"Take heart," he shouted. "By evening this will be over. Do not let fear rule you. Your jobs are secure. Looncraft, Dymstar d has a bright future, as have you all. We will survive this day."
The moment his voice fell silent, the brokers burst into heartfelt applause. Then, at a gesture from Looncraft, they returned to their phones, faces tight, fingers nervously testing the elasticity of their identical red suspenders. Not for nothing was P. M. Looncraft hailed as the King of Wall Street.
Looncraft marched to his office, his back ramrod straight, his long jaw jutting forward with determination, and glanced briefly over the pile of messages on his desk. None were important. He activated his Telerate screen and gave the current market quotes a brief glance. Global was hovering at fifty-eight and five-eighths. It jumped up, and then down, surprising Looncraft, who had expected a precipitous drop by this time. He wondered if he might have come in too early. He did not wish to subject his delicate nerves to the turmoil of a wildly gyrating stock market. It was enough to call for additional guards to be posted at opening, as a hedge against irate investors who might wish to settle their losses with handguns and other piddling weapons.
Looncraft looked away from the Telerate screen. Global had a long way to go before he needed to act. He picked up the two-star edition of The Wall Street journal, neatly folded beside his telephone, and opened it casually, one eye on the frantic activity on the trading floor, visible through the glass inner-office wall.
An hour later he looked up from the paper and to his surprise, saw that Global was now at fifty-nine and three-eighths. He blinked, grabbed the telephone.
"Ask the floor manager-his name escapes me at the moment-to give me a report on the last hour's worth of GBL activity."
"At once, Mr. Looncraft. And his name is Lawrence."
"Whatever," Looncraft said dismissively. In fact, he knew the name of every employee on the payroll of Looncraft, Dymstar d, right down to the boy who had started working in the mailroom two days before. Some of the firm's best people came up from the mailroom. Looncraft had made it his business to know their names. He subscribed to the ancient superstition-it was actually more than that-that held that the ability to call a person or thing by its right name conferred power over that person or thing.
The intercom beeped.
"Mr. Lawrence on line one, Mr. Looncraft."
"Who?"
"The floor manager."
"Oh, of course." Looncraft pressed line one. "Go ahead."
"Global issues are rebounding from a low of twenty-one and an eighth," Lawrence said crisply.
"Who's buying?"
"DeGoone Slickens, for one."
"What!" Looncraft exploded. "That scoundrel! He wouldn't dare. Who else?"
"Nostrum, Inc., was the first. But others have jumped in."
"Nostrum! Never heard of them."
"I think they're venture capitalists. Their own stock trades on NASDAQ. Do you want me to look into it?"
"Later. Is this a rally, or just a short-term run-up?"
"The entire market seems to be stabilizing. Volume is at five hundred and eighty-nine million shares across the board. I think we're going to pull out of this tailspin. Could be the start of a dead-cat bounce."
"Blast," Looncraft said under his breath.
"Sir?"
"Buy Global," Looncraft snapped. "As much as you can get your hands on. Now. Then find out whatever you can about these Nostrum interlopers."
"Yes, sir."
"Damn," P. M. Looncraft said angrily. "This is the limit." He reached for the telephone, hesitated, and then, thinking that even his vice-chairmanship of the New York Stock Exchange did not exclude him from SEC investigation, moved his caster-wheeled chair to a personal computer on a gunmetal typewriter stand.
He logged on and got an electronic bulletin board. The legend across the top read "MAYFLOWER DESCENDANTS" in ragged block letters. His fingers keyed like twitching spiders.
"Knight to Bishop Two," he keyed. Then he logged off.
Within moments the Telerate screen began to show a dramatic rise in Global's selling price. Looncraft's undertaker's face frowned darkly.
It held that expression well into the afternoon, as the stock market rebounded slowly. Frequent calls from his secretary were met with a curt, "Take a message." Until her voice came over the intercom with even more hesitancy than usual.
"Ronald Johnson to see you, sir."
Looncraft's eyebrows lifted in astonishment.
"Who?" he asked, momentarily taken aback.
"He's one of your floor traders."
"Cheeky sort, isn't he?" Looncraft muttered. Only ten years ago a Wall Street trader would have been beneath his notice. But not these days. The whole financial world had been turned turtle after a decade of leveraged buy-outs and junk bonds.
"Show him in," Looncraft said. He did not say, "Show him in, Miss McLean." It was better if his employees thought he didn't know them by name, as if such minutiae were beneath his lordly notice.
Johnson stepped into Looncraft's spacious office like a nervous poodle. Looncraft silently waved him into a black leather chair and tented his long aristocratic fingers.
Looncraft waited for the young man to sit down, and then looked at Johnson with eyes that invited explanation rather than asked or demanded it. Looncraft had an inkling why a mere floor trader would leave his post at such a hectic time. Johnson handled the Global account.
Ronald Johnson cleared his throat before speaking. He wore the uniform of a broker-striped shirt, red suspenders, and a haircut that reinforced his poodlelike demeanor.
"Mr. Looncraft, sir," he said deferentially, "I realize that I may be out of line asking to speak with you at a time like this, but-"
Looncraft cut him off with a wave of his hand that made his Rolex flash in the late-afternoon sunlight coming through the thirty-fourth-floor window.
"But," the young man continued, "as you may know, I handled the Global transaction, and I'm puzzled by the buying we've done."
"Puzzled? In what way?"
"Sir, we liquidated our Global positions this morning at forty-six. Now we're buying back at fifty-eight. It makes no sense. We'll take punishing losses."
"Oh?" P. M. Looncraft asked, with just the right arching of his right eyebrow. Behind him, portraits of past owners of Looncraft, Dymstar d hung in massive gilt frames that could be considered tasteful only because of their great age. There were no Dymstars or Buttonwoods on the wall. Only Looncrafts. The Looncrafts had forced out the Dymstars and Buttonwoods generations before keeping only their reputations. The Looncrafts looked down with imperious glares, making the young trader in the black leather chair even more nervous than he would have been. Just as P. M. Looncraft knew they would. That was why they hung along the walls of the office: so that wherever a visitor looked, he either stared at a Looncraft-living or dead-or kept his eyes on the floor.
"Yes," the young man said. "I wonder if in the heat of the meltdown-"
"There is no meltdown," Looncraft snapped. "The Dow is rebounding. The system is very resilient. We are merely experiencing a correction."
"Excuse me, sir. You're right, of course. But I couldn't help but wonder if in the excitement, the buy orders weren't miscommunicated."