After Leslie Waller. Palmer walked into the lobby of the narrow old office building in which the Club was located

(to be continued)

Palmer walked into the lobby of the narrow old office building in which the Club was located.

Palmer glanced around.

“Yes, sir?”

Palmer turned to find an elderly gentleman. Palmer said: “Mr Palmer to see Mr Loomis.”

“Yes, Mr Palmer. He’s expecting you. This way, please.”

Palmer followed him along a rather narrow corridor.

The first impression most people got of Joseph Loomis was usually an accurate one, unchanged by closer inspection. He had probably looked this way for the past thirty years and his photograph was familiar to anyone who followed the financial news.

“Glad you could come,” Loomis said as the waiter arrived with small leather folders.

“How’s Burckhardt treating you?” Loomis asked then.

“Leaving me pretty much alone.”

“Ha.” The monosyllable was not a laugh, but a word. “Lane leaves nobody alone. I imagine he warned you I’d turned renegade, eh?”

“He didn’t use exactly that word.”

“Too weak, eh? Turncoat? Traitor?”

“He told me about what 1 suppose a lot of people already know. Your loy­alty to Murray Hill Savings.”

“Can’t figure it out, I imagine,” Loomis said, smiling slightly. “Lane has a sharp mind for corporate structures and such. But he’s poor on people. Can’t read them the way he ought to. Or won’t take the trouble, more likely.”

“I really haven’t noticed that.”

“Seems pretty astute to you, eh?” Loomis asked.

“Yes.”

“Why? Because he hired you?” Loomis smiled thinly again. “Sound judgement, eh?” The older man nodded several times. “All right. But he also hired Mac Burns. Eh?”

“And?” Palmer parried.

“Ha.” Loomis closed his menu with a sharp slap and pushed it away from him. “You’re about as close with words as your father before you.”

Palmer grinned, paused and cleared his throat.

“About this Murray Hill Savings business.”

“Yes, all right.”

“The whole savings-bank thing, really,” Palmer amplified. “Does it have to be as serious as it seems to be?” “Seems to who?” Loomis asked dryly. “Lane Burckhardt and who else?”

“You’ll have to forgive me there,” Palmer said. “I’m a country boy, still. I I’m not as up on things as I’d like to.”

“Palmer,” the older man cut in. “Every time a man tells me he’s a coun­try boy who isn’t up to our big city ways, I always finish without my wallet. I Now, then. I will do you the favor of being entirely candid. I know the job you’ve been assigned. Will you be equally candid and stop pretending this ] fight with the savings banks is a holy crusade?”

Palmer smiled. “It’s refreshing to hear you say that,”

“Eh?” Loomis stared at him, then nodded by way of acknowledging the evasion. His large eyes scanned the room behind Palmer. “All of us here,” he j said then, “understand that it’s a grab for cash. The savings banks now get more of the cash and the commercial banks want a bigger share than they’ve j been getting. In a situation like that, nobody profits.”

“Except the public.”

“Exactly.” Loomis nodded again several times. “There are certain battles ] the public watches with ill-concealed glee. Any kind of retail price war, for, example. The public couldn’t care less who wins. They simply step in and buy j at the lowest prices they can find. What we have here is much the same thing. Bankers at each other’s throats? The public loves it. And, meanwhile, they j shop around for an extra quarter of a per cent per annum as though it would make them all rich as Croesus. Who gains? They, not we. Are we agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“A man with your particular background,” Loomis went on quickly, I “doesn’t have to be told that bankers, of all people, can’t afford to wash their dirty linen in public. Am I right?”

“You are.”

“It may be somebody’s meat,” Loomis added, “but it’s our poision. Is I hat correct?”

“Correct.”

Palmer nodded politely, waited a second and then asked, with as little ingenuousness as he could muster: “Do I understand, then, that you’d be willing to withdraw your branch bill?”

Loomis sank back in his chair and, for a moment, Palmer thought he had scored a point. It was an interesting game, now that he knew the name of it.

“You understand nothing of the sort,” Loomis said at last. He glanced up at Palmer. “They warned me you were bright,” he added in a quiet voice and looked down again.

“It’s just,” Palmer went on, “that it will be difficult to settle things out of the court as long as the savings banks pursue their branch bill.”

“And if we withdrew it?” Loomis’ glance lifted from his plate to fasten on Palmer.

“Then there’d be nothing to battle about.’“

“Is this your view, or Lane’s?”

Palmer shrugged: “Anybody’s, I should think. No branch bill, no branch battle.”

Loomis nodded. “You have an odd idea of a compromise, eh? Nothing less than unconditional surrender. I really wish Lane hadn’t found you, young man. You’re as intransigent as he.”

“Not really.”

“Perhaps more so, since you are, as you say, new to the situation. One cxpects a wait-and-see attitude from a new man.”

“Actually, wait-and-see is my attitude,” Palmer said.

“Let me tell you something about Lane Burckhardt,” Loomis began. “He fancies himself a leader. He is, too. He has all the physical qualities of a great line officer: bearing, gusto, presence, style, dash, all the outward qual­ities. He seems born to deliver the line: “Follow me, men!” As head of Ubco, he adds something else to his natural attributes: great financial power. You would think, therefore, that he should be, and therefore is, the leader of the commercial banks, eh? But he’s not. No one is. Each bank follows its own destinies. After all, they compete with each other, as well as with the savings banks. What’s good for Ubco isn’t always good for its sister commercial banks. And when something’s bad for Ubco, not all of Lane’s immense per­sonal qualities of leadership will convince his rival banks that they, too, are suffering. They may be, I should think they are, as a matter of obvious fact. But they would suffer still more if they had to submit to Lane’s leadership, because they would be abdicating a piece of their own autonomy by so doing. You’ll find that the chief spokesman for the commercial banks in this state will always be some gentleman from a smaller bank, preferably upstate, who has been carefully chosen to head their trade association because, in real life, he is a pygmy among giants. The giants endorse him because they obviously surrender nothing by so doing. When Lane jumps into the situation, they flinch. They retreat. And that leaves Lane so far ahead of the parade that he can’t hear the music.”

Palmer smiled, not so much at the thought, but at the fact that Loomis had been effortlessly able to express it without cliches, unless you counted the parade-music thing.

“I think that figure with the baton out there in front all by himself,” he said, “isn’t Burckhardt. It’s me.”

For the first time since they had met, Loomis’ mouth split into a real, full grin. “Now we’re talking,” he said. “I wondered if you’d understood just what Lane was doing to you.”

“But you’re not going to like this next thing,” Palmer said. “You see, the business of being a whatayacallit? Cat’s paw? Stalking horse? It may all be true.”

“I assure you it is,” the older man said.

“But it doesn’t bother me in the least.”

Palmer watched him sit perfectly still for a moment. Then Loomis nod­ded twice. “I see,” he said, finally. “I was afraid of that.”

Date: 2015-07-17; view: 439; Нарушение авторских прав