The Mouse on Wall Street

by Leonard Wibberley

  THE MOUSE ON WALL STREET

  Leonard Wibberley

  WILLIAM MORROW AND COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK, 19 6 9

  Copyright © 1969 by Leonard Wibberley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 78-85130

  THE MOUSE ON WALL STREET

  1

  THE world was, as usual, out of sorts. To be sure, no crisis greater than normal (and it was a sign of the times that there was a certain normalcy about crises) loomed on the political or military fronts of Europe or Asia. Negotiations for peace between the United States and Northern Afghanistan were entering the third year with hope held out that a place would shortly be agreed between the two sides at which to meet to start considering an agenda for the talks. At home in the United States groups of Polish-American students were rioting on college campuses and had shut down the University of Chicago, demanding that the contribution of the Polish people to American history be emphasized in the college curriculum. They were opposed by groups of Russian-American students, who insisted that the Poles wished only to defame the Russian nation.

  Chinese-American students had burned down four libraries in the interest of academic freedom and to protest that that part played by Chinese laborers in laying the first continental railroad line was utterly ignored in American textbooks.

  In Eastern Europe the tanks of a hugely expanded Soviet Army were restoring the People’s Democracies in Rumania and Hungary, rumbling through the streets of cities with their own particular brand of liberty or death. The taxi drivers of Milan were on strike to protest the engagement of Karl Schmidt, a German, to sing the title role in a production of Otello at La Scala.

  These routine crises did not disturb the Count of Mountjoy, seated in his study in the castle of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, of which nation he was Prime Minister. It was early morning and the Count, silver-haired, aristocratic in bearing as well as in name, seemed scarcely a day older than he had been fourteen years previously when he had saved the world from atomic destruction by the seizure of the Q-bomb, which still rested on its straw-padded pedestal in the dungeon of the castle.

  What did concern the Count was the inefficiency of the postman on whom the Duchy depended for its overseas mail service. Letters for the Duchy, which shared a border of a quarter of a mile in extent with France, its ancient enemy, were brought by a French bus driver by the name of Salat, who was of a moody disposition. If he felt, after reading his morning paper, that his country had been insulted or taken advantage of, he avenged his national honor by discontinuing the mail service to Grand Fenwick. Mail might lie in the postbox on the Duchy’s borders for two or three days until the bus driver felt sufficiently mollified to pick it up. And during that interval, of course, he would refuse to deliver letters from abroad—sometimes letters of official concern addressed to the Count of Mountjoy or to the sovereign lady of the Duchy, Her Grace Gloriana XII.

  This greatly irritated the Count, who had many times written to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France on the matter only to be met with the bland and meaningless phrases of diplomacy which he often employed himself.

  So, that morning in September, while the world was concerned with riot and military threat, the balance of trade and the price of gold, the Count of Mountjoy awaited with some anxiety news of whether his copy of the Times of London had been delivered or whether Salat had once more decided to boycott Grand Fenwick for a day or two.

  However, on such a glorious morning with the chirping of birds melodious and liquid, coming to him from the nearby Forest of Grand Fenwick, with the fields and vineyards bathed in the generous sunlight of autumn, it was impossible for Mountjoy to be irritated for long. From a road below skirting the castle, the Count heard the rumbling of iron-rimmed cartwheels and the clumping of heavy hoofs on the drawbridge as yet another wagon entered the castle courtyard laden with the small black grapes from which are produced that wine coveted by the connoisseurs of the world—Pinot Grand Fenwick. The grape harvest had been excellent. The grapes were small, firm, and high in sugar content. No more than five thousand bottles would result from the harvest and these would command tremendous prices in the world market. The wool clip had been excellent too, and the fleeces of Grand Fenwick, like the wine of Grand Fenwick, commanded a high price abroad. White-faced mountain sheep provided those fleeces which when carefully washed in the icy streams of the Duchy produced a wool with a delicate shade of cream highly esteemed by the mills of England.

  Wine and wool were between them the total national resources of Grand Fenwick, which, being only five miles long and three miles broad in its greatest extent, supported but five thousand souls. The nation, one of the smallest sovereign states in the world, was unique in many respects, not least among them the fact that it had balanced its budget for the past five hundred years and its currency was absolutely sound. Not for Grand Fenwick the spiral of wages and prices, the worries over inflation and deflation and the anxieties of combating an adverse balance of trade. The finance and commerce of the Duchy were in precise balance. Exports and imports between them formed a partnership which made impossible any dangerous rise of either prices or wages, and the Grand Fenwick pound, together with the Swiss franc, was pronounced by men of finance the soundest of the world’s currencies.

  Founded by Sir Roger Fenwick in 1475 (Old Style), there had been but one year that Grand Fenwick had had to go abroad for funds to balance its budget, and support its people. That year, 1954, the problem had been solved by declaring war on the United States of America. Under the terms of the peace treaty which resulted from the victory of Grand Fenwick, the Duchy had been given the right to sell its wine in the United States without tariff or impost and also to manufacture in the United States and sell there a chewing gum with the unique flavor of its famous wine, Pinot Grand Fenwick. The right to make and sell the Pinot gum had been given under the contract to an American manufacturer on condition of receiving a royalty on profits and a holding of 45 percent of the common stock of the manufacturing company. There were no profits and there were no royalties, but royalties were not missed. Wine and wool provided all the income the Duchy needed.

