CHAPTER V

The Gentleman in Cannibal Land

The older man paused a second, and then pressed on with his explanation.

“The stock ownership of record on our books here that day was as follows.”—He withdrew from the central drawer of his desk a typewritten slip which had evidently been prepared for this interview with his nephew, or perhaps for similar interviews. “I have written it out in percentages of the total stock ownership,” he explained, “but of course in view of the fact that our corporation consists of only 100 shares, the figures in the percentage column also stand for actual shares owned by each stockholder.” And in silence he handed it to the younger man.

Carr Halsey ran his eyes over it. There did not seem to be hardly a change to it, so far as he could remember the list as it used to stand. True, what once had read “Henry Shilt, Chicago, 19%” now read “Estate of Henry Shilt, deceased, Chicago, in probate—19%.” It was evident that trading in nearly defunct American Projectiscope Company stock with its diminishing breathing being kept within the limits of regular respiration only by Cebrey-shutter oxygen, already perilously low in supply, hadn’t been brisk! The list ran:

Percent:

Mrs. Amelia Rawson, Boston, Mass 30

Roger Halsey, Chicago, Ill 27

Estate of Henry Shilt, deceased, Chicago, in probate 19

Carr Halsey, Chicago, Ill 10

Joseph and Florence Drake, Chicago 3

Harvey Ellsworth Jones, Evanston, Ill 2

Abner Hemingway, Sheridan, Wyoming 2

Mrs. George DuFries, Chicago, Ill 2

Gus Popolos, Detroit, Michigan 2

Nick Popolos, Detroit, Michigan 1

Ruth White, Chicago, Ill 1

Minnie Duggen, Hammond, Indiana 1

Total 100

The younger man looked up, typewritten slip in hand. Whereupon his uncle went on speaking:

“Now we are, as you doubtlessly know, re-incorporated under the Laws of the State of Delaware, which provides that a majority vote only of stockholders is required to legally convey assets of the company. I think that, could I have reached everybody that day, I could have gotten a unanimous acceptance of the tentative price offered by the Consolidated Projection Corporation for the Zell Process. All had been notified, of course, that their stock was now in on a large unexpected melon cutting, size as yet unknown: I shall perhaps say all, with the exception of yourself, Carr, but since you had conveyed to me three years ago a 5-year power-of-attorney to vote your stock and to sign your name to all transactions which were already a majority transaction or which your 10-percent stock would thereby make a majority, including any sale of the stock itself, I knew that when my letter to you came back—you were living on Junior Terrace, at the time, do you remember? And you had moved. Well, as I say, when my letter to you came back, I didn’t send it out again, for I knew you were quite safe from any possible loss of your stock, because you couldn’t sell it without coming to me first. And so I pressed on with the more important things. I did, Carr, try again later to get in telephonic touch with you through your newspaper, on the day when we threshed out the price, but that was the day when you had gone up to James Bay, Canada, for that International Skiing tournament—a place as isolated and cold as your own attitude has been about mixing in any of the affairs of our company. And so I dropped it. I—well, let that go.

“Neither could I get in immediate touch with Mrs. Amelia Rawson of Boston, Massachusetts, with her 30 percent of stock, nor with my old friend Abner Hemingway, of Sheridan, Wyoming, with his lone 2 percent, for reasons which I will touch upon later. Henry Shilt, who had owned 19 percent, was dead, to be sure, but Lucas Shilt, his only son, an adult, and named as sole heir in his will, was on tap, the estate was in probate with only a few more weeks to complete its year of probate, and there were two executors of the estate capable and ready to agree to the young man’s disposition of his own property.

“And therefore, by signed consent of 68 percent of our stockholders, we delivered that evening an exclusive 4-months’ purchase option for the complete Zell Process to the Consolidated Projection people. We naturally could not write in a longer option period than the one we ourselves were leaning on—ours with Orski. They immediately left for New York; but before my people even dispersed that night, and while our lawyers were still on the scene, the same signers all affixed their signatures to a majority stockholders’ transfer of the Zell Process to the First National Bank of Chicago, as trustee, for and in consideration of a million dollars. To each signature was attached an ‘irrevocability clause,’ making it unwithdrawable, without my permission, so far as the signer went, for a period of 6 months, and unusable, therefore, on any other sales papers for the complete Zell Process during that length of time. This, so our lawyers said, to keep them lined up properly against internal strife, in case of delays of any sort.

“As to the reason for the First National Bank of Chicago being trustee, one of the clauses in our option to the Consolidated people was that they were to place in trust, in this bank, within no more than a week, and secretly, if possible, so far as the newspapers were concerned, the million dollars in cash, the trust agreement to specify that the million was to remain there, if necessary, for not less than four months and was to be paid immediately to the American Projectiscope Company upon a transfer of the Zell Process to the bank, as trustee, by any stockholders’ majority. This move also was by advice of my lawyer, and was intended to stop all possible quibbling, and also protect us if any temporary flaws of title cropped up in our respective signatures. Incidentally, I might mention that I got our company’s thousand dollars back that night in the thousand cash which the Consolidated people paid down as ‘option binding money.’ And I might also add, too, right here and now, that their million dollars and properly executed trust agreement was in the hands of the First National Bank of Chicago by noontime two days later, waiting on us.

