The Mouse on Wall Street

by Leonard Wibberley

  Hans always took up his station in the center of the bar, leaning against the back bar and greeting nobody. Yet he managed to bend his head down close to each of his old customers and exchange a secret word before the customer left, and he was particularly astute at noticing anything amiss in the behavior of his clients which indicated either that his client needed information or had information to impart.

  So seeing Dibbs not his ebullient and somewhat coarse self, but drinking his manhattan as if it were water (he had two in five minutes) and neglecting to light the end of a new cigar, Hans moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, toward him and bent his head down so that his ear was close to Dibbs’s mouth.

  “Westwood Coal?” whispered Dibbs.

  Hans straightened up slowly and gave only the slightest shake of his Knight Templar’s head. Then without a further sign he returned to his station in the center of the bar, watching for others of his customers in distress.

  That scarcely seen shake of the head had conveyed to Dibbs the information he needed—namely that no rumors concerning Westwood Coal were abroad on Wall Street. That meant that nothing whatever out of the ordinary was happening at the company—either actual or speculative. And so Dibbs was left to ruminate over the problem of why someone would want to buy Westwood Coal and was prepared to spend six million dollars in so doing.

  This puzzle he must solve, though strictly it was none of his business. But he had to know whether the purchase was being made out of pure ignorance or out of inside knowledge or some deep and subtle plan which would result in Westwood Coal becoming in the next few days or weeks a valuable asset instead of remaining a complete turkey. So he ordered one more manhattan and signified to Jimmy the bartender that that was to be the last by paying for them all. And when the drink arrived he was calm enough to light his cigar and examine the problem with more detachment.

  The first conclusion he reached was that six million dollars wasn’t fool’s money. It was too big a sum to be in the hands of an idiot. Therefore whoever was going to invest it knew something. The something he knew was unknown to the rest of Wall Street or Hans would have heard of it—however secret. Therefore that something was the secret of the investor alone. It was something he himself was perhaps going to do with Westwood Coal and which he had discussed with nobody.

  “What?” That was the question.

  The company had no assets—or rather what it had were pledged and overpledged to banks in return for loans. In fact, the company’s assets were in such a poor way that it was public knowledge that the banks were thinking of foreclosing on the two remaining coal mines in the company’s hands, on its tiny automobile factory in western Michigan and on its remaining forty-three miles of railroad—long ago leased to the Long Island Central, which itself couldn’t make any money.

  Government contract, maybe? Had someone in the company managed to get a government contract, perhaps in connection with the space program, which would make it worth while for someone else to buy up the whole business? The three manhattans glowing within him, it seemed to Mr. Dibbs that this was the only possibility. Some big lump of business was coming to Westwood Coal and Carriage. This survivor from the age of the dinosaurs was at last going to get a bundle of hay.

  Jimmy, the young bartender, picked up the five-dollar bill that Dibbs had put on the bar for his drinks and inquired jokingly, “What should I put my life savings into, Mr. Dibbs?”

  “Westwood Coal and Carriage,” said Dibbs. And those who heard looked at first surprised and then thoughtful. ,

  10

  THE six million dollars which Gloriana, acting on a decision made by a pin, had invested in Westwood Coal and Carriage readily purchased the majority of the shares of that company so that it was now owned, almost entirely, by the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Nor was the full six million required to obtain control of the company for the Duchy, actually for the Duchess. Almost two and a half million dollars was left over, and Mr. Joseph Balche considered sending a cable to the Duchy asking for further instructions regarding the investment of this amount. On reflection he decided against this. There was no cable office in Grand Fenwick. That much he knew.

  A cable to the Duchy would be transmitted to Paris, retransmitted probably to Marseilles, and then mailed to Grand Fenwick since there was no telephone system in the Duchy connecting the little nation with the outside world. Mountjoy had been able to obtain the installation of a telephone system about the castle and from the castle to the frontier guard, but there were no outside lines, for the reason that before the arrival of the Gum Money, the Duchy was not able to afford long-distance calls. Mr. Balche reflected that in

  these days of jet-propelled airplanes, an air-mail letter went as fast almost as a cable and, in the case of the Duchy, would probably arrive earlier. Also the Duchess had herself sent her original instructions to buy by surface mail, indicating strongly that no great haste was required.

  In his letter Mr. Balche stated that he had been able to acquire for the Duchy 71 percent of the shares of Westwood Coal and Carriage and that the Duchy could therefore dictate the future policy of the company and secure the election of a new board of directors. He warned that the company’s affairs were in the worst possible way and added that he had thought it proper to require a full audit of the company’s business and this would be sent to Her Grace at the earliest moment.

  “Since the purchase of these shares for Your Grace they have fallen in value from two and an eighth to one and a quarter,” the letter continued. “I had hoped that when news of the purchase got about, it would bring about a rise in the market value of the shares, but the company’s financial record proved too formidable an obstacle to such a rally.

