David got to his feet. "Well, there's no use in worrying about it. There's still six months till the meeting. And a lot can happen in six months."
"Yeah," Norman said discouragingly. "It can get worse!"
David closed the door of his office behind him. He sat down at his desk and ran down the list of enemies his uncle had made in the course of his life. It was a long list but there wasn't anyone who had the kind of money this operation required. Besides, most of them were in the picture business and they had done as much to his uncle as he had done to them. It was a kind of game among members of a club. They screamed and hollered a lot but none ever took it seriously enough to carry a grudge like this.
Suddenly, he remembered something – Rina. He glanced at the door, his hand going automatically to the telephone. He pulled his hand back sharply. There was no sense in making a fool of himself.
But he had a hunch. How right he was he wasn't to know until he had Ilene sign Rina into the hospital under a phony name six months later. She was just back from Africa after shooting The Jungle Queen, and suddenly took very sick. He hadn't wanted the press to find out until after the picture was released.
21
"Jonas Cord," Norman said bitterly. "Jonas Cord it was the whole time. Why didn't you tell me?"
David turned from the hotel window looking out over Central Park. "I didn't know. I was only guessing."
"Know, not know," the producer said, chewing on his dead cigar. "You should have told me, anyway."
"What good would it have done?" David asked. "I couldn't have proved it and even if I had, you didn't have the money to fight him."
Norman took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it glumly. With an angry gesture, he threw it on the rug. "What did I ever do to him he should want to ruin me?" he asked angrily.
David didn't answer.
"Nothing! That's what I did. Only made money for him. More money that he should use to cut my throat with!" Bernie took a fresh cigar from his pocket and waved it in front of David's face. "That should be a lesson to you. Never do a favor for anybody, never make money for anybody, only yourself. Otherwise, you'll find a knife in your back made of your own silver!"
David looked at his uncle's angry purple face, remembering the scene that had taken place at the stockholders' meeting.
Norman had gone into it, feeling more confident than he had at any time during the past few months. The percentage of proxies that had been returned was about what they got every year. Only about twenty-five per cent of the stockholders ever bothered to send in their proxy forms. All they were interested in was when they'd begin receiving dividends again. But those proxies, plus the eight per cent of stock that Norman had in his own name, gave him a comfortable thirty-three per cent of the stock to vote.
The attendance at the meeting was the same as usual. A few retired businessmen and some women who wandered in off the street because they owned ten shares and it gave them something to do; those directors of the company who happened to be in town and the company officers from the New York office.
It was only after the formalities of the meeting were over and Norman was asking for nominations for the board of directors that he sensed there was something wrong. As he was speaking, Dan Pierce, the agent, and another man, whose face was familiar but whose name Norman couldn't remember, came into the room and sat down in the front row of the small auditorium.
A vice-president in charge of sales dutifully read off Norman's approved list of nominations for directorships. Another vice-president, in charge of theater operations, dutifully seconded the nominations. A third vice-president, in charge of foreign operations, then dutifully moved that the nominations be closed.
At that moment, Pierce got to his feet. "Mr. President," he said, "I have several more nominations to make for directors of the corporation."
"You got no right," Norman yelled from the podium.
"According to the bylaws of the company," Dan Pierce retorted, "any stockholder of record may nominate as many persons for directors as there are directors in the corporation!"
Norman turned to his vice-president and general counsel. "Is that true?"
The attorney nervously nodded. "You're fired, you dumb bastard, you!" Norman whispered.
He turned back to Pierce. "It's illegal!" he shouted. "A trick to upset the company."
The man seated alongside Pierce got to his feet. "Mr. Pierce's nominations are perfectly in order and I, personally, can attest to his legal right to make them."
It was then that Norman remembered the name – McAllister – Jonas Cord's attorney. He calmed down immediately. "I suppose you can prove you're stockholders?" he asked cannily.
McAllister smiled. "Of course."
"Let me see your proof. I got a right to demand that!"
"Of course you have," McAllister said. He walked up to the podium and handed up a stock certificate.
Norman looked down at it. It was a stock certificate for ten shares properly issued in the name of Daniel Pierce, "Is this all the stock you got?" he asked innocently.
McAllister smiled again. "It's all the proof I need," he said, evading the producer's attempt to find out just how much stock he represented. "May I proceed with the nominations?"
Norman nodded silently and Pierce got to his feet and presented six names for the nine-man board. Just enough to assure clear-cut control. Outside of his own and McAllister's, all the names were strange to Norman.
When the votes were ready to be counted, McAllister presented to the meeting proxies representing forty-one per cent of the company – twenty-six per cent in the name of Jonas Cord and fifteen held by various brokerage houses. All six of his nominees were elected.
Norman turned to his executives. He studied them silently for a moment, then withdrew six of his nominees, leaving only himself, David and the vice-president and treasurer on the board. The meeting over, he called for a directors' meeting at the company offices that afternoon, for the election of officers.
Silently he started out of the room, his usually ruddy face pale and white. Pierce stopped him at the door. "Bernie," Pierce said, "I'd like a minute with you before the directors' meeting."
Norman stared at him. "Traitors to their own kind I don't talk to," he said coldly. "Go talk to Hitler!" He stamped out of the room.
Dan Pierce turned to David. "David, make him listen to reason," he said. "Cord authorized me to offer three million bucks for the old man's shares. That's twice what they're worth. If he doesn't sell, Cord says he'll put the company in receivership and all the shares will be good for then is wall-paper."
"I'll see what I can do," David said, hurrying after his uncle.
Now Norman was yelling again, pacing up and down the room and threatening a proxy fight. He'd show that crazy Cord that Bernie Norman was no fool, that he hadn't built a business up from nothing with his bare hands without having something in his kopf.
"Wait a minute!" David said sharply. He had taken more than enough nonsense from his uncle. It was time somebody taught the old man the facts of life. "You're talking about a proxy fight?" he shouted. "With what are you going to fight him? Spitballs instead of money? And if you fight, do you honestly believe that anybody will go along with you? For the last four years, this company has been steadily losing money. The biggest picture we had during that time was The Renegade – Cord's picture, not ours. And the biggest picture on the market today is Devils in the Sky – Cord's picture, too. The one you wouldn't distribute for him because there wasn't enough koom-shaw in it for you! Do you think anybody in his right mind is going to pick you over Cord?"
The producer stared at him. "To think," he cried out, "that from my own flesh and blood should come such words!"