Douglas Lippincott, president of the Lippincott Mercantile Bank, foreclosed on corporations. Douglas Lippincott was an investment banker. When he lowered the boom, individual families weren't put out on the street. Instead, entire towns went on welfare.
As a result of foreclosures, Douglas Lippincott presided over a multinational corporation that cut timber in Alaska, raised minks in California, processed shale in Kentucky, and made money everywhere else.
He was seated in his plush office sixty floors above lower Manhattan, contemplating his moral superiority over his widow-abusing forebears, when there came a crashing noise outside his office. Lippincott, of the Providence Lippincotts, was old-money. He loved old things. Although the Lippincott Building was barely a decade old, he eschewed the glass and steel of its ultramodern exterior for maple paneling and a solid oak door which shielded him from the eyes of his underlings. Thus he could not see what had caused the commotion, any more than his employees could see into the sanctity of his well-appointed office.
Lippincott ignored the crashing sound. If it was important, he knew, one of his assistants would bring it to his attention. He went back to picking his nose with a personalized silver tool handed down through generations of Lippincotts so they needn't sully their hands pursuing everyday personal hygiene.
The crash sound was repeated, causing Lippincott to cut his septum with the scraping edge.
"Blast it!" he said, reaching for a silk handkerchief to stem the blood.
He forgot all about the handkerchief and his nose when an office worker opened the door with his skull. The door banged open and seemed to catapult the man into a bookcase. The books came out of the shelves like quarters from a slot machine. They struck the man on the head. Lippincott winced. Not for the man, but for the books, which had been in the Lippincott family since before the Revolution. Many were first editions.
Lippincott reached for his intercom and then forgot about that too.
His widening eyes went to the towering hairy apparition that lumbered into the room. It stood upright on two hind legs and had a bear's head mounted on its forehead. The face under the bear's head was enveloped in a bearskin helmet with two ragged holes excavated to expose the eyes.
The eyes were mean.
"Who . . .what are you?" Douglas Lippincott demanded uncertainly. Miss Manners had never, to his knowledge, written on the subject of conversing with bears.
"You've heard of the bear market?" the apparition rumbled.
"Of course."
"I'm the bear."
"Is this a joke?"
"I wish."
"Come again?"
"Your company brought up over nine thousand shares of Global," the bear said, pointing an accusing claw directly at Lippincott.
Lippincott clutched the edge of his desk. He got a grip on his voice before he spoke again. "Possibly. What of it?" he asked quietly, his eyes going to the door. He hoped that some brave loan officer would rush to his rescue, but all he saw were frightened sheep running for the doors. A few did not run. They sprawled across untidy desktops. A head stared out from over the top drawer of a file. Lippincott wondered where the rest of the man was.
"Someone is up to no good," the bear said. "And I'd better not learn it was you."
The bear turned to go.
"Wait," Lippincott called after him. "Is that all?"
"That's the message."
"This is most unbusinesslike," Lippincott said. "What is your name?"
"Just call me Bear-Man, cleaner-upper of Wall Street."
"I don't suppose you have a card?"
"Thanks for reminding me," the bear said, lumbering back into the office. He reached up and yanked a bear tooth off his chest shield. He clapped it into Lippincott's open palm.
"What is this?" Lippincott demanded, looking down at the discolored tooth.
"A warning tooth. Don't screw up or you get the next one through the brain. Bear-Man warns only once."
Lippincott looked up at the retreating creature and demanded, "My God, man, couldn't you have just faxed this?"
Bear-Man didn't answer.
Douglas Lippincott closed the door to his office and waited an hour. When no one came in or called, he ventured out again. The outer office was empty, except for poor Peabody, whose head was sticking up from a file cabinet. His eyes were closed.
Lippincott approached carefully, and hearing the sounds of breathing, went in search of a glass of water. He came out of his private washroom carrying a full glass and threw it in Peabody's face.
Presently Peabody opened his eyes. They blinked, focused, and then went stark.
"Is it gone?" Peabody demanded anxiously.
The file cabinet shook with his agitation, which reassured Lippincott that Peabody was not merely a disembodied head in a drawer. He was worried about the company insurance premiums.
"What happened?" Lippincott demanded.
"The . . . the bear . . ." Peabody said shakily.
"Yes, yes, I saw it. Don't fret. It's gone now."
"Thank God," Peabody said. "I tried to stop it, sir, but it insisted upon seeing you."
"Did it state its business?"
"It refused. And when I told it to make an appointment, it . . . well, you can see for yourself what happened."
"Precisely how did you get into this . . . predicament?" Lippincott demanded curiously. He pulled on the top drawer and looked in. Somehow, Peabody's body had been forced into the cabinet, so that the lower drawers had been forced out to make room for his imprisoned body.
"I don't recall, Mr. Lippincott. One moment I was speaking to that . . . bear. The next I was . . . stuck. I don't remember any intervening action."
"I see," Lippincott said. "I suppose we shall have to get you out of this."
"I can't move my arms or legs."
"I'm afraid a blowtorch may be the only solution," Lippincott said. "Wait here."
"Where else would I wait?" Peabody said without a hint of humor or irony. His eyes still stared anxiously. He had never been filed bodily before.
DeGoone Slickens had made his money in Texas oil. With a two-hundred-dollar stake he had started an oil company in partnership with two other wildcatters. Slickens waited until the company started to get into debt-as all new companies invariably did-before he announced that he had been diagnosed as suffering from liver cancer.