Quint had probably been born fat-generous, good-natured, and often childish. His huge torso, contained in a dark vest, seemed to need a golden watch chain. He was a pink flannel-and-tweed man with thinning brown hair and a guardsman moustache; his face was big, with deep square brackets creasing it right down past the mouth into the big dependable jaw. He liked to act bumbling and vague, as if he were unaware of the events that surrounded him. It was an effective pose; it put his adversaries off their guard.
His office commanded a view of Foley Square. His desk ashtray, full of cellophane candy wrappers, was an abalone shell.
Russ Hastings sat in a wooden armchair listening to him growl. As Quint spoke, the bow tie bobbed up and down at his throat. “I don’t know, Russ, you come into this business full of spice and vim, and before you know it you’ve been flattened and dried out by the damned bureaucracy of it all. I sit at this desk trying to work out my plans of action, and all day long I get phone calls from one fellow talking about personnel and another fellow talking about budgets and vacation schedules and some unhappy clerk who wants to resign. The chap from two offices down the hall drops in to ask for information about this and that. Salesmen get past the secretary and unnerve me about office supplies. One inconsequential interruption after another, and before you know it it’s the end of one more day, and you don’t know what the devil’s happened to it, you came in red hot and raring to go in the morning, and you never got a chance to start. It makes me wonder what the hell I’m ever going to accomplish.”
It was a speech Hastings had heard before, with variations; he said, “Why don’t you burn the whole place down and start from scratch?”
Quint grinned and waggled a finger. “Don’t mind me, old boy. There aren’t many sympathetic ears hereabouts. Forgive me if I lean on yours now and then.” The English accent, added to the guardsman mustache, gave Quint a Blimpish aura-one kept expecting him to refer to his wife as the memsahib.
Quint put on his stern down-to-business face. “All right. You said you had a request.”
“I want your authority to make a few waves.”
“To what end?”
“Maybe to squash a raid. Maybe nothing. It’s still too vague to write up a bill of particulars-but somebody’s playing Ping-Pong with Northeast Consolidated stock.”
Quint said, “A few days ago that was a hunch. Is it anything stronger than that now?”
“It’s getting there. I’ve collected lists of NCI trades from the floor specialist and a dozen big brokers. When you compare them, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Too much Canadian activity, too many anonymous Swiss accounts and dummy front men-all buying NCI. Small lots, but steady buying. Just the kind of thing you’d do if you wanted to accumulate a strong position but didn’t want to alert anybody or inflate the price. Whoever he is, he’s collected better than half a million shares in the past six weeks.”
“Is that a firm figure or a guess?”
“A little of both. Some of the Canadian purchases may be legitimate. It’s impossible to tell the difference until we’ve traced every stock certificate by number from source to buyer. That’s going to take time. But in the meantime this fellow’s still out there buying. It’s my opinion if we wait for guaranteed proof with all the t’s crossed, he’ll get there ahead of us.”
Quint unwrapped a ball of hard low-calorie candy and popped it in his mouth. “Any idea who this mythical chap is?”
“Not yet.”
“Suppose it turns out to be Elliot Judd?”
“I’ve thought of that.”
“Of course you have,” Quint mumbled. “It would make you look a bit of an ass, wouldn’t it?”
“It doesn’t have to. That’s why I want to stir things up. I want to take the wraps off-let our man know we’re tracking him.”
“Whatever for?”
“It may frighten him off,” Hastings said, and watched the fat man for a reaction.
Quint shifted his seat on the uncomfortable wooden chair. Finally he said slowly, “No. I’m afraid we can’t have it bruited about.”
“It’s the only way I know to-”
“Let me finish, please. That technique may have worked for you in investigating political corruption. Let a malfeasor know he’s being watched, and he’ll very likely back away from the trough. I understand your tactics. But they won’t work here. We inhabit an asylum of paranoid sensitivity, Russ. To reveal we’re investigating a security as big as NCI is to shake public confidence in it. If public confidence falls, the price of the stock falls, and if a blue chip like NCI falls, the whole market may fall with it. Our only weapon against that sort of disaster is our power to force the Exchange to suspend trading in the stock. But we’re not permitted to exercise that power unless we have substantial and cogent reasons-reasons we can explain to the satisfaction of all concerned. Do you see? Wall Street couldn’t be more fragile if it were perched on the lip of a seismic fault. We all have the same responsibility, to do nothing that threatens to set off the earthquake.”
The fat man crumpled the cellophane wrapper in his huge fist and dropped it in the ashtray. “Request denied,” he concluded.
Hastings nodded. “I understand all that. But I’m beginning to think it may be worth the risk. After all, the company’s too big to take very much of a beating in the market. Everybody knows it’s sound. If we begin to drop hints there’s a raider moving in, it may even raise the price of the stock-after all, if it’s attractive to a raider, there must be something in it.”
“Risk,” the fat man replied, “has to be measured not in terms of what you’ve got to gain, but in terms of what you’ve got to lose. Look, Russ, I don’t mean to trample your enthusiasms. You’ve convinced me there’s something afoot that bears investigating. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to go on conducting the investigation by the book. The idea doesn’t appeal to you? There was a time when I was too impatient to go by the book too. But everything in the book was put there for a reason. You’ll go right ahead and dig, with my blessings, but you’ll do it discreetly, and you won’t broadcast any warnings. I trust I’m making that abundantly clear.”
“About as unmistakable as a giraffe in a bathtub,” Hastings agreed. He stood up. “I guess you’re right.”
“You bloody Americans are always ‘I-guessing.’ It’s not one of your more endearing habits of speech.”
“You’ll get used to it. The first hundred years are the hardest.” He turned to the door.
“Russ.”
“Mmm?”
“Not one man in a hundred would have had the hunch you started with on this thing. Not one in a thousand would have played it. I’m not unmindful of that. Don’t take my schoolmasterish scoldings as criticisms. You’re worth any five other men in this office-and if it comes to it, I’ll support you right up to the lynching. But you must play this one close to your chest.”
“I understand.” He gave Quint a smile and went out into the hallway.
When he entered his own office, Miss Sprague looked up from her desk and said, “Mr. Burgess is waiting in your office. And there was a phone call from a Miss Cynthia MacNee.”
It stopped him in his tracks. He frowned at her. “Did she say what she wanted?”
“Only that she’d call again within a half-hour. She specifically asked that you don’t call her back-she said she’s not at the Nuart office. She also said it was very important, and she hoped you’d wait for her return call.” Miss Sprague gave him an arch look of speculation and turned back to her typewriter.
Puzzled, he went into the office and greeted Bill Burgess. The lawyer from Justice was a harried-looking sort with dark blond hair and a square face with a short nose and good jaw. He spent Wednesday nights playing poker, took his wife to neighborhood Italian restaurants and movies on Saturday nights, and spent summer Sundays at Jones Beach. He had limp shirt cuffs, blackened around the seams by soot and too much wearing; his shoes were very old and assiduously polished; the seersucker suit was baggy. His smile was fond with the warmth of old friendship.