Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [23]
Noel Constant did it without genius and without spies.
His system was so idiotically simple that some people can’t understand it, no matter how often it is explained. The people who can’t understand it are people who have to believe, for their own peace of mind, that tremendous wealth can be produced only by tremendous cleverness.
This was Noel Constant’s system:
He took the Gideon Bible that was in his room, and he started with the first sentence in Genesis.
The first sentence in Genesis, as some people may know, is: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Noel Constant wrote the sentence in capital letters, put periods between the letters, divided the letters into pairs, rendering the sentence as follows: "I.N., T.H., E.B., E.G., I.N., N.I., N.G., G.O., D.C., R.E., A.T., E.D., T.H., E.H., E.A., V.E., N.A., N.D., T.H., E.E., A.R., T.H."
And then he looked for corporations with those initials, and bought shares in them. His rule at the beginning was that he would own shares in only one corporation at a time, would invest his whole nest-egg in it, and would sell the instant the value of his shares had doubled.
His very first investment was International Nitrate. After that came Trowbridge Helicopter, Electra Bakeries, Eternity Granite, Indiana Novelty, Norwich Iron, National Gelatin, Granada Oil, Del-Mar Creations, Richmond Electroplating, Anderson Trailer, and Eagle Duplicating.
His program for the next twelve months was this: Trowbridge Helicopter again, ELCO Hoist, Engineering Associates, Vickery Electronics, National Alum, National Dredging, Trowbridge Helicopter again.
The third time he bought Trowbridge Helicopter, he didn’t buy a piece of it. He bought the whole thing— lock, stock, and barrel.
Two days after that, the company landed a long-term Government contract for intercontinental ballistic missiles, a contract that made the company worth, conservatively, fifty-nine million dollars. Noel Constant had bought the company for twenty-two million.
The only executive decision he ever made relative to the company was contained in an order written on a picture postcard of the Wilburhampton Hotel. The card was addressed to the president of the company, telling him to change the name of the company to Galactic Spacecraft, Inc., since the company had long since outgrown both Trowbridges and helicopters.
Small as this exercise of authority was, it was significant, for it showed that Constant had at last become interested in something he owned. And, though his holdings in the firm had more than doubled in value, he did not sell them all. He sold only forty-nine per cent of them.
Thereafter, he continued to take the advice of his Gideon Bible, but he kept big pieces of any firm he really liked.
During his first two years in Room 223 of the Wilburhampton, Noel Constant had only one visitor. That visitor did not know he was rich. His one visitor was a chambermaid named Florence Whitehill, who spent one night out of ten with him for a small, flat fee.
Florence, like everyone else in the Wilburhampton, believed him when he said he was a trader in stamps. Personal hygiene was not Noel Constant’s strongest suit. It was easy to believe that his work brought him into regular contact with mucilage.
The only people who knew how rich he was were employees of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and of the august accounting firm of Clough and Higgins.
Then, after two years, Noel Constant received his second visitor in Room 223.
The second visitor was a thin and watchful blue-eyed man of twenty-two. He engaged Noel Constant’s serious attention by announcing that he was from the United States Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Constant invited the young man into his room, motioned for him to sit on the bed. He himself remained standing.
"They sent a child, did they?" said Noel Constant.
The visitor was not offended.