by Phillip Rock
“Will you do it by yourself? I could help you.”
“No. I … I think we should go back. Don’t you?”
“Whatever you say, Fat Chap.” She yawned and got stiffly to her feet. “I’m cold.”
He peeled off his sweater and gave it to her. The dogs began a frenzy of barking. A light snapped on in one of the stable buildings and a large man stumbled out into the yard cursing loudly. Slowly, very slowly, the two children moved away through the shadows of the trees and then ran along the line of fence into the meadow. Halfway to the school Derek’s legs gave way and he flopped onto his back in the tall grass.
“Tired, Fat Chap?”
“No.”
“I am.” She slumped down beside him. “It was jolly good sport, though. Sorry you didn’t get your ride, but it was clever to leave when you did. I don’t think that man would have liked it.”
Laughter bubbled in his throat as elation replaced fear. He stood up and looked off across the fields. The thin white line of the fence could barely be seen.
“I was there, wasn’t I? Right on the stroke.”
“You were and he wasn’t. If I see him at the bazaar I’ll jolly well tell him, too!”
“No, Val. It doesn’t matter.”
He had been there. That was all that mattered. In the darkness and the silence with the whole world in bed. He … Sir Derek of Ramsay who had ventured forth at midnight on a quest with his faithful squire. He helped the bedraggled girl to her feet and felt quite different than he had a mere hour before. Older … strong … immeasurably tall.
6
IT BEGAN TO rain as Martin crossed Green Park, the dark clouds rolling across what had been only minutes before a pristine August sky. He hurried along the path toward Piccadilly and the Ritz Hotel, one hand clamped on the top of his straw hat to keep it from skimming away in the wind. Lightning scorching the air and a clap of thunder sent people hurrying from their canvas deck chairs to the dubious shelter of the great trees. Martin began to run and reached the marble-and-gilt lobby of the Ritz a few steps ahead of a cloudburst.
He found Scott Kingsford in the bar, patiently trying to explain to the barman how to fix an American-style martini.
“A waste of my time and his,” Scott said as the man walked off. “You’d think a country that invented gin, for chrissakes, would know how to use it properly.” He held out a huge hand, callused as a sailor’s. “Well, Marty, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
It had been over a year and a half since Martin had last seen him, and their meeting at that time had been cool, if correct. He had gone to Scott’s office on the twenty-second floor of the CBC building on the corner of 64th and Madison Avenue in New York City to hand in his resignation—which had been accepted. An awkward moment for both of them. But that had been then. A great many things had taken place since that bleak February day in 1929. A world had changed, profoundly and forever.
THE COLLAPSE OF Scott Kingsford’s Consolidated Broadcasters Company in December 1929 had not come as any surprise. It had been a season for failure. Numbed investors who had once scrambled to purchase CBC stock for as much as 392½ had watched with morbid fascination as the value of their holdings sank within two months to less than 85¾ a share. Dying dreams linked to the pulsebeat of a ticker-tape machine.
Scott Kingsford went into the radio business because he was bored. By 1921, the year of his forty-seventh birthday, the wire service he had started twenty years earlier, International News Agency, had become second only to the Associated Press. He was many times a millionaire and INA ran like a well-oiled machine. He had hired the best journalists money could buy to head the various bureaus—John Hammet in the United States, Peter Overholt in Asia, Martin Rilke in Europe—and there was little if anything for him to do. He looked about for a new challenge and found it in a radio set.
The potential grasped … the vision seen. The artful manipulation of a cat’s whisker across a lump of crystal brought sound out of the nothingness of air. A human voice speaking into a microphone in New York City emerging in an instant in the most remote cabin in North Dakota. It would take money and it would take time, but there would be millions to be made in the sales of radio sets and in the selling of air time to advertisers. Not everyone shared his vision of the future and few rushed to buy stock in his Consolidated Broadcasters Company at 33⁄8 a share when it went on the market in the autumn of 1921. He formed a small financial syndicate composed of himself, Paul Rilke, and three other financiers. Together they put five million dollars into building radio transmitting stations and a radio manufacturing-and-research company with the grand name of Meradion Neutrodyne. The sale of radio sets, of which Meradion Neutrodyne captured the lion’s share, reached the astonishing figure of sixty million dollars in 1922. Two years later that sum had rocketed to three hundred fifty-eight million. Radio was becoming an industry and Scott Kingsford had it by the throat.