  “God has always had us in his special care,” mused the Count, viewing the pleasant landscape about from his window. “We have lived with the esteem of the world, with no ambitions upon the territories of our neighbors, with respect for the rights of others, supporting ourselves by our labor and by the fruits of the soil. We are enemies of none and bear ill will toward none.” His eye strayed to where the white and winding road disappeared into the Gap of Pinot toward the border and he added, “Except, of course, the damnable French.”

  At that moment he caught sight of a figure on a bicycle coming up the road toward the castle. From the height of his study window, the figure appeared little bigger than a beetle, but he knew immediately that this was Will Creman, one of the border guards, now relieved of duty and bringing, he trusted, the morning mail, including a copy of the Times which would be no more than three days old.

  Will came on fast, passing a cart lumbering up the road with its load of grapes. Mountjoy was probably the only statesman in the world who could sense a crisis in the speed of a man on a bicycle and he sensed one now. Will did not, passing the cart, slow down for a word with the carter, who waved his whip at him. He sped on, sc
attered a company of geese nibbling grass and dandelion leaves by the roadside, and wheeled over the drawbridge into the courtyard at a brisk pace.

  “Probably an air-mail letter,” said Mountjoy. “Which means a letter from America. Nobody else uses air mail.”

  Sure enough, when, fifteen minutes later, Will presented himself at the door of the Count’s study, he had an air-mail letter from America in his hand.

  “From New York,” said Will, as if he were saying “From Venus” or “From Saturn.” And he added, “It was in America only four days ago. And now it’s here in Grand Fenwick. Makes you sort of excited to think of it.”

  “Would you like to go to New York?” asked the Count.

  “I were there fifteen years back come Michelmas,” said Will. “When we took the city. Met a girl called Rosie. Only saw her for three minutes. Real American girl. Funny how you remember something like that. Could I have the stamps?”

  “You’re collecting them?” asked the Count.

  Will blushed. “No, my lord,” he said. “It’s because of Rosie. Sort of makes me feel . . . well ... a little more in touch with her. Having something from her country. . . . See?”

  “Yes,” said Mountjoy, “I do see,” and he carefully tore the stamps from the letter and gave them to Will.

  When Will had gone the Count remained for a moment looking at the closed door. Then he sighed, opened the letter, throwing the envelope on the floor as was his custom, and glanced at the letterhead. The name, Bickster and Company, of Pacific Grove, New Jersey, seemed vaguely familiar, though he could not immediately place it. He turned to the contents, which read:

  The Honorable Count of Mountjoy,

  Prime Minister to Her Grace Gloriana XII The Castle,

  Grand Fenwick

  Dear Sir:

  We are delighted to inform you that this year, for the first time, there has been a great and welcome increase in the sales of our product due in part to a change in the social habits of the consuming public and in part, we believe, to our adroit exploitation of this changing situation.

  At this point the Count lowered the letter with a grimace. “ ‘Social habits of the consuming public,’ ” he repeated aloud. “What in God’s name do they mean by that? What a frightful way to think of people. ‘Consuming public.’ Like boa constrictors swallowing everything that is put in front of them.” Having relieved his feelings in some degree by this outburst, the Count continued reading the letter:

  You are undoubtedly aware of the recent report of the Surgeon General of the United States detailing the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer as well as cancer of the bladder, restriction and hardening of the kidneys . . .

  “Damn,” said the Count of Mountjoy. “What is it about Americans that they can make anatomical details sound so revolting? ‘Cancer of the bladder.’ I’ve managed to live for over three-quarters of a century without even acknowledging the existence of my bladder. These confounded people are in love with their insides.”

  He threw the letter to the floor, where it fell face down, and he gave it a kick with his foot as he went to the bellpull to tell his man to bring him a fresh pot of tea and some toasted Hovis bread and a pot of marmalade. In being kicked the letter flipped over, and out of the single sheet of a white paper a figure preceded by a dollar sign seemed to leap at him. He ignored it, thinking that this was probably some appeal for a donation to help forward the American antismoking crusade. Then, when his tea and his toast had been brought to him, the significance of the name on which he had been ruminating came to him. Bickster and Company, he now recalled, were the people in the United States who were authorized to manufacture and sell the Pinot Grand Fenwick chewing gum, which they had managed to do for so many years without bothering anybody in the Duchy!

  Intrigued, the Count picked up the letter once more and, ignoring two further paragraphs detailing how Americans were switching from smoking to chewing, pounced on the last paragraph, which read:

  Total sales of Pinot Grand Fenwick chewing gum in the United States last year, after deduction of manufacturing, distributing, and advertising expenses, and also putting aside a reserve for further promotion and payment of state and federal taxes, showed a profit of $2,500,000. Under the terms of our agreement with yourselves, whereby you are to receive 40 percent of the profits, as that term is defined in Article 14, subsection a, of that agreement, you are to receive the sum of $1,000,000, which we have pleasure in sending to you through Lloyd’s Bank in London... .

