The Lost Prince (8 page)

She had lived her entire life in the Acorn Street house, as had her mother before her, and now that her mother and father were both gone, sole ownership had fallen to her and she was supposed to live out her whole life there. She was shocked now to think how easy it had been to sign the deed over to Mr. Lowenstein’s bank and to put the fate of the family house into the hands of an impersonal third party. That was what risk was all about, she was now learning painfully as she reviewed her decisions.

And one more troubling thought visited her on that night of despair, an old thought, one she had confronted before. Her father had been a weak man and had never gotten over the death of her mother in Eleanor’s eighth year. Because he had been a man of the cloth and a member of one of Boston’s oldest families, no one had realized just how much his life and his promise had collapsed when he lost that great strength that marriage and his wife had provided him. At one point, when Eleanor’s mother was alive and entertaining so beautifully in this very living room, her father had been considered one of the shining lights of the New England clergy, perhaps a future bishop of Massachusetts, a future Phillips Brooks, some said. But then the bottom had dropped out of his life and the decline began, and people wondered if he could keep his position as rector, let alone ascend to a bishopric. But he had taken to drink and not to financial profligacy. He had ruined family life, but not family finances. Her father
had been weak, but he had never compromised that family legacy, his own or her mother’s, and when he died, during Eleanor’s junior year at Smith College, the title to the property and the other family holdings remained free and clear, as they had since her mother’s great-grandparents’ day.

As a compensation perhaps, without a strong father model inside her, she had developed a steely determination of her own, one that served her well in moments of crisis, but one that also stepped in when caution would have been a better course, and pushed her resolutely into action. How much better it would have been in this case to use that cautious part of herself in this moment of decision, to have thought things through the way her mother might have. Now, as many times before, too late, she asked herself, what would Mother have done? She had seen what needed to be done and pursued the solution with great inner strength, a kind of blind courage, and that courage, strong as it was, also had a dark consequence that now was going to lead to her ruination.

A more cautious person, a timid person even, would not find herself in this situation, she kept saying to herself. A more cautious person would not have put Acorn Street at risk.

“You will spend your entire life here,” her father had said to her in one of their last conversations. “This house is a fine old Boston landmark,” he said. “And now you will be its center, raising your family here, as you have been raised, making your mother and her forebears proud.”

That was Acorn Street. And now, because of her fevered devotion to the imperious mandate of the journal she had brought back from her fateful encounters in Vienna, she had risked all and had lost her beloved childhood home.

It was during that night of torment that the dream first came to Eleanor. She was alone on a cold and windswept promontory, a high cliff on the edge of a raging ocean. She was drawn to the edge by a distant figure in white, and as she approached, she was aware of the figure falling far below into what now appeared as a bottomless void. Trying to steady herself, digging her fingers into the muddy surface, Eleanor felt herself slipping as she stared into the dark abyss. It was always at this point that she would waken, in a cold sweat, fighting for breath.

She bore the news secretly and alone, waiting for the axe to fall and for the word to come from Cincinnati to her bank, when she would have to tell Frank Burden and the world that she had lost her family home. She
put the decision off for days, and then finally one morning, after a sleepless night, she decided she must act. And it was that very morning that she read shocking news in a small column in the
Boston Herald
. At first she could not believe what she saw, that a circumstance so central in her life would appear in her Boston newspaper, but there it was: Homer Smith, prominent Cincinnati businessman, a Harvard alumnus, it turned out, was dead, felled by a heart attack in his office, and now Procter and Gamble, the greedy giant, spread its tentacles over Cincinnati Soap and Candle Company and, in the old patriarch’s view, threatened to suck out its life. In the ensuing takeover attempt, which the family had enough sense to ward off, one of Homer Smith’s nephews seemed to take control. Eleanor did not travel to Cincinnati this time, but spoke to the young man on the telephone.

“What have you planned?” she said when he asked about her holdings.

“We have contacted Colgate,” he said. “They are definitely interested.”

That action on the family’s part set up a bidding war between the two companies. Procter and Gamble acted aggressively and hastily, “before the Colgate folks could even put together an offer,” the nephew said in the second phone call. “They are offering a price that will double in value our holdings in stock. They very much want Workman’s Soap.”

“And what do you plan to do?” Eleanor asked.

“Why, we’ll sell, of course,” the nephew said in a burst, not acknowledging any humor in her question. And then he paused. “I hope that is satisfactory with you.”

“Thank you for inquiring,” she said, registering fully only much later the mature consideration in his tone. “And, yes, it is satisfactory with me.”

After the packet arrived special delivery from Cincinnati, Eleanor made the trip back to Mr. Lowenstein’s office on Boylston Street. “I trust that I can pay you in Procter and Gamble stock,” she said.

“Oh my, yes,” the kindly banker said. “That stock is like gold right now.”

Eleanor flashed him a look of concern. “For a moment, it looked as if my investment was going to fail, and I was going to lose my family home.”

Mr. Lowenstein gave her a long appraising look, then smiled. “Oh my, no. We would have found a way. This bank would never have allowed you to lose your family home.”

“That is comforting to know.”

“We would have thought of some solution. Our bank was glad to be of service in your enterprise.”

So, all the borrowed monies paid back, her holdings now increased not the tenfold caused by the loan, but twentyfold, it became clear that Eleanor, barely knowing what she was doing, had made the purchase of a lifetime and was able to set up the Hyperion Fund as a more-than-significant financial entity.

