Read Online All The Way by Charles Williams - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charles Williams
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and he was wasting himself on a piddling law practice. They were attracted to each other from the beginning.
His first venture, in the process of becoming a millionaire in eight years, was a laundromat, and it was she who prodded him into it.
“He defended the owner of the laundromat in a minor damage suit,” she went on. “And got him off with a minimum judgment, but the man was in financial trouble and couldn’t even pay the legal fee in full. I had an idea and went out and surveyed his place. His trouble was location; he was in the wrong end of town, where most of the families had washing machines of their own, and he had a bad parking problem. To the south of town there was a large colored section swarming with children. I located a building that could be leased, and told Harris about it. Because of his father’s connection with the bank, he had no trouble borrowing the money. He bought the man’s machines at a terrific bargain, and moved them. We got a deacon of one of the colored churches to run it, and I kept the books. Eight months later he sold it for a net profit of six thousand dollars.”
They were on their way. Next came a couple of real-estate speculations that paid off to the tune of better than fourteen thousand. By late 1950 she was working for him full time, and the law practice was only a small part of his operations. He was far over-extended and in debt to his ears, but he was growing, right along with the big business boom of the early 1950’s. Chapman’s wife had left him now, and Marian Forsyth and her husband had had several painful and increasingly bitter arguments about her working for him. People were beginning to talk. She refused to quit. The showdown came in less than six months. Forsyth was transferred again.
The choice was hers, and she made it. She told Forsyth she wanted a divorce, and stayed in Thomaston. She was in love with Chapman.
She had no illusions as to what she was letting herself in for. He couldn’t marry her, as long as his wife was alive, and in a small town no matter how discreet they were with the affair everybody was going to know. I thought of the snubs, and frozen stares. They probably didn’t bother her a great deal, I thought—not during the six busy years while she had Chapman and the fascination of the job. But when he jilted her and left her standing alone and naked in the middle of town— That must have been a long, long mile to the city limits.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “A point’s just occurred to me. You’ve got to have a legitimate excuse for going back, or it won’t look right.”
She stopped the tape. “Of course. But I still own my house there. It will take two weeks at least to sell it and put my furnishings in storage in New Orleans. And don’t forget, I won’t arrive there until he’s left for his vacation, which will give it exactly the right touch.”
She was right, of course. It all fitted perfectly, like the stones in an Inca wall. If sheer deadliness could be beautiful, this operation of hers was a masterpiece.
We went on. We finished that roll of tape with a detailed account of how Chapman acquired the rest of his holdings in the next five years and how she’d led him a little at a time into growth stocks in the big bull market from 1950 to 1955, into IBM and Dow Chemical, and Phillips Petroleum, and United Aircraft, and DuPont.
”Always for capital gains,” she went on. “Income wasn’t any good to him any more, not in the tax bracket he was in, or approaching. All those years I’d been studying stocks and the stock market paid off for him. He rode it up all the way. And last summer, when the market showed signs of running out of steam, we began switching to defense holdings—utilities, high-grade preferreds, and bonds. And cash. It’s safe—except from me.”
It was three-thirty when we came to the end of the roll. “Play it back,” she said, already making notes for the next session. I ran it. She fired
His first venture, in the process of becoming a millionaire in eight years, was a laundromat, and it was she who prodded him into it.
“He defended the owner of the laundromat in a minor damage suit,” she went on. “And got him off with a minimum judgment, but the man was in financial trouble and couldn’t even pay the legal fee in full. I had an idea and went out and surveyed his place. His trouble was location; he was in the wrong end of town, where most of the families had washing machines of their own, and he had a bad parking problem. To the south of town there was a large colored section swarming with children. I located a building that could be leased, and told Harris about it. Because of his father’s connection with the bank, he had no trouble borrowing the money. He bought the man’s machines at a terrific bargain, and moved them. We got a deacon of one of the colored churches to run it, and I kept the books. Eight months later he sold it for a net profit of six thousand dollars.”
They were on their way. Next came a couple of real-estate speculations that paid off to the tune of better than fourteen thousand. By late 1950 she was working for him full time, and the law practice was only a small part of his operations. He was far over-extended and in debt to his ears, but he was growing, right along with the big business boom of the early 1950’s. Chapman’s wife had left him now, and Marian Forsyth and her husband had had several painful and increasingly bitter arguments about her working for him. People were beginning to talk. She refused to quit. The showdown came in less than six months. Forsyth was transferred again.
The choice was hers, and she made it. She told Forsyth she wanted a divorce, and stayed in Thomaston. She was in love with Chapman.
She had no illusions as to what she was letting herself in for. He couldn’t marry her, as long as his wife was alive, and in a small town no matter how discreet they were with the affair everybody was going to know. I thought of the snubs, and frozen stares. They probably didn’t bother her a great deal, I thought—not during the six busy years while she had Chapman and the fascination of the job. But when he jilted her and left her standing alone and naked in the middle of town— That must have been a long, long mile to the city limits.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “A point’s just occurred to me. You’ve got to have a legitimate excuse for going back, or it won’t look right.”
She stopped the tape. “Of course. But I still own my house there. It will take two weeks at least to sell it and put my furnishings in storage in New Orleans. And don’t forget, I won’t arrive there until he’s left for his vacation, which will give it exactly the right touch.”
She was right, of course. It all fitted perfectly, like the stones in an Inca wall. If sheer deadliness could be beautiful, this operation of hers was a masterpiece.
We went on. We finished that roll of tape with a detailed account of how Chapman acquired the rest of his holdings in the next five years and how she’d led him a little at a time into growth stocks in the big bull market from 1950 to 1955, into IBM and Dow Chemical, and Phillips Petroleum, and United Aircraft, and DuPont.
”Always for capital gains,” she went on. “Income wasn’t any good to him any more, not in the tax bracket he was in, or approaching. All those years I’d been studying stocks and the stock market paid off for him. He rode it up all the way. And last summer, when the market showed signs of running out of steam, we began switching to defense holdings—utilities, high-grade preferreds, and bonds. And cash. It’s safe—except from me.”
It was three-thirty when we came to the end of the roll. “Play it back,” she said, already making notes for the next session. I ran it. She fired
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