Текст книги "The Villiers Touch"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

27. Mason Villiers

A limousine, sealed against the heat, prowled southward through heavy traffic on Park Avenue. Wyatt sat with his back to the chauffeur on the flip-top jump seat, facing Sidney Isher, who crouched in the corner, resembling a middleweight boxer waiting tensely for the gong. Mason Villiers sat back with his lean legs stretched out, looking entirely at his ease, a chilled self-contained smile playing on his mouth while he talked in his resonant baritone. The face he turned to his companions had been molded by years of deliberate calculation-the face of a man who could not be frightened, appealed to, or reasoned with on a basis of personalities; a cool face, primitive, unfeelingly logical, as pragmatic in design as a steel bayonet.

He carried a briefcase, according to habit, in which was hidden a demagnetizing jammer designed to ensure that no conversation in its range could be miked or tape-recorded. It was manufactured by a subsidiary of NCI and sold to the public for $289.50-legal, commonplace, and by now a fact of life in business.

Sidney Isher wheezed and snorted, and said, “I don’t want to be a nuisance, but I keep wandering if-”

“People who don’t want to be nuisances,” Villiers snapped, “seldom succeed.”

“Your point is well taken. I’ll withdraw the preamble. The question is, will Cleland show up at this meeting? If he doesn’t, we’re wasting a morning.”

“Cleland,” Villiers murmured, “is as likely not to show up as a corpse at its own funeral.”

Steve Wyatt agreed: “What choice has he got? We’ve got him by the balls.”

Isher remarked to Wyatt, “No need to smack your lips so loud.”

Ignoring the byplay, Villiers said, “Cleland’s angry but that may be good-an angry man can make mistakes. He’ll show up. Cleland and I understand each other, I think,”

“Like a pair of sharks smelling the same blood,” Isher observed gloomily. “If Cleland was stupid Elliot Judd wouldn’t have put him in charge of the NCI board of directors.”

“We’ll handle him,” Villiers said, unworried.

Steve Wyatt said, “What about Dan Silverstein? Are you sure you can trust him?”

“I’m not sure I can trust anybody. I don’t expect loyalty from Silverstein, but we’ll get cooperation. He knows what to expect if he backs out.”

The limousine pulled up at the curb; the three men got out and walked across the sidewalk into the air-conditioned lobby of the fifty-story building that housed NCI’s executive offices.

The reception room on the forty-eighth floor was carpeted wall to wall, discreetly and indirectly lighted, furnished in cool Danish modern. The brunette at the reception desk was precisely groomed and tailored; her smile was impersonal. Wyatt muttered in Sidney Isher’s ear, “You could hang meat in here.”

Isher, disregarding him, identified himself and his companions to the receptionist, and said, “I assume the directors are caucusing now? Do you mind announcing us?”

The girl spoke into a phone, listened, and pointed to a leather-covered door. Isher and Wyatt affixed themselves to Villiers when he stepped toward the indicated door. By the time he reached it, it had swung open.

Cleland was big and lean, tanned, his face not unattractively lined; his hair was still a deep rich brown-dyed, perhaps, for his hands were veined and beginning to show age spots. He looked muscular and trim in a way that bespoke health clubs, steam rooms, barbells, and massages. His handshake, to Villiers and his companions, was perfunctory; perhaps he disliked being touched.

Six men stood in a knot just inside the door, not talking, looking at Villiers the way they might have looked at a prowling panther in the jungle-prepared to admire its grace and predatory strength, yet fearful and hostile lest it spring.

When Villiers strode inside, the group parted like the waters of the Red Sea. He went straight through, marching with a calculated display of arrogance down the length of the room to the head of the conference table. Only then did he turn to stare coolly at the others. The six men had been joined by Cleland, and when Villiers had gone right by them without shaking hands, they had burst into a low-voiced babble of talk. Villiers said, “All right, let’s hold it down.”

They gave him angry glares-all except one, a big apple-cheeked man with thin white hair combed carefully over his scalp-Dan Silverstein. The look that came onto Silverstein’s face when Villiers met his glance was like the sickly smile of a rural bank manager confronted with a surprise visit by the auditor, searching quickly and desperately through his mind for the details of his plan to cover up an embezzlement scheme, refusing to admit to himself that it was too late.

The talk subsided and Villiers made gestures. “My associates, Mr. Sidney Isher and Mr. Stephen Wyatt. I know you, Cleland, and Dan Silverstein. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the rest of you gentlemen?”