  “Regarding the balance of close to two and a half million dollars, I would suggest that this be invested in County of Tokyo Bonds, which are safe and which carry a remarkable interest rate of 8 percent.”

  Gloriana was a little annoyed when she got this letter. She didn’t expect to have any money left over. She wanted it all spent on the worthless shares and wrote to Mr. Balche instructing him to do this. “I don’t care how much you pay for the shares,” she wrote, “but you are to use up all the money buying them. When you write to me again, I hope it will be to report that not a penny of the six million dollars remains uninvested.”

  The remaining shares were largely in the hands of the directors of the company. Mr. Balche considered how best to get possession of them and decided this time not to go through

  Dibbs but to approach the directors himself. He believed that the Duchy was about to suffer a huge financial loss, and he felt that by getting the shares as cheaply as possible, he ought to both reduce the loss and spread it over as much paper as he could.

  A man of much dignity and a quiet mind, he was able, very largely with a good number of telephone calls, to round up a good many of the remaining shares, though he had to pay higher than for those in the hands of the small holders. The price of the shares then started to go up. A rumor about a space contract, connected with the buying of Westwood Coal, flitted around Wall Street, stimulated by the buying of the shares and Mr. Dibbs’s advice on investment to Jimmy in Hans’s Bar, which had been overheard by several brokers.

  They went up an eighth, then a quarter and then a surprising one and an eighth. The buzz in Wall Street spread to Washington, to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. Government contracts let out were pored through and inquiries were made at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency concerning the rumor of a fat contract for Westwood Coal. Other speculative money came in looking for Westwood Coal shares. In two weeks the price of the shares had doubled, entirely on their demand value, and at the end of that time John Dibbs called Mr. Balche from his Wall Street office.

  “About Westwood Coal,” he said. “I have a client here who would like to meet your client and discuss a deal.”

  “Impossible,” said Mr. Balche. “My client is not even in this country.”

  “Who is your clie
nt?” asked Dibbs.

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Look,” said Dibbs, “this whole thing is a soap bubble. You know it and I know it. Your client is trying to bid up the price of the shares and the game is just about over. I’ve had inquiries made at every government office and all along the line and there’s no new business and no new financing coming to Westwood Coal. This kind of gambling is bad for Wall Street and bad for business. So why doesn’t your client just get together with mine and at least discuss intentions? Maybe when the whole thing blows up something could be saved.”

  “Tell me,” said Mr. Balche, eying the geraniums glowing red in the window box, “is your client interested in buying the shares held by my client?”

  “No,” said Dibbs. “He owns the remaining shares and he wants to know what’s the action.”

  “The action is that I have a certain sum of money and no more with which to buy the outstanding shares in Westwood Coal,” said Balche. “Your client can either sell them or take his chances on the shares devaluing because there is no more money looking for these shares and nothing available beyond the sum at my disposal.”

  “How much is at your disposal?” asked Dibbs.

  “I am not going to mention a figure, but it is limited,” said Balche. “You might inform your client that if he is not willing to sell now while he can get a good price, my client will start disposing of shares in large blocks about the middle of next week. At that time the price should go down rapidly, and when your client decides to sell, he won’t get what he could get now.”

  “That sounds suspiciously like a threat,” said Dibbs.

  “It is a threat,” said Mr. Balche smoothly. “And a very serious one. I am glad you recognize it.”

  “Your client must be out of his head,” said Dibbs. “I’ve had a six-alarm check run on that company and it has no assets whatever, tangible or intangible. Do you realize that its average bank account has never exceeded thirty thousand dollars for the past eighty years?”

  “A very small sum indeed,” said Mr. Balche. “Will you kindly call me back if your client decides to sell?” He put down the telephone and considered the remarkably small bank account of Westwood Coal. It was not, he decided, surprising in a company which had showed only losses for so long and had been kept alive on borrowed funds.

  The following day Dibbs called again to say that his client had agreed to sell the remaining shares at four and a quarter to Mr. Balche. Obedient to his instructions, Mr. Balche bought them on behalf of Gloriana, and wrote her a letter saying that she now possessed all the shares of that company and no cash, for the whole six million dollars was gone. The directors, he added, had been instructed to continue their business as usual pending an audit of the company’s assets, which was still being made.

  In the week that followed, there being no more bidding for shares, and with no news of new products planned or new contracts received, the value of the shares started to decline. In the second week after completing the purchase Gloriana, reading the London Times, which was a few days out of date, and figuring with a pencil, was able to congratulate herself on having lost three-quarters of a million dollars. The second week things leveled out a bit and she lost only half a million.

