"Say, old man, what happened to your hand?" Graham Wasson, plump, dark
and fortyish, but very clean-cut and with a Dewey dab on his upper
lip, was my questioner. He sat across the glass-topped desk in my Wall
Street Office, while Arthurjean Briggs typed demurely in the adjoining
office.
"Changing razor-blades," I confessed. "The damn thing slipped and
before I knew it I made a grab for it. Lucky it didn't go deep. Hence
the surgical gauze and the lousy signature. Do you think you can get my
check cleared through the bank or should I write Winnie 'X' Tompkins,
his mark?"
Wasson chuckled like a well-fed broker. "We'll get enough witnesses to
your John Hancock to make it legal," he promised. "Now what you've got
to do is to ease old lady Fynch into the trustee's delight and take a
gander at her former investments. I've brought the list with me. As you
know, she insisted that you okay the deal."
I glanced at the typed list. "This stuff looks pretty good to me,
Graham," I said. "Detroit Edison's safe as the Washington Monument,
A.T.&T. is solid, and G.E. ought to do all right with this new
electronic stuff."
"And how!" My partner agreed. "Boy! what a windfall! Stuff like that is
scarcer than hen's teeth on the open market. With close to a million
bucks to turn over, we ought to do pretty well on this. Here's what
we're buying for her."
Wasson passed me a slip of paper. "The trustee's delight," he said.
"G-Bonds. You buy 'em, we should worry. No money back for ten years.
Morgenthau's dream-child."
The slip was attached to a printed Treasury form. "See here," I
pointed out. "These damn bonds depreciate 2.2% a year for the first
five years and then start climbing up the ladder again, and they're
non-transferable."
"That's it, Winnie. The trustee's delight," Wasson agreed. "They pay
2-1/2% a year if you hold them but if you try to sell them within
five years the discount means you only get about .03% on your money.
Once a trustee has put you aboard this roller-coaster, he can't
conscientiously advise you to get out."
"Who dreamed up that swindle?"
"Oh, a couple of dollar-a-year bankers we sent down to help the
Treasury win the war. It's a natural. It's patriotic to invest in
war-bonds. The yield's conservative as hell and you get it all back if
you wait long enough."
"But what if the old girl dies within the next five years? Won't the
estate be liquidated? How will the heirs feel when they have to take a
loss of $60,000?"
"That's their worry, Winnie," Wasson pointed out. "All we have to do is
sign the papers and la Fynch gets about $25,000 a year for the rest of
her life."
"Instead of the $40,000 a year she's getting out of her present
investments now."
"Sure, Winnie. We're not in business for our health. Industrials are
risky and Miss Fynch is awful set on beating Hitler. We take over her
present portfolio and take our chances on the market. If values shift
we're in a position to unload--but fast. She isn't. She only gets to
town twice a year, once between Bar Harbor and Long Island, and then
next time from Palm Beach to Long Island. Come on, Winnie, stick your
fist on these papers and I'll handle the transfers."
I shook my head. "I'd like to think this over," I said. "If I was an
old woman and expected only five or ten more years of life, I'd be
hanged if I'd tie myself down to these financial mustard-plasters. It
sounds okay to be patriotic, but I think I'd stick to the greater risks
and higher yields and get a run for my money. Tell you what, Graham,
you phone and tell her I'd like to have a talk with her before she
makes up her mind."
Wasson shoved back his chair and faced me, bristling. "I'll be damned
if I will. This is a natural and, handled right, is worth $100,000 to
the firm. You talked her into it and now if you're getting cold feet
you can talk her out of it. All I know is that you've gone nuts."
"We aren't so hard up that we have to swindle old ladies."
"Swindle my eye! What's wrong about $25,000 a year guaranteed by your
Uncle Sam?"
"Less income tax," I reminded him.
"Oh, sure--that--"
"Well, it's about $15,000 a year less than she's getting now. If she
sold out and invested in an annuity she could get about $70,000 a year,
tax-free. No, I don't want to rush her into this."
"Then you've forgotten how we made our pile in the first place," my
partner growled. "Phil Cone and I will have to talk this over. This is
a fine time to go soft on us."
I grinned at him. "Go on, talk it over. If you want out, you're
welcome. I'd rather like you to stick around, as I'm on to something
really big and I don't want the Street to say we fleeced our clients."
"I resent that, Winnie," Wasson snapped.
"What else would you call it? Reinvesting?"
