New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [313]
The great man might despise him, but at least, William had been able to reflect, he had managed to prosper pretty well in recent years. The market had mostly been rising. The trust had made a fortune; the brokerage house, too. If you were making money, then you must be doing something right. They took in ever more money, pledged against the value of the stocks they held, and speculated some more with that. The higher you could build the house of cards, the better you did. Obviously.
He’d still been riding high when he read about the new Rolls-Royce. But even then, the cracks in the system had begun to appear. That spring, when the market had been shaken and credit had been tight, a number of the biggest men in American industry had come together to discuss the situation. Coal was represented by Frick, railroads by Harriman, oil by Rockefeller, banking by Schiff and the Morgans. They’d wanted to form a consortium to support the market. Jack Morgan had agreed, but old Pierpont had not, and the proposal had come to nothing.
All through the summer, William had watched as the market dithered, hoping it would strengthen, or at least send him a sign. Wasn’t the market supposed to be wise? So people said, but William wasn’t so sure. Sometimes, it seemed to him, the market was nothing more than an aggregate of individuals, like a great school of fish, feeding upon small hopes until some fright causes them all to swerve together. Amid all this doubt, the thought of the Rolls-Royce on its way to him had kept his spirits up. And when it was delivered, the solid magnificence of the thing seemed to say: No man who owns a Rolls-Royce can be in trouble.
How ironic then that the rotten timber that was about to bring the whole market crashing down should be the one with the most splendid name.
The Knickerbocker Trust. By the sound of its name, you’d have thought it was as solid as a rock. Knickerbocker meant tradition, his father’s club, old money, old values. Well, by noon today, the word on the street was that the Knickerbocker was in trouble.
At three o’clock, the partners of William’s trust had reached a terrible conclusion.
“If the Knickerbocker goes, it’ll start a panic. Everyone’ll want their money. The trusts will start going down like ninepins. Ours included.” And that would only be the start of things.
After the meeting, he’d gone into his office and closed the door. He’d taken a piece of paper and tried to figure things out. What did he owe? He really wasn’t sure, but more than he had. And what was he going to do about it? Nothing he could do.
Pray.
That weekend, on Saturday, William Master took his wife and children out in the Rolls. They drove up into Westchester County. It was quite warm, and with the fall leaves turning to red and gold, it was a beautiful drive. They went up to Bedford, and had a picnic there. A perfect day.
On Sunday, of course, they all went to church. The service was all right. A bit insipid. The vicar was away, down at a liturgical conference in Virginia with the great men of the Episcopal Church, including J. P. Morgan. The curate gave a sermon on Hope.
That evening, he read to his children. For no particular reason, he chose the tale of Rip Van Winkle. As they came to the place where the ghostly Dutchmen play ninepins in the mountains over the Hudson, he could not help thinking of the terrible crash of financial ninepins that was probably coming on Wall Street, but his face gave nothing away. Let his family remember one last, happy weekend.
And that night, when Rose remarked that two of the wives she’d met at church had whispered that there was likely