  The third week a prolonged oil-refinery strike was settled, and in the glow of happiness which always touches Wall Street on these joyous occasions, stocks advanced sharply and Westwood Coal was, almost as an act of generosity, included in the advance. Six hundred thousand dollars of the previous losses were wiped out. But then, two days later, realizing with horror what it had done, Wall Street recovered its senses in so far as Westwood Coal was concerned and the price of shares dropped one and a quarter, so that Gloriana, after only four weeks as owner of the company, could claim to have successfully lost four and a half million dollars.

  She felt very proud of herself. Not many people, she was sure, could get rid of four and a half million dollars in just four weeks without working very hard at it. And she had scarcely worked at all. She had written a couple of letters and glanced at the financial columns of the London Times. That was all.

  To lose a million dollars a week with such little energy, she reflected, took a particular kind of genius, and she was so pleased about it all that she was about to tell both her husband Tully and the Count of Mountjoy, now leader of her Loyal Opposition but still her devoted guardian, when she got another air-mail letter from Balche and Company.

  The envelope was very fat, stuffed with papers, and caused considerable comment as it was brought from the frontier postbox to the castle. In fact, it was passed into several people’s hands for examination on the way. All felt the thickness of it and admired the stamps and speculated on the news which it contained and which they were sure vitally affected them.

  And so it did. The thickness of the letter was accounted for by the fact that it contained a fifty-page audit of the assets of Westwood Coal. The inventory was astonishingly precise with a value allotted to each item, ranging all the way from cylinder blocks to paper clips and typewriters. Gloriana riffled through these pages, feeling slightly concerned because all that material which now belonged to the Duchy represented a vast and untidy lump of responsibility.

  The front page, she found, struck a balance between assets and liabilities. Gloriana skipped that because she had come to doubt the accuracy of company balance sheets. They always agreed down to the very last penny and that, she knew, was purest fiction. Nobody could make anything come out to a penny. Supposing just as the company had balanced its books the janitor, sweeping up, found a sixpence on the floor —what then? Wouldn’t that unbalance the whole thing?

  She turned to the letter from Mr. Balche. It was a formal letter, striving to be cold and impersonal. And yet there was a touch of almost triumph and congratulation in the introductory paragraphs, which was explained in paragraph three. Paragraph three read:

  As Your Grace will see on examining the audit, the auditors discovered that for many years Westwood Coal has been operating on a cash basis and the amount of cash in the company’s hands—ten million dollars—far exceeds the price paid by Your Grace for ownership of the company. Your Grace will forgive me expressing my pleasure at so adroit a stroke of business by one thought unversed in financial affairs.

  I must confess that I myself was surprised by your order to purchase these shares, which have brought a profit in cash of four million dollars and have acquired for Your Grace the other assets of the company. These assets, to be sure, consist for the most part of certain mortgaged buildings, goodwill, etc., of this fine old firm. I have taken the liberty of getting the advice of an automotive production engineer on the inventory of the automobile factory in western Michigan. He has assured me that there are enough parts available to make 100 Westwood automobiles of the 1928 model which could be sold on the antique car market at six thousand dollars apiece and the net profit here, without looking further, would be in the neighborhood of a further quarter of a million dollars.

  I await with respect Your Grace’s further instructions.

  Yours truly,

  Joseph Balche

  11

  GLORIANA was so vexed at having made four million dollars when she had firmly intended to lose six millions that for a while she refused even to think about money and would not write to Mr. Balche. She felt that he was in some obscure way responsible for the failure of her plan to lose on the stock market. She felt he should have known that hidden around in safes, and drawers, and cashboxes of Westwood Coal was ten million dollars in cash. But at the end of a week she convinced herself that she had been the victim of a stroke of fortune—the well-known “beginner’s luck” which awaited all who ventured into a new field. She consoled herself with the thought that she had only to persevere and continue to invest her money in the stock market and she would lose everything.

  She got a little oblique support for this view from Mountjoy, who often came to her apartments for tea, sometimes with Tul
ly and sometimes alone, for Gloriana was as devoted to him as if he were her father.

  “Bobo,” she said to him at one of these tea sessions, “what are shares? When people talk about buying shares, what are they talking about?”

  “Thev are talking about buying shares of stock in a company,” said Mountjoy, sniffing delicately at the aroma of the tea in his cup. Darjeeling, he decided, and after another sniff, December crop. This being the best time of the year for Darjeeling teas, he added only a small amount of sugar to his cup so as not to destroy the exquisite flavor of the infusion.

  “Five minutes is about best, depending on the water,” he said aloud, taking a sip. “In fact, I would say five minutes is perfection.”

  “Five minutes for what?” asked Gloriana.

  “Allowing the Darjeeling to stand before pouring,” said Mountjoy. “The chemists, of course, say three minutes, but they are concerned only with the tannin and caffein content. This is excellent.”

  “Thank you, Bobo,” said Gloriana, and she was really pleased, for the Count viewed tea in the same light in which he viewed wine and often remarked that between the two there was at least a collateral relationship.