The board of directors was, in due course, identified and separated out as to names and faces. They distributed themselves around the table. Ansel Cleland took a pair of glasses out of a leather case, arranged papers before him, pushed his glasses higher on his nose, and said, “You’re the visiting team. You can have the first turn at bat.” He planted his elbows on the table and thrust his jaw forward stubbornly, striking the pose familiar to anyone who had seen him on the cover of Newsweek.

Villiers, on his feet, launched into a clipped speech, the length of which was not out of proportion to what he had to say. He spoke without animation in a hard, mechanical voice; his words, delivered in a pitchless monotone, fell equally, like bricks, as if he were uttering a ritual incantation. Speaking down the length of the conference table from a widespread stance, he took the NCI directors step by step along a carefully planned route. He spoke mainly to Ansel Cleland, because in the absence of the chairman Cleland was NCI’s top man, a Cincinnati-born businessman whose career in banking and corporate law had catapulted him onto the boards of directors of eleven corporations, but whose principal interest had lain with the affairs of NCI ever since he had been hired on in 1946 as Elliot Judd’s corporation counsel. Cleland’s facade-jutting jaw, shrewd eyes, alert seated posture-was no sham.

Villiers took them through a swift course, twice deferring to Sidney Isher, who put in legal niceties, and to Steve Wyatt, who had come armed with a briefcase full of statistics and corporate figures.

He watched them while he spoke, gauging the temper of the group with hair-fine care; afterward he paused, and in a room whose silence was disturbed only by the thrumming of air-conditioning, he moved his eyes from face to face with an expression like that of a man who, drawing back his whip, hesitates just briefly to select the most painful spot on his victim’s naked back. And then he said, “My terms and conditions should be easy enough to understand. Either you support my campaign to persuade stockholders to trade their NCI shares for Heggins debentures, or I’ll proceed with moves to raise patent royalties and drive NCI out of the competitive marketplace. I’ve accumulated enough of a position and enough voting proxies to make a strong bid for control in a stockholders’ meeting, but if you force me to that extreme you’re only hurting yourselves and the company. Your best choice is to go along with the Heggins exchange and afterward dissolve the present board of directors so that I can replace it with my people.”

There were no outraged cries; most of them steepled their fingers and squinted at him, making it clear they were not ready to jump for the lifeboats yet, not prepared to be easily swayed. Ansel Cleland just watched Villiers as if he were slightly crazy. Silverstein looked uncomfortable and sick; he was toying with a mechanical pencil and not meeting anyone’s glance. There were looks of stunned fascination, pained looks of indignation, dazed looks of shock. Finally Ansel Cleland spoke: “You ought to be shot,” he said, filling with red-faced anger. “I won’t let you get near it.”

“I’m afraid you can’t stop me.”

“You’ll never pull it off, Villiers. We’ll line up proxy-soliciting firms. We’ll form a protective stockholders’ committee. This firm will not be bled by a common raider!”

“Go ahead. Insist on a proxy war. You’ll have trouble, Cleland. When I raise the patent royalties on Melbard and the others, your market picture will go sour. The big fund managers will dump NCI from their portfolios. Your own employees will get shaky and your customers will be frightened off. The competition will get brave, and you’ll get squeezed out of your outlets. You’ll destroy the confidence of your stockholders and wreck the entire company. Is that what you want?”

“Don’t try to put words in my mouth,” Cleland said. “You know what we want. The question is, what do you want?”

“I thought it was obvious by now. I want NCI.”

“No. You won’t get it, and you know that. So the question becomes, what will you settle for?”

Villiers shook his head. “You misunderstand me. I didn’t come here to bargain and negotiate and reach a compromise. There’s no middle ground here. You go along or you go under, that’s all there is.”

“You’re playing poker-running a bluff. Don’t you think we can see that?”

Villiers’ reply was the slightest of smiles. It had no visible effect on Cleland, but some of the others were visibly chilled; shaken, they looked away and fidgeted. Villiers nodded to Isher and Wyatt, who dragged on his cigarette and poured thick, slow rivers of smoke from his nostrils while he packed up his briefcase. Villiers walked down the length of the room to the door, turned, caught Dan Silverstein’s eye for a moment, and said to Cleland, “Our newspaper ads will be on the street Monday morning. You’ll have to make up your minds between now and then. If you’re smart, you won’t make a fight of it.”