“From that million, of course,” commented Carr Halsey, “you’d pay the Ajax Company—or Orski—the $100,000 for their Hextite crystal, which you had tied up by option.” He ruminated puzzledly. “Then out of $900,000, to be split by us all here as a melon, my 10 percent of shares would bring me $90,000. I see part of the figures now, Uncle. But—the dime—the 10 cents. Where does that come in? And why didn’t you immediately close with the Consolidated Projection Corporation—or, rather, the First National Bank of Chicago, now trustee?”

“Because,” declared Roger Halsey, “I could not deliver to the bank, two days later, a properly executed majority stockholders’ transfer of the Zell Process with its now included option on the Hextite crystal. It was the Henry Shilt Estate 19-percent block of stock that crumbled temporarily on me—knocking my 68 percent down to only 49 percent—not a legal majority. Indeed, what happened that day was unfortunate enough, in a scandal sense, to make the newspapers.”

“What was that?” asked his nephew quickly. “I would have been just getting down to my work up at James Bay at that time. Never looked at a newspaper other than some little Canadian sheets. In fact, Uncle, I didn’t even know that Henry Shilt had become ‘Estate of Henry Shilt, deceased’ until I saw it on this little stockholders’ list. What happened?”

“Simply this. An illegitimate son of Henry Shilt—Billy Shilt-Higgins—popped up that morning with a claim against Henry Shilt’s entire estate, still in probate. Henry Shilt, as you may or may not know, had been a wholesale grocer. He must have thought he possessed a smattering of legal knowledge, for he’d tried to be economical in drawing up his will, and had written the document himself, although it was duly witnessed and properly executed. He’d attempted, in a sort of good old English way, to leave everything to his oldest son, at least at the time this will was written. Indeed, it seems that in that way he was nicely cutting off some younger son, a ne’er-do-well named Lucas Shilt! But, Carr, the older son had long, long since died: and, since there had been but two sons, the younger son, Lucas, had now become the oldest! And Henry Shilt’s will specified that his estate was to go to his ‘oldest surviving male issue.’ And Billy Shilt-Higgins, the illegitimate son, was older than the heir in probate. He had full proof of his paternity—letters of acknowledgment by Henry Shilt, documents, photos, etc. etc. etc.—and was beyond any question whatsoever Henry’s son. And Henry’s will, as I say, had read ‘surviving male issue.’ Now this identical legal point had been up in the courts so far back even as ’way back in 1931, in a case called the John Jacob Astor case—the point as to whether ‘issue’ means ‘legitimate issue’ or—just—well—‘issue.’ It has come up again in the lower and intermediate courts several times in the intervening years, always being finally compromised, and it finally came up more than a year ago in a particular case, Hacknow vs. Hacknow, which, carried clear to the Supreme Court of the United States, was to decide once and for all which and what that term ‘issue’ legally meant. This decision had already been written up by the presiding judge, but according to the new procedure instituted in 1937 by the American Institute of Law, was scheduled for official release only on a particular date so that cases involving the decision, or suits pending anywhere in the United States, could adjust themselves and schedule themselves properly in any and all courts, a considerably smoother process than that which used to obtain when I was a boy.” He paused. “The date scheduled for its official release was Sol 13th—that was last Friday—and if you hadn’t been in the North Woods soliloquizing on the wonders of a Nature from which newspapers and ether waves are absent, you’d have read what the decision was. At any rate, when all the things I am relating were taking place ’way last March, Billy Shilt-Higgins’ lawyers promptly tied up the entire Shilt estate, bag and baggage, with a clear-cut suit for possession, which of course must be automatically decided on the day the Supreme Court released its decision on what ‘issue’ meant.”

“Too bad, Uncle, that you couldn’t have gotten the spurious heir’s signature to your transfer, same as the putative heir’s—they to fight out later between themselves the ownership of that 19 percent share of the melon. Then you could have completed your conveyance of the Zell Process, couldn’t you?”

“Possibly—I don’t know. Whether or no, Orski caught the wind of the Shilt disturbance a bit quicker than I did, and seeing that he was on the smaller end of the Zell Process sale, now commenced in a modest way to pick up stock, if he could, in this company which would at least pay him a nice dividend. When you were a boy, Carr, in the First Dry Era, and there used to be powerful rival gangs striving for control of the Chicago underworld, instead of everything being finely organized as it is today in the Second Dry Era, and all the unlawful elements of living—dope, liquor, vice and gambling—knitted together under one big all-powerful chief like this Steve ‘Big-Shot’ Mala whose little finger practically controls the shooting finger of every gunman in this city, we called that process ‘muscling in.’ And at the risk of talking somewhat unintelligible language to you, I’ll have to use that term with respect to—”

“F’evvens sake, Uncle,” broke in Carr Halsey, half humorously and half chidingly, “don’t you think I used to attend the old black-and-white squawkies in my teen age? I know more of the gangsterese lingo of that day than you do, I’ll warrant. It—it was romance with a big R! Why—I remember when the Wets finally overcame the Drys, and it was presumed that gangsterism was to go out, and—Lord, Uncle, my pals and I figured that every bit of romance and color was to depart for all time to come from the American scene. Which it didn’t! For as you say, dope, vice, gambling and racketeering were left for the gangs to feed on. Which I suppose is what caused that precariously tiny fickle plurality of Wet over Dry to veer back again to Dry—and jerk the Second Dry Era back on our heads.”

