Kane and Abel Read online

  ‘You were magnificent, William. That’s exactly the way to treat that sort of people.’

  ‘Enter in triumph, the Bolski slayer.’

  Cohen hung back, but William had not forgotten him.

  ‘Gentlemen, may I present my worthy adversary, Mr Thaddeus Cohen.’

  Cohen stepped forward hesitantly.

  All conversation ceased. A number of heads were averted, as if they were looking at the elm trees in the Yard, their branches weighed down with snow.

  There was the creak of a floorboard as one young man left the room by the far door. Moments later there was another departure. Without haste, without a word being spoken, every other member filed out. The last to leave gave William a long look, then turned on his heel and disappeared through the door.

  Matthew gazed at his companions in dismay. Thaddeus Cohen had turned a dull red, and stood with his head bowed. William’s lips were drawn together in the same tight, cold fury that had been apparent when Crosby had made his reference to the Titanic.

  Matthew touched his arm. ‘We’d better leave.’

  The three trudged off to William’s rooms and silently drank some indifferent brandy, and exchanged stories that no one listened to.

  When William woke in the morning, an envelope had been pushed under his door. He tore it open to find a short note from the chairman of the Porcellian Club, informing him that he hoped ‘there will not be a recurrence of last night’s unfortunate incident’.

  By lunchtime the chairman had received two letters of resignation.

  After several studious months, William and Matthew were almost ready - no one ever thinks they are entirely ready - for their final examinations. For six days they answered questions and filled pages and pages of the little blue examination books, and once they had written their last line they waited patiently, but not in vain.

  A week after the exams it was announced that William had won the President’s Mathematics Prize. Matthew had managed a ‘gentleman’s C, which came as a relief to him, and as no great surprise to anyone. Neither had any interest in prolonging their education, both wishing to join the ‘real’ world as quickly as possible.

  William’s bank account in New York edged over the million-dollar mark eight days before he left Harvard. For the first time he discussed with Matthew his long-term plan to gain control of Lester’s Bank by merging it with Kane and Cabot. Matthew was enthusiastic about the idea, and confessed, ‘That’s about the only way I’ll ever improve on what my old man has achieved in his lifetime.’

  In June 1928, Alan Lloyd, now in his sixtieth year, travelled to Harvard for graduation day. How William wished his father was alive to witness the presentation ceremony.

  Afterwards, he took Alan for tea on the square. The banker looked at the tall young man with affection.

  ‘And what do you intend to do now that you’ve put Harvard behind you?’

  ‘I’m going to join Charles Lester’s bank in New York. I want to gain some more experience before I come to Kane and Cabot in a few years’ time.’

  ‘But you’ve been practically living in Lester’s Bank since you were twelve years old, William. Why don’t you come straight to us? We would make you a director immediately.’

  No reply was forthcoming.

  ‘Well, I must say, William, it’s most unlike you to be rendered speechless by anything.’

  ‘But I never imagined you’d invite me to join the board before my twenty-fifth birthday. My father …’

  ‘It’s true that your father was twenty-five when he was elected. But that’s no reason why you shouldn’t join the board before then if the other directors support the idea, and I know they do. In any case, there are personal reasons why I’d like to see you take your place on the board as soon as possible. When I retire from the bank in five years’ time, we must be sure to elect the right chairman. You’ll be in a stronger position to influence that decision if you’ve been working for Kane and Cabot during those years, rather than as a glorified functionary at Lester’s. Well, my boy. Will you join the board?’

  It was the second time that day that William had wished his father was still alive.

  ‘I should be delighted to accept, sir.’

  ‘That’s the first time you’ve called me “sir” since we played golf together, and I didn’t win on that occasion.’

  William smiled.

  ‘Good,’ said Alan, ‘that’s settled, then. You’ll be a junior director in charge of investments, working directly under Tony Simmons.’

  ‘Can I appoint my own assistant?’ asked William.

  ‘Matthew Lester, no doubt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. I don’t want him doing to our bank what you intended to do to theirs.’

  William didn’t comment, but he never underestimated Alan Lloyd again.

  PART THREE

  1928-1932

  25

  IT TOOK ABEL about three months to appreciate the full extent of the problems facing the Richmond Continental, and why the hotel was losing so much money.

  The simple conclusion he came to after twelve weeks of keeping his eyes wide open and his mouth shut, while at the same time allowing the staff to believe he was half asleep, was that the hotel’s profits were, quite simply, being stolen. The Richmond staff were working a cooperative on a scale that even Abel had not previously come across. The system did not, however, take into account a new assistant manager who’d had to steal bread from the Russians to stay alive. Abel’s first problem was not to let anybody know how much he knew until he’d had a chance to check on every department in the hotel. It didn’t take him long to figure out that each one of them had perfected its own system for stealing.

  Deception started at the front desk, where the clerks were registering only eight out of every ten guests, and pocketing any cash payments from the remaining two. The routine they were using was a simple one. If anyone had tried it at the Plaza in New York, they would have been found out within minutes, and fired the same day. The head desk clerk would select an elderly couple from another state who had booked in for only one night, and who had never stayed at the hotel before. He would then discreetly make sure they had no business connections in the city, and then simply fail to register them. If they paid cash the following morning, the money was pocketed. Provided they had not signed the register, there was no record to show that they had ever stayed at the hotel. Abel had long thought that all hotels should be required to register every guest, as the Plaza did.

  In the dining room the system had been refined. All cash payments from any non-resident guests for lunch or dinner were immediately siphoned off. Abel had anticipated this, but it took him a little longer to check through the restaurant bills and establish that the front desk was working with the dining-room staff to ensure there were no restaurant bills for those guests they had already chosen not to register. In the bar it was even more blatant. The barman was bringing in his own bottles of liquor and pocketing the cash while the hotel’s own bottles remained unopened. Over and above all this, there was a steady trail of fictitious breakages and repairs, missing equipment, disappearing food and lost bed linen - even an occasional mattress had gone astray. Abel concluded that more than half of the Richmond’s staff were involved in the conspiracy, and that not one department had a completely clean record.

  When he’d first arrived at the hotel, he had wondered why the manager, Desmond Pacey, hadn’t noticed what was going on under his nose. He wrongly assumed that the man was just lazy, and could not be bothered to follow up minor peccadilloes. Even Abel was slow to realize that the manager was in fact the mastermind behind the entire operation, and the reason it worked so well. Pacey had been employed by the Richmond Group for more than thirty years. There was not a single hotel in the group in which he had not held a senior position at one time or another, which made Abel fearful for the solvency of the entire chain. Moreover, Pacey was a close friend of Leroy, and had become his most trusted lieuten