Chapter 29 The Sting #3
“Not Europe?” Vandemeer cuts in.
McAllister looks to Alice. She shakes her head very slightly—enough to be seen, firm enough to preclude any argument.
“Not at this time,” Ward goes on. “As we discussed, this is for American markets only, but if you’d like to walk away at this
point, we certainly understand—”
“Zee markets have opened, ladies and gentlemen!” the ambassador shouts from next to the mantel, where their “market ticker”
has now clacked abruptly to life, threads beginning to unspool. Béa typing it all from the next room, unheard.
“Anyone?” Ward offers, motioning to the door.
“Enough,” Peyton growls. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Very good.” Ward bows, hands pressed together. Lord, much as he disdains it, the man was made for the lackey role, Alice thinks. “The corporation will now be issuing an initial set of twelve hundred shares. We will look to the markets to see where to start our bidding.”
They turn to the ambassador, who is squinting through a monocle at the tiny type on the ticker tape. “We have not yet reached
zee emerald value. Gold is steady at $1,894 per troy ounce. Silver has dropped to $108. Emeralds . . . $64.78 per one carat
average.”
“Shall we begin the bidding at one dollar a share, just for simplicity’s sake?” Vandemeer affects an affable smile.
“You and your goddamned suggestions,” Peyton growls.
Vandemeer’s face goes white, just in time for Ward to chuckle and say, “I was thinking more like five. Do I have five?”
Five sets of hands rise in the air at once.
“How exciting this is,” Cora murmurs. Alice turns to smile at her over her shoulder.
“I, for one, feel thoroughly invigorated,” Ogden breathes in Alice’s ear.
The ambassador makes a sputtering noise that draws everyone’s eye. “I say! There has been a jump. Emeralds now at $110.29
per—”
“Let me see that.” Ward bustles over, peering through the monocle at the tape. “Well, buff my buckles, quite a jump!”
Alice rises from her chair, partly to get away from Ogden’s attentions. “It is the abdication. It must be. My king has capitulated
and the news has broken—”
“Prince Wilhelm is going to be king!” Mrs. Ames squeals, clutching a stunned-looking Arabella’s hand.
“And the price of emeralds is leaping in joy,” Ward puts in, eyebrows high. “Everyone open those bags. Let’s get your cash
deposits in at five a share, even split.”
The cash is produced in haste. Harry Peyton, cowering silently in the corner, at a threatening wave of his father’s cane, hastens to draw stacks of cash from the leather bag hanging from the back of the golden wheelchair.
Arabella cranes her head over her dainty shoulder to watch him as he does so, a look of plaintive concern playing over her
face.
The ambassador circulates the room, collecting each bundle with a grave nod of thanks, then places it into the double-sided
safe set into the far wall—adjoining, conveniently enough, the ambassador’s office. Alice had wondered whether the outward
face of the safe was too ostentatious, with its large handle wheel and iron door, but if anyone here thinks it looks theatrical,
it hasn’t deterred them from filling it with bills.
“Now the fun begins,” Ward says. “You’ll all benefit from here on out, but the majority stakeholder will control the market.
Anybody game?”
And again, Alice watches with rich satisfaction as five hands fly into the air.
Mr. Vandemeer slides a very large wad of cash across the parlor room table. “I’ll raise to ten a share, for my part—if it means I can take the company majority. Six hundred and one shares.”
“I think not.” Mr. Peyton’s tone is pure venom. “Harry, place the bag on my lap. My lap!”
Harry jumps to, rounding his father’s wheelchair with the large, leather-bound case.
The senior Peyton grabs at it hastily and waves his son away. He fishes into the case, soon dislodging a wad of bills three
times the heft of Vandemeer’s pile.
Mrs. Witt lets out a shocked hiccup. “Now that’s a lot of money . . .”
The ambassador looks up from his ticker. “Emerald price now at $120—”
“You are all . . . wasting . . . my . . . time!” Peyton tosses the heap onto the table as if kindling for a fire. “One thousand a share. For majority ownership. Just to get the rest of you to shut the hell up.”
Cora manages to keep her face stone.
Good God, momentum is a beautiful, magical thing.
Mr. Ogden stands from his chair, his handsome face uncharacteristically thrown. “I must say, Duchess, Ambassador Roderick . . .
I wasn’t expecting the price to climb so high so soon. I do hope my lack of cash on hand won’t preclude me from further bidding.”
“I’m out as well,” Mrs. Witt admits, slumping back onto the settee.
“Perhaps we can put a cap on the price, you know?” Mrs. Ames pipes up in apparent panic, clasping at her husband’s arm. “Considering
we’re all friends.”
Cora watches as Alice frowns, positing a discreet but nonetheless orchestrated glance at the running commodities ticker.
