The Devil To Pay (3 page)

He found her in the front gardens radiantly holding off all the sad young men and their ladies with one hand and offering them delicatessen with the other. At first Walter blinked, for it seemed as though Val was plucking salami and sausages from the rose bushes; and he had never heard of bologna sandwiches and one-drink cocktail bottles growing on palm boles before. But then he saw that the refreshments had been artfully tied to the arboreal landscape.

“Oh, it’s Walter,” said Val, the radiance dimming. Then she stuck out her chin. “Walter Spaeth, if you mention one word about the starving coal-miners I’ll scream!”

“Look out,” giggled a young lady, “here’s Amos again.”

“Wasn’t he the prophet who flapped his arms so much?”

“Goodbye, Val,” said Tommy. “I’ll see you in the first tumbril.”

“Val,” said Walter, “I want to talk to you.”

“Why not?” said Val sweetly, and excused herself. She maintained the sweet smile only until they were behind a cluster of palms. “Walter, don’t you
dare
spoil my party. It’s a brand-new idea, and I’ve got Tess and Nora and Wanda simply tearing their permanents—” She looked a little more closely at his face. “Walter, what’s the matter?”

Walter flung himself on the grass and kicked the nearest palm. “Plenty, my feminine Nero.”

“Tell me!”

“Bottom’s dropped out. Hell’s loose. River topped the levees last night—out of control. The whole Ohio Valley and part of the Mississippi Valley are under water. So there, may they rest in peace, go the Ohippi plants.”

Valerie felt a sudden chill. It didn’t seem fair that the floods in a place half a continent away should creep into her garden and spoil everything. She leaned against the palm. “How bad is it?” she asked in a croupy little voice.

“The plants are a total loss.”

“First the stock-market drop, and now— Poor pop.” Val took off her floppy sunhat and began to punch it. Walter squinted up at her. It was going to be tough on the kid, at that. Well, maybe it would do her good. All this criminal nonsense—

“It’s your father’s fault!” cried Val, hurling the hat at him.

“Ain’t it the truth?” said Walter.

Val bit her lip. “I’m sorry, darling. I know how much you hate what he stands for.” She sank down and laid her head on his chest. “Oh, Walter, what are we going to do?”

“Hey, you’re wetting my tie,” said Walter. He kissed her curls gently.

Val jumped up, dried her eyes, and ran away. Walter heard her call out in a marvelously bright voice: “Court’s adjourned, people!” and a chorus of groans.

Just then it began to drizzle, with that dreary persistence only the California clouds can achieve during the rainy season. It’s like a movie, thought Walter gloomily, or a novel by Thomas Hardy. He got to his feet and followed her.

They found Rhys Jardin patrolling the flags of his terrace at the rear of the house. Pink, in sweat-shirt and sneakers, was staring at his employer with troubled eyes.

“Oh, there you are,” said her father. He immediately sat down in the porch swing. “Come here, puss. The rain’s spoiled your party, hasn’t it?”

“Oh, pop!” said Val, and she ran to him and put her arms about his neck. The rain pattered on the awning.

“Well, Walter,” smiled Rhys, “as a prophet you’re pretty good. But not even you foresaw the floods.”

Walter sat down. Pink heaved out of his deck-chair and went to the iron table and poured himself a drink of water. Then he said: “Nuts!” and sat down again.

“Is anything left?” asked Val quietly.

“Don’t look so tragic, Val!”

“Is there?”

“Well, now that you ask,” smiled Rhys, “not a thing. Our negotiable assets are cleaned out.”

“Then why did you let me run this party today?” she cried. “All that money going to waste!”

“I never thought I’d live to see the day,” said Pink lightly, “when Val Jardin would start squeezing the buffalo.”

“Do we have to give up the Malibu place, the house in Santa Monica?” asked Val with difficulty.

“Now don’t worry, puss—”

“This—this house, too?”

“You never liked it, anyway.”

Val cradled her father’s head in her arms. “Darling, you’ll have to give up your yachting and golf clubs and things and go to work. How will you like that?”

The big man made a face. “We can realize a lot of money from the real estate and the furnishings—”

“And we’ll get rid of Mrs. Thomson and the housemaids and Roxie—”

“No, Val!”

“Yes. And of course Pink will have to go—”

“Nuts,” said Pink again.