Isher opened the door. They filed put; and Isher, with exaggerated propriety, closed the door firmly behind him.

They waited for the elevator-Villiers calm and steady, the others breathing hard. Steve Wyatt’s grin jerked, and he said nervously, “Prosperity is just around the corner.”

“Objection,” said Isher. “Assuming facts not in evidence. They haven’t capitulated yet.”

“They will,” Wyatt said. “Hell, four of them sold Heggins short on information we got leaked to them-those four are in a hell of a tight spot, and the only way they can get out of it with their scalps whole is accept our deal and trade their NCI shares for Heggins convertibles.”

The elevator came; they stepped in. Sidney Isher said, “If they’re inclined to play dirty pool, they may stop us yet.”

Villiers spoke finally: “They’ll hassle for a while. Silverstein will keep slinging wrenches into the works. With him in the group, if all seven of them were laid end to end they couldn’t reach a decision. The only thing they can do is try to get through to Judd on the phone, and they won’t reach him. They’ll still be arguing when our ads hit the market-and as long as they’re arguing among themselves, they won’t be fighting us.”

“Maybe,” Isher said. “Maybe. I think you’re selling them short. I think Cleland will ride right over Dan Silverstein like a steamroller. I think for every ad of ours on a left-hand page we’re going to see an ad of theirs on a right-hand page exhorting stockholders not to tender any shares to Heggins. And we can be sure they’ll spell out the reasons in blood.”

“Let them try,” Villiers growled, and strode away across the marble-floored lobby.

28. Russell Hastings

Hastings came down the hall with his tie at half-mast, collar open, entered the head office, and found Quint wasn’t alone-there was an elegant old man in a black Chesterfield, and a dark pretty girl.

Quint acknowledged his arrival in his wry English drawl: “Marvelous. Enter the hero.” There never was any real bite in Quint’s sarcasms; Hastings only smiled and shook hands when Quint introduced him to the visitors-Howard Claiborne, of Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers, and Claiborne’s private secretary, Miss Goralski. Quint completed the introductions by intoning, “Russ Hastings, an attorney on my staff. Russ has been concentrating on the NCI matter, and I think it would be judicious to repeat what you’ve told me to him.”

Howard Claiborne gave Hastings a firm handshake and an unsmiling greeting. Quint indicated a chair, and Hastings settled in it after turning toward Miss Goralski but thinking better of offering to shake her hand: the girl seemed to be in a state of marked agitation, too distracted by nervous anxiety to do more than acknowledge him with a jerky nod of her pretty head.

Howard Claiborne cleared his throat and said, “My secretary and I seem to have become involved unwittingly in certain activities of a recent employee of mine-activities which, if not entirely illegal, could at least be described as extralegal. I think perhaps it would-”

“Excuse me,” Gordon Quint said. “It occurs to me we’ll save time if I ask one of the Justice Department chaps to sit in, so that you won’t have to go over it yet again. Unless you object?”

“Not at all,” Claiborne replied. “Miss Goralski was good enough to come to me with the information we’ve given you, and as I told you, I decided immediately to bring the entire matter to the attention of the authorities. By all means, let’s have the Justice Department.”

Quint nodded and reached for the phone; while he waited for his connection, he passed a sheaf of papers to Hastings and said, “Have a look through these.”

They were printed market letters and analysts’ bulletins, stacked in chronological order, beginning with two Standard amp; Poor’s yellow insert sheets on NCI and Heggins Aircraft dated a few weeks ago. One of the documents, ten days old, was the Albert Marlowe Bulletin, a market letter with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands-a hedging, pontifical tip sheet widely used by those who relied on forecasters’ predictions. Now and then it could have a marked influence on the Market.

It was headed “CONFIDENTIAL: FOR SUBSCRIBERS’ USE ONLY” and in typical Wall Streetese it said:

As the year develops, the economy has undergone a moderate readjustment, and even though there is no unanimity among economists, it is fair to estimate that, by and large, dividends will hold up well, though there will be a few instances of tax selling and casualties. Given the current slowdown in business it is doubtful there will be any short-term reverse in the present leveling-off trend, although with current high interest rates, only time will tell whether a slump across the board is in the offing. At the moment there is no sign of such a further deceleration.