“Not so much that,” said his uncle grimly, “as the trick the Dry-as-Dust, or Constitutional Enforcement Party of 1936 insinuated into the scheme of affairs, when they incorporated in their platform two new amendments together, the XIXth—or New Dry—Amendment, with extra teeth, and the XXth—or National Enforcement Compulsion—Amendment, providing for national enforcement by all state militias, when not being used otherwise in a state emergency, of all constitutional amendments equally, with which as you ought to remember, Carr, they induced every Negro in the South to go to the polls with a militiaman on that famous election day, and every Negro in the North without any, and vote the party in in the expectation that he and his black brothers could vote unmolested in the South ever after and practically control Dixie for ever more. The Southern Drys, of course, voted the Dry-as-Dust Party in with their tongues in their cheeks—they were more than glad to have the Negro at the polls that year—and the interesting result of it all is, of course, that today, thanks to people like our ‘Big-Shot,’ we’ve plenty of beer and liquor—and 30,000 speakeasies in Chicago alone—just exactly as in the First Dry Era—and the Southern Negro, even with his XXth National Enforcement Compulsion Amendment in his black hand, together with his XIIIth Amendment which originally freed him from slavery, is shaking in his burlap wrapped shoes on election day and keeping well hid, wondering why the Southern governors always put the state militias on that day to guarding great blank areas of land!”

Roger Harvey paused just long enough to give expression to a peculiar gesture of futility with his two hands.

“But, of course,” he added, “like all apparently well-laid plots, Carr, this one contains its fatal defect for the Dry-as-Dust Party. I refer to the Vigesimal Mail Vote which they held out as additional bait and security to the Negro: the national provision by which every twenty years—in the years evenly divisible by the figure 22—all registrations and elections will be held through the United States mails, instead of the Australian polls system, by franked registered ballots put by Federal distributors in the hands of every individual over 21. That of course is the doom of the Dry-as-Dust Party, for it’s conservatively estimated that the Southern Negro—the Northern Negro too—is going to rise up fully 99.99 strong in the 1944, or first vigesimal mail election, and crush to atoms the party that tricked him in 1936 with that specious proviso concerning the use of state militias in his favor. The only party strong enough to run against them two years from now is the new Governmental Liquor Purveying Party, and we’ll have everything back, beer, wine, champagnes, liqueurs, brandies—and all thanks to the fearfully tricked Negro. And then—but, Carr, we’re getting entirely off the matter we were discussing. We were talking of Orski. And we got badly thrown off of our subject, didn’t we, merely by using the old term of the early gangsterism—‘muscling in’? For Orski, as I say, ‘muscled in’ gently on this Zell Process sale. That is, he took a gamble, and bought from Billy Shilt-Higgins, that illegitimate son of Henry Shilt, a quitclaim on his father’s stock in this company, paying him $23,000 cash for it. The boy was so money-hungry, I guess, that he somewhat lost his sense of values, or else he wasn’t so confident in his own mind that he could win his case; again, he may just have figured that if he won Henry Shilt’s estate he’d be worth nearly a million dollars anyway; so he signed off to Orski when he saw 23 yellow $1,000 bills laid in front at him.”

“Orski himself,” commented Carr Halsey, “has a good bit of financial nerve, I’d say. Of course, it wasn’t a bad gamble mathematically—7 or 8 to 1 for the possible winnings, with, perhaps, so I would guess, a 3 or 4 to 1 chance against him.” He paused. “However, Uncle, all of Orski’s personal ventures, I take it, didn’t bother your possible moves, did they? 49 percent of your signatures were still O.K.—so all you needed to complete the conveyance then, was Mrs. Rawson’s 30 percent—or just even so little as your friend Abner Hemingway’s tiny 2 percent.”

His uncle was getting glummer and glummer. What, Carr Halsey wondered dimly, was the puzzle that confronted this company. He started to speak, but his uncle spoke instead.

“Yes,” he said, “all I needed was Mrs. Rawson’s 30 percent—or Abner Hemingway’s 2 percent. But even then those three old devil ladies who spin the lives and fates of men were conspiring against me—for it had been decreed that Orski himself, Carr, was to grab off Mrs. Rawson’s 30 percent of stock by a trick, a piece of luck and a piece of sheer stupidity on another person’s part. And Abner Hemingway—Abner, with his 50 years of dignity and his gray hair above his temples—well—Abner was at that moment squatting on his heels amidst a circle of cannibals—the Ogwali tribe—the last surviving specimens in this world of that sort of thing—in the highest mountains of New Guinea—in the very heart of Black Papua—whither a 19-year old bleached-blonde golddigger of Sheridan, Wyoming, had catapulted him!”