Kane and Abel Read online

  The one piece of good news that Abel discovered in his first week in Chicago was that Melanie Leroy was an only child.

  24

  WILLIAM AND MATTHEW started their freshman year at Harvard in the fall of 1924.

  William accepted the Hamilton Memorial Mathematics Scholarship and, despite his grandmothers’ disapproval, at a cost of $290, treated himself to ‘Daisy’, the latest Model T Ford which became the first real love of his life. He painted Daisy bright yellow, which halved her value but doubled the number of his girlfriends. Calvin Coolidge won a landslide victory to return to the White House - much to the disappointment of the grandmothers, who both voted for John W. Davis - and the volume on the New York Stock Exchange reached a five-year record of 2,336,160 shares.

  Both young men - ‘We can no longer refer to them as children,’ pronounced Grandmother Cabot - had been looking forward to going to college. After an energetic summer of chasing golf balls and girls, both with handicaps, they were finally ready to get down to more serious pursuits. William started work on the day he arrived in their new room on the ‘Gold Coast’, a considerable improvement on their small study at St Paul’s, while Matthew went in search of the university rowing club. He was elected to captain the freshman crew, and William left his books every Sunday afternoon to watch his friend from the banks of the Charles River. He secretly enjoyed Matthew’s success, but was outwardly scathing.

  ‘Life is not about eight muscle-bound men pulling unwieldy pieces of misshapen wood through choppy water while one smaller man bellows at them,’ he declared haughtily.

  ‘Tell Yale that,’ said Matthew.

  William, meanwhile, quickly demonstrated to his mathematics professors that, like Matthew, he was several strokes ahead of the field. He became chairman of the freshman Debating Society, and talked his great-uncle, President Lowell, into introducing the first university insurance plan, where students graduating from Harvard would take out a life policy for $1,000, naming the university as the beneficiary. William estimated that if 40 per cent of the alumni joined the scheme, Harvard would have a guaranteed income of about $3 million a year from 1950 onward. His great-uncle was impressed, and gave the scheme his full backing. A year later he invited William to join the board of the University Fund Raising Committee. William accepted with pride, not realizing that the appointment was for life.

  President Lowell informed Grandmother Kane that he had captured one of the finest financial brains of his generation free of charge. Grandmother Kane testily told her cousin, ‘Everything has a purpose, and this will teach William to read the fine print.’

  Almost as soon as the sophomore year began, it became time to choose (or be chosen for) one of the Finals Clubs that dominated the social landscape of the most successful at Harvard. William was ‘punched’ for the Porcellian, the oldest, most exclusive and least ostentatious of such clubs. In the clubhouse on Massachusetts Avenue, incongruously situated above a cheap Hayes-Bickford cafeteria, he would sit in a comfortable armchair, considering the four-colour map problem, discussing the implications of the Loeb-Leopold case and idly watching the street below through the conveniently angled mirror while listening to the large, newfangled radio set.

  When the Christmas vacation came, William was persuaded to go skiing with Matthew in Vermont, and spent a week panting uphill in the footsteps of his fitter friend.

  ‘Tell me, Matthew, what is the point of spending an hour climbing up a hill only to come back down the same hill in a matter of seconds at considerable risk to life and limb?’

  Matthew grunted. ‘It sure gives me a bigger kick than graph theory, William. Why don’t you just admit you’re not very good at either the going up or the coming down?’

  They both did enough work during their sophomore year to get by, although their interpretations of ‘getting by’ were wildly different. For the first two months of the summer vacation they worked as junior management clerks in Charles Lester’s bank in New York, Matthew’s father having long since given up the battle of trying to keep William off the premises.

  When the dog days of August arrived, they spent most of their time dashing about the New England countryside in ‘Daisy’, sailing on the Charles River with as many different girls as possible and attending any house party to which they could get themselves invited. They were fast becoming the most respected personalities of the university, known to the cognoscenti as the Scholar and the Sweat. It was perfectly understood in Boston society that the girl who married William Kane or Matthew Lester would have no fears for her future, but as fast as hopeful mothers appeared with their fresh-faced daughters, Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot unceremoniously dispatched them.

  On April 18, 1927, William celebrated his twenty-first birthday by attending the final meeting of the trustees of his estate. Alan Lloyd and Tony Simmons had prepared all the documents for his signature.

  Well, William dear,’ said Millie Preston, as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders, ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to do every bit as well as we did.’

  ‘I hope so, Mrs Preston,’ William replied. ‘But if ever I need to lose half a million overnight, I’ll give you a call.’

  Millie Preston turned bright red, and never spoke to William again.

  The trust now showed a balance of over $32 million, and William already had plans for further growth. But he had also set himself the target of making a million dollars in his own right before he left Harvard. It was not a large sum compared with the amount in his trust, but his inherited wealth meant far less to him than the balance in his personal account at Lester’s.

  That summer, the grandmothers, fearing a fresh outbreak of predatory girls, dispatched William and Matthew on the grand tour of Europe. This turned out to be thoroughly worthwhile for both of them. Matthew, surmounting all language barriers, found a beautiful girl in every major European capital - love, he assured William, was an international commodity. William secured introductions to directors of most of the major European banks -money, he assured Matthew, was also an international commodity, and a far less capricious one.

  From London to Berlin to Rome, the two young men left a trail of broken hearts and suitably impressed bankers. When they returned to Harvard in September, they were both ready to hit the books for their final year.

  In the bitter winter of 1927, Grandmother Kane died, aged eighty-five, and William wept for the first time since his mother’s death.

  ‘Come on,’ said Matthew, after bearing with his depression for several days. ‘She had a good life, and waited a long time to discover whether God’s a Cabot or a Lowell.’

  William missed the shrewd observations he hadn’t fully appreciated in his grandmother’s lifetime, and arranged a funeral she would have been proud to attend. The great lady may have arrived at the cemetery in a Packard hearse (‘An outrageous contraption - over my dead body’), but her only criticism of William’s arrangements for her departure would have concerned this unsound mode of transport. Her death drove William to work with even more purpose during his final year at Harvard, and he dedicated himself to winning the university’s top mathematics prize in her memory.

  Grandmother Cabot died five months after Grandmother Kane - probably, said William, because there was no one left for her to talk to.

  In February 1928, William received a visit from the captain of the university Debating Team. There was to be a full-dress debate the following month on the motion ‘Socialism or Capitalism for America’s Future’, and he asked William to represent capitalism.

  ‘What if I told you I was only willing to speak on behalf of the downtrodden masses?’ William enquired of the surprised captain, slightly nettled by the thought that outsiders assumed they knew his ideological position simply because he had inherited a famous name and a prosperous bank.

  ‘Well, I must say, William, we did think your preference would be for, er - ‘

  ‘It is. I accept your invitation. I take it that I am at liber