By January 1929, the annual sale of radio sets in the United States had touched the seven-hundred-million-dollar mark, and was rising. More radios meant more listeners, and more listeners meant higher advertising rates for air time. Anyone owning a radio station couldn’t help getting rich, and anyone owning a great many radio stations would get a damn sight richer. Scott Kingsford owned a great many stations.
After its modest beginnings Consolidated Broadcasters Company had grown into the largest radio network in the country. More people tuned into CBC than into all the other networks combined. This popularity was reflected in the value of its stock. All stocks were rising on a flamboyantly optimistic bull market, but CBC’s rise was spectacular, touching the three-hundred-dollar mark after several years of stable growth with its stock in the fifty- to sixty-dollar range. Stock-market analysts sagely predicted that CBC would go to the blue sky within a year and investors eager to get in on this gold mine flocked to their brokerage houses, cash in hand. CBC stock lunged ever upward.
Scott Kingsford took this as a sign that gave credence to his vision. It was not enough to be big, he had to be overpoweringly dominant. It was possible to control the radio market, coast to coast and border to border, to drive his competitors into insignificance. To do this required nothing more than buying every independent radio station he could get his hands on, and building newer, more powerful stations in key areas. The sums required would be enormous, but Wall Street would finance. They knew a good opportunity when they saw one and his CBC holdings were gilt edged and sound as the dollar.
Stock pledged for cash. Cash spent for stations. Pledge and buy and pledge some more. And day after day the value of CBC rising on the Big Board.
There were men in congress who worried over the ethics, if not the legality, of Scott Kingsford’s grab for control of the radio-broadcasting industry. There should be regulations of some sort, or did it already fall under the provisions and restraints of the Sherman Antitrust Act? No one could say for sure. And outside of a few, no one really cared. At the level of Rotary and Junior Chamber of Commerce there was outright approval. If Ford could manage to beat Chalmers out of the marketplace … well, where was the harm in that? Business was business. It made the world go around. It was, in the words of Bruce Barton, a holy thing that, like any solid and respected religion, should not be tampered with by government interference.
There had been warnings and danger signs, and some people had heeded them. “What goes up must come down,” was heard in more than one corporate board room. But they were the doom criers, or the bears. “Be a bull on America,” was more widely expressed. A delicious fever began to sweep the country, an “itch to get rich”—as easily and as quickly as possible. “Why, everybody ought to be rich,” said John J. Raskob, and proceeded to tell people how to achieve this enviable state in the Ladies’ Home Journal. The secret was in buying good common stocks. But then everybody knew that—and just about everybody knew a broker.
It was this national craze to invest that had so worried Paul Rilke. He had studied Wall Street for
half a century and knew a thing or two about stock prices and earning ratios. The market was shaky, it fell with alarming suddenness, only to rise again a few days or a few weeks later as bullish as ever. It had a life, yes, but it was like some overgrown monster kept from expiring by constant infusions of blood from millions of Frankensteins. When housewives began to pool their bridge earnings to buy four shares of Continental Can on margin, he knew it was time to start getting out of the market—and so advised his friends and relatives.
Martin had been chief of the CBC news department since 1924 and had gone on the air every Saturday at 6 P.M. Eastern Standard Time as a news “commentator.” His opening remark … “Hello, America, this is Martin Rilke speaking to you from New York City …” became something of a catch phrase, as familiar to the radio listener as Graham McNamee’s fervid cry of “And he did it! Yes, sir, he did it!” at every Babe Ruth home run or Notre Dame touchdown.
It had not been his Uncle Paul’s warnings or any personal qualms over the great bull market that had induced Martin to sell his CBC shares. It had been a dispute with Scott over sponsor interference with his news broadcast. He had sold his stock at 305½ the day he resigned from the company.
Scott had thought him a damn fool. Not for quitting, because he had anticipated that, but for selling the shares at such a low price. “It’s going to hit a thousand, Marty.”