  The Count read no further. The hand in which he held the letter trembled slightly. A piece of toast, laden with marmalade, which he was conveying to his mouth remained in midair, arrested in mid-voyage, as the Count grasped the significance of what he had read.

  “One million dollars,” he cried. “One million dollars? It’s an outrage. A confounded outrage, an unwarranted, planned, and dastardly invasion of our completely balanced economy. Those blackguards will ruin us.”

  2

  IT was the Count of Mountjoy’s habit, when confronted with any crisis, to do nothing for a week but think about it and cautiously sound out others for their opinion on the matter. “Time/’ his father had often told him, “dissolves most crises. If you will examine the history of the world you will find that the greatest disasters have always resulted from hasty decisions. Furthermore, if God took seven days in which to make the world, you will never be blamed for taking three weeks to answer a letter. In that time you will often find the urgency has disappeared and no action at all is required on your part.”

  This advice the Count had always found sound, and confronted with the crisis of one million dollars in American currency about to be dumped into the Treasury of Grand Fenwick with not a project in sight on which it could be wasted, Mountjoy began to subtly investigate possible means of getting rid of the money without introducing it into the national economy to the nation’s ruin.

  He first questioned the Duchess, Gloriana XII (“as lovely a sovereign as ever Europe saw,” in the Count’s words), whether she would not like the whole of the ducal apartments in the castle completely redecorated in the most lavish style. She said she wouldn’t.

  “We’ve just finished a three-year redecoration plan, Bobo,” she said. “If I see another paint pot or another ladder or roll of carpet, I think I’ll scream. What have you got up your sleeve?” she asked, eying him closely, for she knew the Count well and knew that, while completely honorable, he was never without some hidden plan or project.

  “Your Grace,” said Mountjoy, “I have nothing which will remain hidden from you.”

  “But something you don’t want to talk about right now?” “Precisely, Your Grace,” said Mountjoy. “There are times, as you know, when it is the duty of a servant to be silent, and this is such a time. Later, when the season is more fitting, every particle of what I have in my mind will be placed openly and frankly before you with such recommendations as I am able to offer.”

  “It is something to do with money, isn’t it, Bobo?” asked Gloriana.

  “Your Grace, it is something which involves far more than money. That much I can tell you while begging your indulgence in not pressing me further.”

  Gloriana nodded. She could never remember a time in her life when she had been able to refuse Mountjoy a request, for his language was always so courteous and he was always able to convince her that whatever he asked was entirely in her service. She turned to a related subject.

  “The grape harvest, I think, will be the best in twenty years,” she said. “Will it be possible to announce a slight tax reduction in January? I feel that we must leave more money in the hands of our people so that they can improve their own lives and living conditions. We take twelve percent of their income in taxes now. It is far too high.”

  “It is the lowest taxation rate anywhere in the Western world,” replied Mountjoy.

  “It is still too high,” said Gloriana.

  Mountjoy promised to see what he could
do, but he was opposed to tax reduction, finding the present tax levy necessary to prevent inflation in the Duchy.

  Unable to find a source of expenditure in Gloriana, Mountjoy sought out Tully Bascomb, Hereditary Grand Marshal of the Duchy and also Chief Forester, and consort to Her Grace. As consort his political position was nil, but two of his offices corresponded roughly to that of Minister of the Interior and Minister for War.

  Of natural resources Grand Fenwick had but portions of three mountains and the Forest of Grand Fenwick, which comprised but five hundred acres, so forest was perhaps too large a word for it. All in Grand Fenwick, however, were enormously proud of these five hundred wooded acres and the post then of Chief Forester carried great eminence and respect in the Duchy. No budget expenditure on Fenwick Forest was ever challenged, for between the people of the Duchy and the forest itself there was a sense of close and deep associations, as if the soul of the Duchy lived not in the castle but in the woods.

  Pierce Bascomb, Tully’s father and a man of great learning, had postulated that this particular feeling on the part of the people of Grand Fenwick was akin to the tree worship of pagans, which he pointed out survived in many parts of the world, as for instance in Wales, where the Great Oak of Carnarvon was held upright in the center of town by cement (when the oak fell, Wales would fall also), and in the proposal that the flag of the early American Revolutionaries should show a pine tree.

  The elder Bascomb, bespectacled, tall and lean, was the author of two books on birds which had gained for him a world-wide reputation among ornithologists. His Migratory Birds of Grand Fenwick was widely hailed and his Fenwick-ian Songbirds was reckoned one of the better works of its kind published in Europe.

  His son, Tully, had his father’s tendency to scholarship. He was especially knowledgeable on the subject of trees and had read a paper before the Royal Society in London on the relationship between elm disease and soil bacteria which had gained him great respect in scientific circles. Tall like his father, muscular and inclined to be taciturn, he had traveled abroad more than any other in Grand Fenwick and was an astute student of politics, counseling the Duchess but never directly making a decision for her.