"Listen," he exploded. "You built up this business. You invented the
methods. I'm damned if I let you call me a swindler for following your
lead!" And he stormed out, slamming the door. A moment later, he stuck
his head in again. "Forget it, Winnie. If you're working on a big
operation, count me in!"
I studied the list of the Fynch investments again and the more I saw
it the more I wondered how anybody but a fool would fall for the
proposition of putting money in the government bonds for ten years,
when you could clean up outside government.
There was a tap on the edge of my desk. I looked up to see Arthurjean.
"Mr. Harcourt is back to see you," she said. "I'll get set with the
stenotype. And don't worry about that Fynch dame. I'll give you a
fill-in later. She knows what she's doing."
"Fine!" I told her. "Now you show Mr. Harcourt in and make with the
stenotype. Did you finish copying what we said yesterday?"
Her mouth dropped open and her sweater quivered eloquently. "Omigawd!
baby! I clean forgot."
Mr. Harcourt seemed much more vital and self-possessed than on the
previous afternoon--perhaps because he had obviously had a sleep, a
shower and a hearty breakfast, presumably prefaced by ten minutes of
vigorous push-ups and toe-touching in bathroom calisthenics. At any
rate he looked fit.
"Morning, Harcourt," I said casually. "Sorry to tell you that Miss
Briggs was home with a bad headache last night and wasn't able to make
that copy of our talk yesterday."
G-Men on duty are not supposed to smile without written permission from
their immediate superior but Harcourt must have had an extra helping of
Wheaties for breakfast. "Call yourself a headache, Mr. Tompkins?" he
asked. "That's who our man reported Miss Briggs had last night at 157
East 51st Street, third floor front. Can I get her some aspirin?"
"There are no secrets from the Gestapo," I observed, "and I have no
comment to offer except to say next time come on up and have a drink
with us instead of doing the G-Man in a cold and drafty doorway across
the street."
The Special Agent gave an entirely unofficial wink at Arthurjean.
"Oh, hell," he remarked. "What's the use of all this coy stuff? The
Bureau isn't interested in your private life. What I wanted to say, Mr.
Tompkins, is that I reported our talk to my chief and he teletyped my
report down to Washington. We're not going to fool around with Church
Street on this one. The Director's going to take it up direct with
Admiral Ballister at the Navy Department. For my part, I told him I
thought it was all a pipe-dream but like I said the F.B.I. doesn't
believe in dreams that come true."
Arthurjean crossed the room and stood behind him, pressing a little
unregenerately against the back of his chair, until Harcourt remarked
conversationally to U. S. Grant in the engraving, "I'm a married man,
baby, with a wife and kids in Brooklyn."
My secretary smiled and gave him a smart tap on the top of his head.
"You're a good boy, junior," she told him, "and I'm all for you. But
don't you go making trouble for this dumb boss of mine or I'll call on
your wife, personal, and Tell All."
Harcourt murmured to the engraving that unconditional surrender was
_his_ name, too, but that Tompkins was making so much trouble for
himself that he was damned if he could see how the F.B.I. could make it
any worse. In any case, he added more directly, he would keep in touch
with me and let me know whether I was wanted up at the Federal Court
House.
"See here, Harcourt," I replied. "One good turn doesn't make a spring.
This is the screwiest case you've ever been on. If you can drop in and
visit Miss Briggs and myself on Saturday after lunch at our place, I'll
give you a fill-in that will rock the F.B.I. from its gats to its
toupees."
"That's mighty white of you--and Miss Briggs," the Special Agent
allowed. "If the chief lets me, I'll meet you up there, say about 2:30."
"Swell!" I said. "And which do you prefer--Scotch or rye?"
"I don't drink on duty," he told me, "but I find Bourbon helps fight
off colds this early spring weather."
After his departure, I locked myself in the office and with
Arthurjean's help, brought myself up to date on Winnie's business
operations. Tompkins, Wasson & Cone were not, as I had believed, a
high-toned bucket-shop. The proposed Fynch swindle was only the result
of a dopey old maid who practically insisted on helping beat the Axis
by turning her money into Government bonds. There was plenty of honest
graft and many a solid perquisite in straight commission work and
supervision of estates. The firm was not, of course, very scrupulous
but it always gave value for its transactions. It was, in fact, a
pretty slick set-up.
There was a buzz on my inter-office telephone and the receptionist
announced: "Mr. Axel Roscommon to see you, Mr. Tompkins."
"Oh, ask him to see one of the other partners, will you?"
"I told him that you were too busy, but he said he must see you and
would wait."