Val became quiet and sat back in the swing, sucking her lower lip. After a while Walter said uncomfortably: “I know my anti-holding-company cartoons didn’t help Ohippi, Mr. Jardin. But you understand—Newspapermen can’t—”

Jardin laughed. “If I listened to your advice rather than your father’s we’d all be a lot better off.”

“The lousy part of it is,” grunted Pink, “that your old man could still save Ohippi. Only he won’t. There ought to be a law!”

“What do you mean?” asked Walter slowly.

Pink waved his arms. “Well,
he
cleaned up, didn’t he? Why shouldn’t he—”

“My father cleaned up?”

“Keep quiet, Pink,” said Rhys.

“Just a moment. I’ve a right to know!”

“It’s not important any more, Walter,” said Rhys mildly. “Forget it.”

“Forget your grandmother!” yelled Pink. “Go on, tell him about that cat-fight you had with Spaeth this morning!”

Jardin shrugged. “You know, your father and I were equal partners. Whenever he arranged to form a new holding company—he created seven before the government stepped in—the corporation would retain control of the common stock and put the remaining forty-nine percent on the market. The preferred stock we held back, splitting share and share alike.”

“Yes?” said Walter.

“Pop. Don’t,” said Val, looking at Walter’s face.

“Go on, Mr. Jardin.”

“Knowing nothing about these things, I trusted your father and Ruhig completely. Ruhig advised me to hold on to my preferred—it did seem wise, because the basic Ohippi plants were perfectly sound. Secretly, however, through agents, your father sold his preferred as the companies were created. And now, with all the stockholders caught, he’s sitting back there with a fortune.”

“I see,” said Walter; he was pale. “And he led me to believe—”

“With the dough he’s made,” raved Pink, “he could rebuild those power plants and put ’em on their feet again. We got some rights, ain’t we? We—”

“You lost money, too?”

Rhys Jardin winced. “I’m afraid I sucked in a lot of my friends—in my early innocence.”

“Excuse me,” said Walter, and he rose and went down the terrace steps into the rain.

“Walter!” cried Val, flying after him. “Please!”

“You go on back,” said Walter, without stopping.

“No!”

“This is my business. Go back.”

“Just the same,” said Val breathlessly, “I’m coming.”

She clung to his arm all the way around the pool and up the rocky slope to the Spaeth house.

Val remained nervously on the Spaeth terrace. “Walter, please don’t do anything that—” But it was half a whisper, and Walter was already stalking through the glass doors into his father’s study.

Mr. Solomon Spaeth sat at his oval desk, the picture of baronial gravity, shaking his head a little at the rapid-fire questions of a crowd of newspapermen. His reading glasses rested on the middle of his fat nose, and with his paunch and thin gray hair and sober air he did not remotely resemble the devil and worse that the stockholders at the gate were calling him.

“Gentlemen, please,” he protested.

“But how about the flood story, Mr. Spaeth?”

“Are you going on?”

“Where’s that statement you promised?”

“I’ll give you just this.” Solly picked up a paper and fussed with it. The reporters grew quiet. Solly put the paper down. “Owing to the catastrophe in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys,” he said gravely, “our field men report the complete ruin of our equipment. That hydro-electric machinery would cost millions to replace, gentlemen. I’m afraid we shall have to abandon the plants.”

There was a shocked silence. Then a man exclaimed: “But that means a loss of a hundred cents on the dollar to every investor in Ohippi securities!”

Solly spread his hands. “It’s a great misfortune, gentlemen. But surely we can’t be held responsible for the floods? Floods are an act of God.”

The reporters did not even notice Walter in their scramble for the door. Walter stood still near the terrace doors. His lips were twisted a little. … His father rubbed his right jowl thoughtfully for a moment, and then began to read the afternoon papers.

Winni Moon was drifting about the study with a vague, pleased smile, touching things here and there; a small fire crackled in the grate; and Jo-Jo, Winni’s chimpanzee, was whirling on her pink haunches near the hearth like a dervish, chattering crossly. Jo-Jo whirled incessantly, for she despised the smell of herself, although she was prinkled with a scent that set Solly back fifty dollars an ounce.

On the terrace, watching, Val tingled with hostility. The Moon worm was wearing the boldest creation in burgundy crêpe, with shirrings at the wrists that “dramatize your every gesture, madame”—Val knew the line
so
well—and her thick wheat-colored hair was done up in a convoluted braid, like a figure eight lying on its side on top of her head. Hostess gown. Hostess! Protégée! Val’s fingers curled for something to pluck and rend.