NCI has advanced four points since recommended here in March, and we think that while near-term uncertainties exist, NCI has formed a sound base and will probably continue to rise steadily, although no one can guarantee against the unexpected.

Meanwhile it appears Heggins Aircraft may be ready to move. It may well be one of the sleepers of the year, when the public begins to recognize its potential under its new management’s dynamic programs of boldly planned expansion, continuing research and development, and forward-looking diversification.

Hastings read the rest of them, frowning and shaking his head and smiling wryly at intervals. Quint caught his eye, and Hastings said, “It’s inconceivable to me that so many subscribers can fall for this kind of idiocy. No real insider in his right mind is going to let a genuine hot tip out if he’s got any way to stop it. These writers are no more privy to inside information than the man in the street. The same people that believe this junk would never think of going into a high-stakes crap game on a stranger’s advice and on borrowed money.”

He saw the touch of a smile at the corner of Howard Claiborne’s stern mouth; he went on through the stack of bulletins, and it was only when he reached the end that he got the point. It was last Tuesday’s issue of the same market letter:

The economy remains in a moderate state of readjustment, and there is as yet no sign of acceleration in industrial capital investment.

Clearly, there must come times when circumstances force a recommendation to be rescinded. Since NCI was mentioned here last, changing factors have come to light which cast a cautionary glow over the company. Its relative position of strength would appear, perhaps, to have been affected somewhat adversely by the possibility that several of NCI’s important suppliers of patented chemical and mechanical components may soon seek other royalty outlets so as to add further increment to their patent-connected incomes. Royalties may be raised, and a careful analysis of the situation is therefore indicated at this time for those who see NCI as a possible investment.

Bill Burgess entered the office, nondescript and baggy in a seersucker suit. There was a round of handshaking, in which once again Miss Goralski did not engage. Burgess’ smile was friendly; he winked at Hastings and took a seat.

Quint said to him, “Will you do me a kind of unofficial favor, Bill?”

“I’ve learned not to give an answer to a blank-check question like that,” Burgess said apologetically. “But I’ll do as much as I can. What is it?”

“Just listen to what Mr. Claiborne has to say, and be willing to forget you heard any of it if we decide not to take action. Can you do that?”

“It’ll have to depend on what Mr. Claiborne has to say. If there’s evidence of a federal crime I can’t ignore it.”

Howard Claiborne said, “Let’s not pussyfoot around, Mr. Quint. If a crime has been committed, then by all means let’s put the culprit under arrest. If I can disregard the fact he’s distantly related to me, there’s no reason you can’t.”

“The point is,” Quint answered, “it might be better to put him under surveillance than to reveal our hand by arresting him prematurely. But I suppose we can decide that afterward, can’t we? If you’ll proceed now?”

Howard Claiborne nodded, adjusted his seat, and began to speak.

It was noon before Howard Claiborne and his secretary left Quint’s office. The door shut behind them, and Bill Burgess sat back with his legs crossed at right angles and his hands laced together behind his head. “Okay,” he said. “We’ve established those sheets were planted deliberately in Claiborne’s files for the obvious purpose of influencing Claiborne’s decisions. We’ve got Claiborne and his secretary willing to testify to Steve Wyatt’s machinations in his portfolio and the blackmail pressure he put on one of Melbard’s people to part with control of the company. The fingerprints might hold up-at any rate, we’ve got a pretty good case against Wyatt on half a dozen counts. Maybe it’s the break we need; anyhow, it looks like paydirt, and I do mean dirt.”

“If we can tie Wyatt to Villiers,” Hastings said. “All we’ve got is the girl’s testimony she saw them together once.”

Quint popped a ball of hard candy into his mouth. “I want to nail Villiers. I don’t care about Wyatt at this point. I don’t think it’s the proper time to blow the whistle on him. I should like to put surveillance on him and see where that leads us.”

Burgess nodded. He was scribbling in a pocket notebook, his head tilted and eyes half-shut against the smoke from a cigarette in his mouth corner. He put the notebook away and sat back, once again at ease, the picture of careless indolence, the archetypal civil servant. Yet throughout the entire session he had watched with a stare of concentration that indicated his good quick mind was racing, hard at work behind the guarded face.

Russ Hastings looked at him, and looked at Quint, and said, “I’m still a novice at all this, but my instinct is to screw caution. What good does it do to wait for an airtight case if by that time the crook’s dead of old age or fled to Brazil and shipped the money into an anonymous numbered account in Switzerland where we can never get our hands on it? I think we want to stop Villiers before he guts NCI, not after.”

