The Lost Prince (10 page)

She did not notice fully, perhaps, the change in her new colleague because she had her mind elsewhere, on her developing correspondence with Arnauld in Vienna and her next big project, ensuring that the young Viennese would end up in Boston.

THE WRONG MAN

J
ust as everything came to a head with the Northern Pacific stock eruption in the spring of 1901, she discovered the truth about Will Honeycutt. It all came to her as an epiphany when she saw the name on a document in her fiancé Frank Burden’s office that shook her to her core. Nothing was going to be easy. She had already learned that.

“Who is this?” she said to Frank, pointing to the name in the description of a stock transaction in the portfolio of her family holdings that his bank managed.

Frank, not detecting anything of great significance in her question, answered quickly. “He’s the bank’s man in Chicago,” he said. “He’s a brilliant fellow and knows everything about commodities and bonds.”

“Is he from Boston?”

“He grew up here, in Milton, and went to Harvard. His whole family has gone to Harvard. He goes by Williams.”

“Williams Honeycutt,” she said dumbly, running it all through her mind. “Does anyone call him Will Honeycutt?”

“I suppose so. I’ve never heard it though.”

“And he lives here?”

“No, he lives and works in Chicago. He moved out there for the bank. We’re trying to get him to come back.”

“May I keep this?” she said, holding the stock transaction document. “I’d like to read it.”

“Pretty dry stuff,” Frank said. “I doubt you’d find anything you can understand in it. It’s all financial terms, you know.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “I’d like to get to know this T. Williams Honeycutt of yours.”

The shocking discovery came at the same moment when the man from Loeb and Sons had telegraphed with the warning, as she had asked. There had been the anticipated sudden movement in the Northern Pacific stock, and she thought,
This is it. The time has come.
She tried to get in touch with Will Honeycutt, but he was nowhere to be found.
What a time to go missing,
she thought, with little charity.

“When that stock begins to move,” she had told him just a week before, “you had better be there in person. When the warning comes, you go immediately. I will follow when you think it right. I’ll depend on you.” And now the warning from New York had come, and her colleague had disappeared. And there seemed to be no way to contact him. She would have to go herself.

She had held back uneasy feelings about Will ever since the wildness of his bucket-shop obsessions, or from the very start, she would have to admit now. He was a “strange fellow,” as William James said, “rather bereft of social grace.” And now there was the entry of this second T. Williams Honeycutt, one far better suited for the task she had in mind and probably much easier to get along with. Things were very far from settled in her world, and she intended to do something about it, as soon as she found him.

Now, all the way to New York City on the train herself, she kept looking down at the paper Frank had given her, and the name. And once again, the old question returned: Should she have acted or waited for events to unfold? There was a second T. Williams Honeycutt, one already well versed in the stock market, brilliant, from a Harvard family, probably a relative of her Will’s, one he had known well, from birth. Had she waited, perhaps that young man would have come to her. By stepping in early and recruiting the Ted Honeycutt from William James’s experience, she had forced matters and had caused the error. Had she been patient and waited, things would have turned out differently.

Will Honeycutt has known all along,
she said to herself, as she fumed inwardly, looking out the train window as Connecticut farmland rolled past.
The man, this second T. Williams Honeycutt, was his cousin, after all.
That is what really irked her. She would confront him as soon as she got
to New York, and demand an explanation, if she could find him. And she was pretty sure what the outcome was going to be. It was in no way good. Left alone again, she struggled now to get command in her mind of at least the situation with Northern Pacific.

The railroad company’s stock where, per instructions from the page in the journal, Eleanor had placed all her funds had been in decline. As a result Will Honeycutt—now at the peak of his bucket-shop trading frenzy—was beginning to feel the investment was a disaster and worse, a product of his employer’s total whimsy. The Hyperion Fund, over which he, with his new “expertise” in the market, was supposed to have some oversight, was now invested solely in that one commodity, a large mistake, as any stock speculator knew. Eleanor insisted on holding tight, and losing value by the week.

Will had broached the subject of reconsidering. “I suppose it would do no good,” he said, aware of Eleanor’s intransigence on certain subjects, “to try to talk you out of what looks like a very unwise investment and into moving at least part of your investment to something with more promise.”

“You are correct,” she said without flinching. “It would do no good. And it is
our
investment.”

“
Our
investment,” he said. “And it would do no good?”

“It would do no good, Mr. Honeycutt. Our monies are exactly where they should be.”

“I thought as much.”

“You are becoming quite confident with analysis of the market, I see. That is very good.”

“I am coming along, I guess you would say. And I know enough to know it is not wise to have all eggs in one basket, even if they are good eggs, which these of Northern Pacific are not.”

“My dear Mr. Honeycutt, I know your concern and your desire to move our investments about. We will hold. You will just have to trust me. From time to time, you will just have to do that. But this one time I will tell you this: If our position has not at least doubled within the year, I will grant you any wish you want.”

“Any wish?” he said. “My, you seem very confident.”

“Any wish,” Eleanor replied. “And, yes, you are correct in your assessment. About some things, I am supremely confident.”