The ambassador nods gravely. He reaches for the ornate handle of the telephone. “Are you thinking, Your Grace, zat we open
the bidding . . . ?”
Alice sighs. “I merely wish to consider what is best for Württemberg—”
“Hang on one gosh darn minute,” Mr. Vandemeer interrupts hastily, scrambling to his feet. “No, don’t offer to the larger market.
Surely there’s something we can do.”
“Well.” The ambassador frowns. “There is zee word as bond, as our people say.”
“‘The word as bond,’” Mr. Vandermeer echoes. “What the devil does that mean?”
Alice explains, “In Württemberg, there is always the ability to enter into a contract without money in hand. A note of . . .
promise, is how it roughly translates.”
“Why, we have promissory notes here in the US of A, Your Grace,” Ward drawls. “If these fine investors would be willing to
sign pledges to that effect.”
He looks around the group, gauging their responses.
The marks give eager nods.
“Well zen!” The ambassador claps his hands. “Then let us resume ze bidding. Did ze man on wheels zay one thousand a share?”
“Two thousand,” Vandemeer says.
“Three,” Witt trills, petting her empty crocodile clutch. “I’m good for it.”
“Five,” counters Vandemeer. “Thousand.”
“You think you’ve got me with five? Do you? Imbecile.” Peyton Senior growls. “Ten!”
Mr. Ames stands, squeaking, “Put me down for the majority of shares at twelve thousand!”
Mr. Vandemeer scoffs. “I call humbug, Robert; you know damn well you can’t afford that.”
Arabella blushes, recoiling, as her father reels toward Vandemeer. “How dare you claim to know my business!”
“And yet I do know your business,” Vandemeer goes on. “I thumbed through your financials during the Manifest merger, and unless you’ve
received an unexpected inheritance . . . Oh, wait. You don’t come from family money.”
Ames clenches his fists, but he’s easily held back by his much larger wife.
Arabella covers her face with both gloved hands.
Peyton’s attempt at sardonic laughter rolls him straight into a coughing fit.
Cora looks to Harry, expecting him to lend a hand to his father, but he’s walked away, gazing worriedly (longingly?) in the
direction of Arabella.
Which makes Cora even more settled about her little amendment to the plan.
“Fifteen thousand.” Ogden cuts through her thoughts, though he’s looking a bit queasier, Mr. Vandemeer beside him a bit more deflated
too.
“Sixteen,” Mrs. Witt says, her voice a far sight less braying than Cora’s ever heard it.
“Sixteen-five,” Ogden croaks.
“Twenty-five thousand a share!” Mr. Peyton roars.
Harry flinches. The rest of the room falls silent.
“That’s . . .” Ward looks taken aback as he scribbles down the calculations. “At 601 shares—”
“Fifteen million twenty-five thousand dollars, and none of you nitwits can outbid that, can you?” Peyton snarls. He stamps
his cane beside his chair so hard, Cora suspects it’ll leave a dent in the embassy floor. “Living your frivolous lifestyles,
building your monuments to poor taste all over Fifth Avenue, your ugly castles in the clouds. I will own this company, same as I once owned all of you! I made you all . . . and I command you to stand down before you idiots ruin yourselves along with this opportunity.”
His head swivels toward Alice like a reared rattlesnake’s.
“But I don’t want 601 shares. I want 700 shares at twenty-five thousand a share, and the rest of these peons can peck at each other for the scraps.”
Alice stays silent, ostensibly waiting for someone to jump in, correct him, outbid.
No one does. Mr. Peyton has swallowed the room and spit out the bones. More vicious than all the rest of them put together.
Alice and Cal were right.
How he produced a naive, harmless fellow like Harry, Cora will never understand.
“I can match that price.” Mr. Vandemeer clears his throat. “For, let’s say, a quarter of the shares that are left? Even split.”
Mr. Ames, Mr. Ogden, and Mrs. Witt nod reluctantly, agreeing.
“Seven hundred to Peyton, with the rest split equally between Ogden, Ames, Vandemeer, and Witt,” Ward announces.
The ambassador nods toward Dagmar.
From the nearby cabinet, Dagmar retrieves a pile of official-looking documents—the promissory notes, all teed up with fields
for the investors’ names, respective banks, accounts, places for an official seal—and hurries over with them.
The marks lean together over the table, reading, completing, signing.
Cora lets out a silent, exultant breath. Word as bond indeed.
The ambassador claps his hands again, and from the adjacent vestibule emerges a handful of young lads, dressed in modest suits
and sharp hats. Cora needs to look twice before recognizing them.
Of course. Cal’s young newsies.
“My couriers vill bring zeez to zee banks,” the ambassador explains.
From her station near the windows, Cora watches as the newsies scurry out of the embassy’s parlor level, through the vestibule, and down the front steps, the notes safely tucked into their satchels. The lads disappear into the growing morning crowd.