But not in this world.
THE BARMAN PLACED a glass containing a pale yellow fluid on the counter. “Here you are, Mr. Kingsford. The classic martini cocktail. Two parts gin to one part vermouth … stir gently, serve with a twist of lemon peel.”
Scott’s expression was bleak. “One third vermouth? That will not be a dry martini, George.”
Martin ordered a whisky and soda. “Not exactly like Gilboy’s.”
The big, gray-haired man sighed and took a small sip of his drink as though it were medicine. “Ah, Gilboy’s. A pitcher full of ice … pour in vermouth, pour out vermouth … fill with gin. Now that’s classic in my book. They raided Gilboy’s a week after you left New York. Sloshed all that good hooch down Third Avenue.”
“That must have been a sad day.”
“Not as sad a day for me as the day you went off the air. Old ‘Hello America’ heard for the last time.”
“I don’t imagine Goldfield shed any tears.”
“Hell, you just waded into politics. Gordon Benn of United Tobacco was angling for an ambassadorship. Some of your comments irked Hoover. So, tough. You had a right to your opinion, it’s still a free country. The trouble was, old friend, there’s a disease in radio known as please-the-sponsor, and I caught it bad. I should have backed you to the hilt and told Goldfield to go puff on their smokes.”
“That’s water over the dam.”
“Sure. But it still hurts. I may not have stabbed you, Marty, but I twisted the blade.”
“Don’t go gray over it.”
Scott chuckled softly and tore absently at a box of matches with the hotel’s crest embossed on the lid. “Just a clash between my hubris and your integrity. But virtue is always rewarded in the end. I’m glad you cashed in your chips when you did. How does it feel to be one of the rich Rilkes for a change?”
“Pretty damn good.”
“I understand you’ve built a very comfortable ivory tower with your money. I haven’t read any of your books, by the way. I don’t share your faith in the innate goodness of the human soul.” He tossed off his martini and made a wry face. “I better stick to Scotch. Even this booze jockey can’t screw that up.”
Martin rolled his glass between his palms. “Why did you want to see me, Scott?”
“I’m sure you can guess. It’s a new CBC. Not my CBC, you understand. That’s long gone. The banks, brokers, and a million lawyers saw to that. They carved it up like a boardinghouse chicken. But they let me run it … what there is left of it.”
“You still have some good shows.”
“Oh, sure … Mick and Mary and a new group of loonies called the Happytime Boys … Saturday night, coast-to-coast hookup. Folks appreciate a chuckle these days. Nothing funny in guys selling apples. Ad revenues are way down, but I got hope.” He reduced the matches to sawdust between his powerful fingers. “I lost a bundle in the debacle, Marty, but I’m far from busted and damn far from through. Give me five or six years and I’ll make the network the only one worth tuning in.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“Innovation. Capture the imagination of the listener. Take the news … on all networks … most of it out of date, stale … yesterday’s headlines. One or two good commentators, and with you gone … well, you left a big void.”
“I’m not coming back.”
“Oh, hell, I know that. I’m not asking you to come back. I’d like you to stay here … be CBC’s man on this side of the pond. No network has a regular overseas news broadcast. Too many technical problems involved. But we can solve those problems with new transmitting and receiving equipment … and a wire recording device that has a clarity you wouldn’t believe. Your German relatives make the stuff. Rilkefunken in Hanover.”
Martin swallowed some of his whisky and looked toward the tall windows at the far end of the room. The rain had stopped, the leaves of Green Park glistening like polished jade in the sun.
“Does Paul fit into this some place?”
Scott snorted and toyed with his little pile of crushed matches. “Of course. He’s become a major stockholder in the new CBC. Your uncle’s a carpetbagger at heart. But that’s okay, he can be chairman of the board for all I care. I get along with the old bastard. And I’ll say one thing for him, he’s smart … he looks down the road. We both agree that in ten, fifteen years, radio will knock newspapers right out of the ring. No one will buy a goddamn paper except to read the Macy and Gimbel ads.”
“Was it Paul’s idea to hire me?”