What she did not realize fully at the time was that she had just discovered, quite by accident, the explosive power—and the risk—of buying on margin.

Of course, she was able to tell none of this to her fiancé, Frank Burden, nor was she able to convey in any way to him her very satisfactory last conversation with the moneylender.

She had accomplished, with the infusion of a good deal of luck, her first two assignments, the selling of Prince Rudolf’s ring and the purchase of stock in Cincinnati Soap and Candle Company, at an extraordinary moment in the company’s history. The deep satisfaction from this mostly accidental transaction would revisit her, along with the apprehension, from time to time for the rest of her life.
What if I had not acted?
she would think. At one moment, she seemed a puppet, being pulled this way and that by fate and expectations, and the next she seemed to be acting totally on her own initiative, living by her wits, the mistress of her own drama. Was it all predetermined, some massive fate controlling all the details, or did she bear the heavy responsibility of causing events, or having to save the day? Was it, after all, completely up to her? One thing was for certain: She wished never again to make the journey alone.

The assurance that she would not have to came shortly after her return from Cincinnati after the Procter and Gamble buyout, and from a very unlikely quarter. It came in the form of Harvard physics student Ted Honeycutt, whom she judged from the start, in spite of the very specific instructions, an unlikely savior. It was he who arranged to meet with her again.

“You followed the fate of that Cincinnati Soap and Candle stock?” she said to Ted Honeycutt back in Boston.

“I did,” he said. “It captured my attention. I observed from my distance
that it doubled in value.” There seemed to be a new curiosity in him, but his manner remained brusque.

“Are you sorry that you did not accept a year’s salary in that stock when it was offered?”

“I am a scientist, but even I deduced that I would have made a bundle,” he said. “I have come to hear more about what you are offering.”

“What we will say here must be highly confidential.”

“Of course,” he said. “I am very good with secrets, Miss Putnam. I don’t talk to people.”

“So I have heard. That is one of the qualities I discovered in seeking you out.”

“I want to know what you are looking for.”

“I believe that I told you in our first meeting. With the purchase of this stock, in significant number, I need to add, I have created a fund. I will be making other purchases over the years, and the fund will grow in importance and value. I will need someone intelligent and discreet and efficient to manage it. I wish for you to be that person.”

“And after our first disagreeable meeting you still wish that?”

“I didn’t find our first meeting disagreeable,” she said. She was not being completely honest. “I like honesty.”

For a second time, he asked, “What makes you so certain that I am the man you want?”

Unable to explain the real reason for her certainty, Eleanor said this time, “Mr. Honeycutt, I am, as I have explained, highly intuitive, a good judge of character.”

“Well, I am leaning toward coming on board,” he said quickly.

“I do not want
leaning,
Mr. Honeycutt. I wish to have a decision.”

Ted Honeycutt paused for a moment, looking away, and then his eyes came to hers. “You are very persistent, Miss Putnam.”

“I know what I want,” she said, “and I try very hard to get it.”

“And…,” he said with his head down. “There is something I need to make perfectly clear.”

“And what would that be?”

He paused for a moment, then burst forth. “You are a very attractive woman, Miss Putnam, and I know that you are accustomed to getting your way. But I need to make it clear that attractiveness has no effect on me. I am considering joining you because of the offer, nothing else.
I wish to have what you would call a business relationship, nothing more.”

At first Eleanor said nothing. Thinking back on it, if there was one moment in which she thought she could not go on, this was it. Later she would admit that she found his brashness refreshing and a departure from Boston propriety, but for now she was aware simply that she had no choice. She took a deep breath. “A business relationship is what I am looking for, Mr. Honeycutt. Nothing more. But, my, you are very direct.”

“I think you will find that will always be the case.” He looked her in the eye. “I think you will find me a rather blunt fellow,” he said. “I am not exactly like others in that regard.”

“My goodness,” Eleanor said, both stunned and attracted by the frankness. “We must be cautious here to keep things honest, Mr. Honeycutt, even if they seem blunt. We must be clearheaded, dedicated, discreet, efficient. But we must be able to trust each other.” She paused to be sure that he was taking her seriously.

For a moment, he looked as if he might wish to explain. “You will find me very trustworthy,” he said blankly. “Trustworthiness is one of my strongest attributes.”

“You understand that I will be asking you to pursue certain very specific investments, and that your job will be to do exactly what I say.”

“I understand that.”

“And as a part of your compensation you will always have ten percent of the Hyperion Fund at your disposal to do with as you wish, to use to gain knowledge of how the stock market works.”

“That is very generous.”

“And also essential for your education,” she said, thinking of the discomfort of traveling alone to Cincinnati, reaching out her hand and accepting his. “Now, with regard to that year’s salary you did not accept when first offered—”

“You need not apologize,” he interrupted. “I had my chance, and I did not avail myself.”

“Other opportunities will present themselves. There will be many chances to invest. As I said, you will become a very wealthy man.” She paused. “Now, there is something I do need to give you.” She withdrew from her purse for the second time an envelope. “I can offer this to you now.” She handed it to him.

He opened the envelope and examined its contents carefully, a look of confusion on his face. “It is the year’s salary,” he said, “purchased six months ago.”

“It is,” she said. “Cincinnati Soap and Candle stock purchased back then, in your name. Now worth considerably more. Double, actually. All you need to do is redeem it for the highly valued Procter and Gamble stock.”

“You knew I would say yes. You knew I was about to lose my position here.”