"He too?" I asked. "Okay. Send him in. Do you know an Axel Roscommon,
Arthurjean?"
"Uh-uh!" She shook her head. "The name's sorta familiar. Something in
oil before Pearl Harbor. I can find out if you'll wait a bit."
"Never mind," I told her. "I'll see him. You stay in the next room and
keep the door ajar so you can take a record."
She laughed. "I can do better than that, boss. I'll switch down the
inter-office phones and keep the door shut. That way. I'll hear every
word you say. It's like a dictaphone."
Mr. Roscommon was an extremely well set up man in the middle fifties,
about six-feet two, lean, with iron grey hair, a grey moustache,
steel-blue eyes and a bear-trap grip. He looked prosperous but not
worried by it. He spoke with a faint Irish lilt in his voice but his
manner was most direct and unHibernian.
"Mr. Tompkins," he remarked. "You must excuse the lack of formality
but you will understand when I tell you that I am chief of the German
intelligence organization in the United States. Now don't think I'm
crazy or indiscreet. The only reason I have come to you is because my
agents in the F.B.I. tell me that you are involved in the sinking of
U.S.S. Alaska off the Aleutians. Thorium bombs, wasn't it? Chalmis was
a pretty smart chap and I warned our people that he was getting hot.
Now I don't ask you why in Wotan's name the Fuehrer thinks it makes
sense to have two intelligence services in this country. Probably
Berlin didn't like my last reports. No, don't get excited. I've engaged
in no subversive activities, I'm an Irish Free State citizen and if you
go to Washington you'll find that they know all about me. Hitler may
want the old Goetterdaemmerung spirit in our outfit but I can't see the
point of too much zeal."
I offered him a cigarette. "What do you want to see me about, Mr.
Roscommon?" I asked. "For all you know there may be dictaphones planted
all over the place. My last visitor today was actually a special agent
of the F.B.I."
Roscommon lighted his cigarette with a flick of a gold Dunhill lighter.
"That would be Harcourt--A. J. Harcourt--wouldn't it? A fine chap and
a conscientious agent. I'd heard he'd been assigned to your case.
You'll find him completely reliable. As you know, in time of war there
has to be _some_ practical way of maintaining direct confidential
communication between the enemies. Switzerland? Bah! All milk
chocolate, profiteering and eyewash. I wouldn't trust a Swiss as far as
I could throw the Sub-Treasury Building. I'm acting here for Berlin and
you have at least three men in Berlin to keep in touch with the German
Government over there. That's the only practical way modern wars can be
fought, eh? As Edith Cavell said last time, 'Patriotism is not enough.'
The fact is that even in war, two great countries like Germany and
America must and do maintain direct contact."
I pushed the button for Arthurjean. "Miss Briggs," I asked, "have we
any brandy in the office?"
Dead-pan and nonchalant, she crossed the room to a small safe,
disguised as a Victorian low-boy, twiddled the dials and revealed a
neat little Frigidaire. She prepared two brandies and soda, handed
them to us and returned to her office.
"Prosit!" said I.
"Heil Roosevelt!" Roscommon answered.
"But what did you want to see me about?" I inquired. "_You_ may be all
right but _I'm_ already under investigation by the F.B.I."
"Nonsense, old boy, nonsense," he reassured me. "If they, get
troublesome, let me know--I'm in the phone book and my girl will always
know where to reach me, day or night--and I'll tell Washington to stop
proceedings. No, Tompkins, what I wanted to tell you was that--when
you report back to your superior and I'll lay ten-to-one he's that
ass Ribbentrop--just tell him that the war's lost. Our game now is
to salvage resources for the next war, which will be against Russia,
unless I miss my guess. We've got to use these last few weeks and
days to rush funds, patents, papers, brains and organization out of
the Reich. Send them to Sweden, to Switzerland, to Italy. Fly them to
Spain, slip them in U-boats to Buenos Aires or Dublin. Tell Ribbentrop
that New York understands our problem and will play the game right
across the board, but there must be no shilly-shallying, no nonsense
about 'last stands.' If Hitler wants a Siegfried finish, let him have
it, but from now on our job is to save Germany as an asset for her
Western Allies and as a people whom the world will need to fight the
Soviets. Tell him that, will you, old man? Thanks most awfully."
Roscommon finished his drink with an expert swirl of the glass, smiled,
shook hands and left the room as abruptly as he had arrived in it. I
picked up the outside phone.
"Get me F.B.I. Headquarters," I said. "I wish to speak to Mr. A. J.
Harcourt. Thanks, I'll wait."