And Will Honeycutt could only shake his head in disbelief.

And then the call had come from Loeb and Sons that the stock had begun to move. “You will have to be in New York City, I fear,” she had said to Will in that early May of 1901. They had been working together for over a year. “It might be for only a short time. We shall have to move quickly.” From the time of their purchase they had placed the full amount of Northern Pacific stock in the hands of the Loeb investment house, and Eleanor knew that if they made known their intention to sell the whole bundle at five hundred, the good investment bankers would have thought them stark raving mad, but she wished them to be forewarned. If there was any unusual movement, she wished to be informed immediately. Hence the telegram on that May morning when Will Honeycutt was nowhere to be found.

Will Honeycutt had been incredulous when she told him the preposterous idea of holding out for the high figure. “But Northern Pacific started at thirty-five,” he had said. “It is a decline from fifty when we bought. Five hundred is ten times what we paid for those holdings six months ago.”

“That is correct,” Eleanor said with finality, seeing no reason for further explanation. She looked at him for a moment. “And you will keep our strategy confidential.”

“Do you think I have learned nothing?” Honeycutt said blankly. “I tell no one anything.”

“Good,” Eleanor said. “I shall hold to my faith in you.” The fewer people who knew of her foreknowledge the better, she knew. Because of its volatile nature, her information derived from the journal must be kept secret.

Now, in Will Honeycutt’s absence, having no idea where he was, she would have to be in New York herself. She would have to be present when and if the stock prices began to rise as the journal foretold, and she had just learned of the other T. Williams Honeycutt, a disturbing discovery that was going to require a face-to-face confrontation, and action. Perhaps Will had heard of her discovery and fled.

“I will join you at the Loeb offices,” she would have told him had she been able to. He was to introduce her as his secretary, in that world of men. But now, she was forced to travel to New York and represent her holdings herself, alone.

How on earth, she thought on the long train ride, was she ever going to extract herself from this fateful mistake?

When she arrived at the Loeb office on Wall Street, Mr. Loeb Sr.’s secretary welcomed her and said, “They are convening in the conference room.” She walked in and saw two Loeb men standing beside a tall, neatly dressed man of finance she nearly did not recognize. It was her partner, Will Honeycutt.

“We have been here for some time,” one of the Loeb men said. “Mr. Honeycutt is minding the ticker tape for us. We are waiting.”

Will had kept up with the rising action on his own and hustled to New York when he realized what was happening. “I told them to notify you,” he apologized. “I see from your consternation that they neglected to tell you that I was already on the job.” Eleanor was stunned to see him and stunned to see how firmly in charge he was.

Already, when Eleanor arrived at noon, action had begun, and she had no chance to raise her sensitive subject. Will was busy watching the tape and barely greeted her. “I’m glad you are here,” he said. “Something is up. Already this morning we have had ten or twelve inquiries.” And she noticed immediately that there was something very different about his bearing. “I am assuming that you want us to hold.”

“We hold for five hundred,” she said in little more than a whisper, wishing none of the Loeb men to know their outrageous strategy.

“Good,” Will Honeycutt said. “As I suspected. It is already over one hundred, and people are wondering why we don’t sell off at least a part.”

And then it hit.

As with all the specific instructions Eleanor took secretly from her Vienna knowledge, past and future, she would try to investigate ahead of time and determine how the instructed investment would work, how it would end up being the absolute right thing to do. But often there was no clue, and she would just have to go blindly where that knowledge dictated. Such was the case with the Northern Pacific purchase.

From what she could see, the Northern Pacific Railway was to become an important link from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound on the Pacific coast, a northern rival to the great transcontinental railroad completed through Utah and the Sierra Nevada to Sacramento gold country in the
late 1860s. There seemed to be no reason why the stock would suddenly shoot up disproportionately to any other railroad stock. All she knew from a note in the journal was that sometime in early May the fund would sell all its holdings for an unbelievable price.

Suddenly, on that fateful morning, a representative from the House of Morgan approached young Honeycutt quietly and explained that he would buy the entire lot that Hyperion was holding for two hundred dollars a share. She noticed the change in him almost immediately. Something had definitely happened. Will tried his best poker face and reported that he would get back. He had been reading the ticker tape. Privately, he told Eleanor, “It’s gone to high two hundreds, Miss Putnam,” enunciating when she resisted. “That would quadruple the fund.”

“We hold for five hundred,” Will Honeycutt told the Loeb representative calmly.

“But, Mr. Honeycutt—” he began, incredulous. “Would you at least move
some
?”

“Hold it all,” Mr. Honeycutt said, and then, after a pause, he returned to the Morgan man with the answer.

The man’s demeanor immediately turned to fury. He fixed his beady eyes on his obviously inexperienced opponent, questioning his very authority. “Mr. Morgan himself wishes this,” he continued, as if that would be enough.

“We are holding for five hundred,” Will said, staring back at the Morgan man in a long, awkward moment of silence.

“Very well,” the man said. “You can report back to your mystery controller that you will certainly regret this.” He stared for a moment. “Let me ask you something,” he said solemnly.