to do even better in the next few years. I’m doing you a favor even offering you any.”

  “Electronics?” Thatcher asked.

  “You know that’s just what I said when Ed Fitzgerald turned this up for us. No, they’re not an electronics firm. You’ll think that I’ve gone crazy. They produce, among other things, textiles. Ah, here’s the coffee.” He smiled blandly at his old friend.

  Thatcher eyed him. “Tom, I know you too well to think that you’re trying to sell textiles .... No, wait a minute.” He stopped. As the waiter put coffee and pie before him, he recalled young Nicolls’ description of the Schneider Manufacturing Company. “Are they in industrial textiles, Tom? In felt?”

  “Damn it,” Robichaux exploded, “how did you know that?” The waiter, startled by his outburst, stood apprehensively over him. “Put that down, man. Now, John, how much do you kno
w about all of this?”

  Thatcher stirred his coffee; “I’ve got my sources, Tom,” he said gravely. “Go on, tell me about it. No, it was just a guess. I really don’t know a thing about them, never heard the name before in my life.”

  Robichaux looked at him with suspicion. “You’d better not. Well, they’re going public at about twenty dollars a share and I think they’ll get to sixty dollars in a year.” He glanced at his companion; there was no doubt that Thatcher was interested in this. Robichaux continued. “They produce a full line of machinery and parts and equipment for the paper and pulp industry. Their most important product is this felt, which is used on the Fourdrinier paper machine. A sort of belt. Now as I understand it, these felts wear out in a week or two, and have to be replaced, so the felt belts are one of the biggest items of their sales. That’s why I called them a textile firm.”

  Thatcher sipped his coffee. “What accounts for the sudden spurt in their growth?”

  Robichaux launched into a pet speech; “Well, you know what’s been happening to pulp and paper firms. Why, Minnesota Pulp alone has doubled its capacity in five years, and is spending fifty million in the next three years to put in eight more mills. This new chemical hardwood pulp process really cuts their cost. Then, of course, new packaging and new uses for paper keep ...”

  Thatcher interrupted. “Yes, I know, but what about these supply firms? I thought that the industry was pretty well stabilized.”

  “Well, that’s just it,” Robichaux said. “They’re not only stabilized, they’re stuck in the mud. Just the other day the Canajoharie Felt Company was sold to Collets and Singer. The Canadian outfit you know. All these small firms have been plodding along, doing things the same old way, for Lord knows how many years.”

  “And this—what was it? Buffalo Industrial Products? It’s a paper firm?” Thatcher asked.

  “That’s the thing,” Robichaux replied, “this bunch is getting ready to really move with the paper industry. They’ve introduced the first real improvement into this felt business in years. You know that each of these belts had to be individually fitted to the machine? Well, out at BIP they’ve just worked out a way to standardize them, and install them every time they wear out without a lot of special people coming in. Fitzgerald says that if it works out it will cut some firm’s costs by as much as 10 per cent.”