“Oh,” cried Winni, “here’s Walter!” And she pounced. Her clinging act, thought Val bitterly. True, Walter was fending her off with one arm, but that was probably because he knew Val was watching.

“Wally dear, isn’t it awful? The floods, and all those people in the woad. You’d think it was the storming of the Castille, at the very weast! I’ve simply begged Solly—your father—to make the police dwive them away—”

Walter shouted: “Lay off me!”

“Why, Walter!”

Solly took off his glasses. After a moment he said: “Get out, Winni.”

Winni smiled at once. “Of course, daddy. You two men must have—” She clapped her hands prettily. “Jo-Jo!”

Oh, you—
thing!
thought Val, seeing it all from the terrace through the glass doors.

The unhappy beast leaped to Winni’s shoulder and she went out with it, her hips swaying from side to side under the clinging stuff as if they were set in gimbals. She turned, smiled again, and carefully closed the study door.

Thing! T
HING
!

Walter strode forward and faced his father across the marbled leather top of the desk. “Let’s get down to cases,” said Walter. “You’re a crook.”

Solomon Spaeth half-rose from his chair; then, blinking, he sat back. “You can’t talk to me that way!”

“You’re still a crook.”

Solly’s complexion deepened. “Ask the United States Attorney! There’s nothing illegal about my operations.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that,” said Walter, “with Ruhig to handle it. But that doesn’t make you any the less a crook.”

“If you call me that once more—” began his father balefully. Then he smiled. “Pshaw, you’re excited, Walter. I forgive you. Have a drink?”

“I don’t want your forgiveness!” roared Walter.

Walter, Walter, thought Val desperately.

“Before the floods our cash position was sound. It was just the government—Congress undermined the confidence of the public—”

“Look,” said Walter. “How much money have you made out of the sales of your preferred stock since you began creating holding companies around Ohippi?”

“A few dollars, Walter,” said Solly soothingly. “But so could Jardin, only he says he hung on to his stock.”

“You got that rat Ruhig to advise him to hold on!”

“Who says so? Who says so?” spluttered Solly. “Prove that. Let him prove—”

“You weren’t satisfied with swindling the investing public, you had to doublecross your partner, too!”

“If Jardin says I doublecrossed him, he’s a liar!”

Val gritted her teeth. You oily rascal! she thought. If only you weren’t Walter’s father…

“Jardin’s broke, and you know it!” shouted Walter.

A strange smile fattened Solly’s features. “Is that so? Really? Did Jardin tell you that?”

Valerie felt her heart skip a beat. And there was almost a dazed look on Walter’s face. What did the man mean? Was it possible that—

“The fact remains,” muttered Walter, “you’ve made millions while your stockholders have been wiped out.”

Spaeth shrugged. “They could have sold at peak, too.”

“And now you’re abandoning the plants!”

“They’re useless.”

“You could put them back on their feet!”

“Rubbish,” said Solly shortly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You could put those millions back where they belong—in the plants. You could get Ohippi operating again at a profit when the floods recede!”

Spaeth pounded the desk, swallowing. “Since the Securities Act of 1934 the government is liquidating holding-company structures—”

“And a damned good thing, too!”

“The turn would have come soon, anyway, even without the floods. There’s just no point in reinvesting; there’s not enough money to be made. You don’t know what’s happening in this country!”

“You made those filthy millions out of Jardin and the public,” growled Walter, “and it’s your moral responsibility to save their investments.”

“You’re a fool,” said Solly curtly. “Come back and talk when you’ve got some sense in your head.” And he put on his glasses and picked up a paper.

Valerie, watching Walter’s face, peering around the terrace wall, felt panic. If only she dared go inside—take Walter away before he—

Walter leaned across his father’s desk and gently took the paper away and tossed it into the fireplace. Solly sat very still. “You listen to me,” said Walter. “I’ll overlook your crookedness, the way you took Jardin, your lie to me about how hard you were hit. But you’re going to do one thing.”

Solly whispered: “Walter, don’t get me excited.”

“You’re going to save those plants.”

“No!”

“It’s my hard luck to own your name,” said Walter thickly, “so I’ve got to take the stink out of it. You’ve ruined the father of the woman I’m going to marry, and you’re going to make it up to both of them, do you hear?”