“No, I got to be getting on back home.”
“Say, I hear you locked Sue Garlan up this afternoon.”
“She didn’t take to the idea.”
“Didn’t take her long to get into trouble again, did it?”
“Not long.”
“Isn’t she some kind of kin to you, Wade?”
“Not blood kin. It was her half brother, Tod Annison, was married to my Ann. Run off with her.”
“Sure. I remember now. I remember she came back with the kids, and later on something happened to him.”
“They’re good kids,” Wade said. “They’re bright and they’re good and they deserve the best anybody can give them.”
“What was it happened to that Annison?”
Wade stood up. “About what you’d expect. A year after he deserted my daughter, he was shot dead while trying to rob a bank up in Waycross, Georgia. But she had her divorce by then.”
Elmo walked him to the door. He shook his head musingly. “Funny the way things work out, isn’t it? Today you have to jail the half sister of the father of your grandkids.” He clapped Wade on the shoulder. “Anything you need, fella, you call on Elmo, hear?”
“Thanks,” the Sheriff said. “I think I’ll get along pretty good. I got a feeling I’ll get along all right from here on.”
James M. Ullman
The Happy Days Club
In the December 1962 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine we presented a new kind of crimebuster — a stock-market detective, a specialist in industrial skulduggery. Here is the second in this unusual series — the second adventure of Michael Dane James and his “Archie Goodwin,” Ted Bennett, who are not only stock-market sleuths but also industrial espionage agents. In their second case they investigate a “leak” in one of the big mutual funds... You say that you too are a shareholder in a mutual fund or a member of an investment club? Then you will be especially interested...
“Ted, I’ve got one right up your alley,” Michael Dane James announced over the telephone.
Ted Bennett, sprawled in a chair beside a customer’s man in a broker’s boardroom, replied without taking his eyes from the tape moving overhead. “Mickey, if it’s another scheme to drift me into a Detroit tool and die plant in the guise of a laborer, climb a tree. I don’t care what the 1965 Whozit is going to look like.”
“It’s a defensive assignment,” James said, “and won’t compromise your principles one bit. One of the nation’s biggest mutual funds, with assets of half a billion dollars, thinks its secrets are being stolen by a little investment club in Iowa.”
“You’re kidding,” Bennett chuckled.
“I’m leveling,” James went on. “So meet me in front of Sam’s at five o’clock. Our Wall Street friends want to talk to us there before they commute home to suburbia. They don’t think it would look good for us industrial spies to be seen in their offices.”
A sign in the window proclaimed SAM’S — HOME OF THE 25-CENT MARTINI. The price prevailed only during the cocktail hour, but as a result the place was jammed, mostly with executives from the financial district. James, a stocky man with horn-rimmed glasses riding his pug nose, and Bennett, tall, lean, and hatless, pushed through the crowd to a rear booth tagged RESERVED FOR MR. ALLEN.
Victor Allen, president of the Gibraltar Fund’s management group, rose to shake hands. He was big and burly and in 1934 had played tackle for the Green Bay Packers. He introduced James and Bennett to the other occupant of the booth — Stuart Clark, chairman of the fund’s stock selection committee.
“Mickey and I,” Allen told Clark as they sat down, “banged heads one year in the old N.F.L. We both got out alive somehow. Mickey’s an industrial espionage consultant now, and Bennett works for him. Sam, a couple more here.”
“Is this,” Bennett inquired, settling in a corner, “where you boys decide which stocks the Gibraltar Fund will buy? Booze up and then shove a pin through the Big Board listings in the Times?”
“Hardly,” Clark smiled. “Let’s just say that here we review in more relaxed surroundings decisions made elsewhere.”
“Show him the clip, Stu,” Allen said.
Clark drew an envelope from his pocket and removed a newspaper clipping. He pushed it across the table. A waiter brought two drinks and set them down.
“This clipping,” Clark explained, “was forwarded to us by the branch manager of a brokerage house in Des Moines, Iowa. It’s a story from a small daily newspaper, the Canfield, Iowa, Gazette. The story is the usual feature that papers print now and then about a local investment club.”
“ ‘The Happy Days Club,’ ” James read aloud, “ ‘is composed of fifteen residents of the Westlake subdivision. Its members are drawn from all walks of life.’ ”
“They seem,” Bennett observed, peering over James’s shoulder, “to have done rather well.”
“There’s something remarkable about The Happy Days Club,” Clark went on. “That’s why my friend in Des Moines sent me the clipping. He sells a lot of shares in our fund, you see, and knows our portfolio. And he noticed in the past eight months that The Happy Days Club has been buying or selling only those stocks which we bought and sold.”
“It could be coincidence.”
“It could be,” Allen broke in, “but even more remarkable is the fact that their buying and selling took place before we announced we had bought or sold the stocks, and in some cases, after we had reached a decision but before we had even completed a transaction. That story gives the dates of their sales and purchases and we checked them against our records. The club didn’t buy every stock we bought, of course — they don’t have that much money. But there’s not a single stock in their list that we didn’t buy. And not a single stock we sold that, if they owned it, they didn’t sell.”
“Secrecy,” Clark added, “is essential at a certain stage in our business, Mr. James. We’re required to report quarterly on our purchases and sales. But we’re allowed enough leeway so that we don’t have to report on the transactions we’re making at that time. Our minimum investment in any stock is about two million dollars. Naturally, we don’t go into the market and buy two million dollars’ worth of stock in one day — the purchase, or sale, is spread out over a period of weeks or months. The brokers we buy through are carefully screened for their ability to keep their mouths shut about what we’re doing. Because if word got out that we were putting two million dollars or more into a company a lot of speculators would buy the stock, too, hoping for a killing.”
“Secrecy isn’t as much of a consideration,” Allen explained, “when we buy widely held blue chips like AT&T or Jersey Standard. But it’s a prime consideration when we buy into a lesser-known company which we think may become a blue chip in the future. And it’s that class of stock, incidentally, which The Happy Days Club has been buying into with us.”
“So you believe,” Bennett said, “that The Happy Days Club has a pipeline into the innermost circles of the Gibraltar Fund.”
“Exactly,” Clark said. “We’re not so concerned that these fifteen Iowans are stealing our judgment, so to speak, as we are with the fact there is a leak in our organization. If word of our decisions reaches many people before we announce them, the price of every smaller company we start buying into will be bid up to the moon. What’s more, we’re one of the big funds in the country. If the story ever got out that a little investment club was able to steal information from us, we’d be held up to ridicule. Someone might even investigate us. You know how things are these days.”