Bill Burgess grinned at Quint. “If you boys had a few dozen more like Russ, instead of that pack of bureaucratic nutless wonders…”

Quint said gently, “Let’s dispense with the interservice rivalry, shall we? Go on, Russ, I’m listening.”

Hastings spread his hands. “Maybe my approach is crude. It’s the way we used to work in political investigations. I’d have a federal court issue a bench warrant for Wyatt’s arrest. I’d charge him with illegal manipulation of the Wakeman Fund-I wouldn’t say a word about NCI or Mason Villiers. No point in spelling it out in block caps that we’re after Villiers. If we’re lucky, Villiers will just think it’s a rough break, but he’ll feel safe enough not to pull in his horns. Once we arrest Wyatt, we can try to break him down-offer him immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony against Villiers.”

Quint said, “You’re assuming Wyatt knows enough about Villiers’ operations to do us some good.”

Bill Burgess said, “I’d be willing to take the chance. Arrest the pipsqueak and scare the pants off him. Keep pushing him before he gets a chance to cool off-maybe he’ll spill something, and once he’s started, he may as well spill the whole thing. In the meantime, I can ask the Canadian securities cops to clamp the lid on those boiler rooms in Montreal. A surprise raid just might turn up documentary evidence to help us knock Villiers over.”

“It’s a long risk, isn’t it?” Quint said. “If Villiers has covered his tracks well enough, he may get off scot free. He rarely allows his own name to appear on paper anywhere in his dealings-it’s always done through fronts.”

Burgess said, “Hold on a minute before you make that decision, Gordon. I was on my way up to Russ’s office when your call caught me-I’ve got some news on the case, and it’ll save time to spin it out now for both of you. It has a bearing.” He looked at his watch. “There’s quite a bit to cover-have you got time?”

“Go ahead.”

“All right. We’ve had a team working around the clock on Villiers’ background, and we’ve had some luck. Partly because there aren’t many lone wolves left in Wall Street-the big action comes from institutions now, they’re all big staffs of college men, dry organization types straight out of those conformity molds they call executive training programs. An individualist sticks out like a sore thumb and people remember him.”

“Villiers has always been a standout, ever since he was a kid. He thinks he’s buried his past, but nobody that flamboyant can really expect to be forgotten. We pulled big crews of trained men off other jobs to run him all the way back to the place where he was born, and when you put a lot of people on a thorough job you’re bound to hit a lucky break somewhere along the line-you make your own luck. Anyway, we’ve got a mobster in jail in Chicago, goes by the name of Manny Berkowitz, and we’ve been pumping him for months. He’s an accountant for the mob, and I think he wants to be this year’s Joe Valachi. One of our men out there knew Berkowitz used to be tied in with Salvatore Senna-the button you put me onto in Montreal, Russ-and we put two and two together and asked Berkowitz if he ever knew Mason Villiers. It was the right question. Berkowitz has known Villiers since they were twelve years old together, and he’s got no reason not to talk.”

“So here’s what we’ve got. Villiers has manufactured a phony background for himself that would have been impossible to check out if it hadn’t been for Berkowitz. The facts: Villiers was born in Chicago, out of wedlock. He was taken in by a Catholic orphanage and put up for adoption, but he was a hard-boiled brat even then and nobody wanted to adopt him. When he was two years old he was christened Mark Valentine by the sisters. He spent ten or eleven years in the orphanage. Evidently he was naturally brilliant as a student, but he didn’t have a single friend, and he hated the nuns and he hated the orphanage. He ran away when he was eleven or so, and Berkowitz first met him peddling the streets down on the South Side. According to Berkowitz, he was always ambitious and greedy, and even from the first he operated in epic style. From the time he was old enough to count, Villiers wanted to be rich. Not just comfortably well off, but the richest man in the country. You’ve got to consider this guy came up from the bottom-a bottom so far down none of us have ever even seen it. According to Berkowitz, when the two of them were thirteen they had to kill and eat pigeons. They got jobs pearl diving in a hotel kitchen in Cicero. It wasn’t too long before they’d started making contacts with minor-league mobsters. Villiers ran with the pack for a while, but he was never really part of it-he could never work with an organization above him, and the organization could never trust him.”