“Hell, no.” He swept the matchbox residue away. “I don’t need him to tell me who’s the best in the business. Martin Rilke … why, that’s a twenty-four-carat name, on a by-line or a broadcast. Why, you’re a drawing power, Marty. You make people tune in—and they’ll sure as heck tune in this show, believe me. It has novelty … and excitement … like talking pictures. Good folk who have never been fifty miles from Tulsa or Pocatello in their entire lives can sit back every Sunday night and have Martin Rilke speak to them from London … Paris … Moscow … Berlin. The world in their front parlor. And with these new wire machines you can prerecord things days before the broadcast. Not just interviews with famous people, but the sounds of the city you’re broadcasting from. The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, say, or Bastille Day in Paris with a million people along the Champs-Élysées singing the Marseillaise while fireworks pop all over the goddamn sky!”
Martin laughed. “Don’t get carried away.”
“Hell, I am carried away. I tell you, Marty, those Kraut engineers know what they’re doing. I’ve been to the factory in Hanover and seen all the prototypes demonstrated. They’re going to make what we have in the States look like crystal sets. The technocracy is here and we have it, bo. We should start getting delivery from Rilkefunken in six or seven months. But there’s a hell of a lot to be done in the meantime. CBC News, Europe, is just something on paper at the moment. It has to be fleshed out with people. You’ll need correspondents, legmen, reliable stringers. You can get some of your top people from INA—Wolf von Dix, Carlos Medina … guys like that. I know that Eddie Miles is an old pal of yours, but I hear he’s back on the sauce and—”
“Now just hold it a minute, Scott. You’re talking as though I’ve taken the job.”
“That’s right, bo.” A huge grin split his craggy face. “You may not know it yet, but you’ve signed on. Oh, hell, yes … you’ve joined the crew!”
THE CONTRACT HAD been a handshake and a toast to success, the handshake more bonding to Scott Kingsford than a fifty-page document hammered out by a Philadelphia lawyer. Martin thought over the terms a
s he took a taxi home. They gave him carte blanche in all matters—staff, content of the broadcasts. Sponsor be damned. His show. But he would be as objective as possible, having been a journalist too long not to be able to look at all sides of a question. And he would avoid the trap, common to some radio commentators, of being blatantly opinionated. The whole idea increased its appeal the more he thought about it. The wire recorders, if they worked as well as Scott claimed, would open up limitless possibilities.
Rilkefunken, GmbH, was part of the sprawling industrial empire of the German Rilkes. The collapse of Germany and the devastating inflation after the war had nearly ruined them and they had been forced to sell patents and foreign manufacturing rights to many of their varied products to their cousin, Paul Rilke of Chicago, for solid American dollars. It had been Paul’s greatest financial coup, leading one of his many critics to say that it was the biggest robbery every committed without the use of a pistol.
Martin lit a cigar and settled back in the seat as the taxi crawled along Piccadilly in the afternoon traffic. He would be working for his uncle in a manner of speaking. The major stockholder in CBC and not a man to refrain from dipping his paddle in the stream whenever he felt like it—not that Martin had any qualms about that. Paul’s advice had always been sound. He had not become one of the ten richest men in the United States because of poor judgment.
One of the ten richest men. He drew idly on his cigar, thinking of Paul’s success over the years. Luck, astuteness, and the ability to grasp opportunities when presented seemed to sum up the man’s secret. They were, he thought, the very qualities his father had lacked. Not that he could recall his father with any great clarity. He had just turned eight when he had killed himself. There had been a faded tintype his father had kept in his Montmartre studio to remind him of Chicago. It had been taken some time in the early 1880s and had shown him with his brother and sister in front of their home on Prairie Avenue. Their lives were in their faces. Hanna doll pretty, a future fairy-tale countess even then. Paul tight lipped and heavy lidded, a young man who seemed to be weighing the contents of his purse, thinking of profit and loss, the Rilke breweries, and the rise and fall of the Chicago exchange. And there was his father, apart from the others, lounging against the porch steps with his indolent bohemian manners and mocking smile, looking as though he already knew he would be disowned one day, would fail as an artist and end in a pauper’s grave—knowing it and not giving a hoot in hell.