“He really started out when he was about nineteen. He seems to have educated himself in libraries, mainly-he never spent any time in school after he left the orphanage. But at nineteen he had a hell of a vocabulary and the brains to go with it. He saw a chance to buy the capital stock of a bankrupt company for two thousand dollars of borrowed money at a sheriff’s auction in Wisconsin. He had to borrow it from loan sharks in the mob, but it gave him a foothold-an established corporate name-and he’s never stopped climbing since then. He got together with Berkowitz, and the two of them put the company into trivial production, just enough to make it look alive. Then they brought in a couple of other partners and started trading the stock back and forth among themselves. Pretty soon the over-the-counter market took note of it. The public watched for a while and decided it was an active stock, so they started to fool with it too, and so the price went up. Naturally, that was when Villiers and his partners pulled out. They took healthy profits after they’d churned the stock, and they left the public holding the bag.”

Quint murmured, “It’s a little game that’s probably been played only a hundred thousand times. But they never learn out there, do they?”

Burgess smiled and nodded; he went on: “Villiers paid off the loan sharks and went into corporate finance for himself. He established an insurance company, chartered in Maryland, where the laws are pretty loose, and he issued reams of paper and used it to buy stock in other companies. Pretty soon he was just trading his own stock back and forth the same old way, but the public saw all the activity going on, and they kept moving in. Villiers took handsome profits and moved on into the plastics business by using Lee Central Plastics Company’s own assets to buy control of the company. It seems to have been a watertight job he did with that one. He issued insurance-company securities and sold them to Lee Central Plastics in exchange for Lee Central stock. Got control, and shifted the watered insurance stock back into a dummy pocket quick enough to get it off Lee’s books before the next annual report came due. Everybody knows he had to have some weapon to hold over Lee’s directors to put the deal through but nobody ever proved anything.”

“While he was in the middle of the Lee Central thing he was working another interesting stunt at the same time-starting a rumor along the Street that the Federal Reserve and the ICC were going to raise margin requirements. He did a hell of a job of planting information, sort of like this plant he’s pulled through Wyatt on Claiborne’s outfit. He got the rumor working so well it drove stock prices down across the board for two days, and he was right in there selling short all the way, buying in at the bottom and riding it back to the top after the rumors fell apart. That kind of thing goes on all the time, I guess-painting the tape. Nobody ever proved Villiers started those rumors, of course, but the word got around somehow, and after that and the Lee Central thing, he’s had a hard time doing business down here. That’s why he shifted most of his base of operations to Canada.”

“He’s a con man, of course, a common swindler, but on a grand scale. That gives you the background-I think it may help, sometimes it’s easier to anticipate what a man will do when you know how he tends to operate in a given situation. All right, now we’re up to the present. That brings us to this item.” He took a folded newspaper proof sheet from his pocket and spread it open on Quint’s desk. “Better come over here and read it, Russ.”

This announcement is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange the securities referred to below. The Exchange Offer is made only by the Prospectus, copies of which may be obtained in any jurisdiction only from authorized dealers, including the undersigned.

NOTICE OF EXCHANGE OFFER TO HOLDERS OF NORTHEAST CONSOLIDATED INDUSTRIES, INC. COMMON STOCK BY HEGGINS AIRCRAFT CORP., INC.

Heggins Aircraft Corp., Inc., is offering by the Prospectus to exchange unlimited shares of Common Stock of Northeast Consolidated Industries, Inc., for Convertible 5?% Debentures of Heggins Aircraft Corp., Inc., in the ratio described below. The Exchange Offer will expire at 5:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time on September 30, 1970, unless extended by Heggins Aircraft or withdrawn as aforesaid.

There was a good deal more, and Hastings, peering over Quint’s thick shoulder, read all of it, right down to the italicized signature of Hackman and Greene, Registered Brokers.

Bill Burgess said, “We got that proof from the Times. The same ad’s set to run Monday in The Wall Street Journal and every big metropolitan daily in the country.”

“The fat,” Quint said obliviously, “is in the fire. Not only that, but the damnable thing about it is, he can do it. Legally. Unless we find a means to stop him.”

Bill Burgess said, “What I still don’t understand is how he managed to beef up Heggins so fast. Two weeks ago it was a dying company floundering on the verge of collapse. Now the price has shot up six points, and you hear nothing but glowing reports-and don’t tell me all of them were planted by Villiers’ people.”