“I’m thinking about selling a block.”
“How large a block?” William asked, a little uneasily.
“Pretty large,” said Harvard. Joining them at the table, he looked steadily at each brother in turn. “In fact, all I’ve got left.”
The brothers shook their heads in unison. “James, James, James,” said John with a sigh. “Why do you let yourself do these things?”
“What you’re really asking is why I’m not like you and Willie — excuse me, I mean William. Can’t call a chief executive officer Willie.” Harvard took a quick sip of coffee, burning his tongue slightly. “I don’t know why I’m not like you two, John. But I’m not. Maybe you two got all the good genes in the family; maybe there weren’t any left for me.”
“That’s nonsense and you know it,” snapped William. “You’re every bit as capable and competent as we are. If you’d just make an effort to control that damned gambling habit!”
“I have made an effort!” Harvard snapped back. “I’ve made a number of efforts. I just — I can’t seem to resist it. The turn of a card, the spin of a wheel, pitch of a baseball, two men in the ring, a new filly on a fast track.” He leaned forward on the table, a sudden urgency in his expression. “It’s like being in love with a woman you know is no good for you. She’s the worst thing that can ever happen to you, and the blackest day of your life was the day you met her. But you’ve got to have her — no matter what the consequences.” Sighing quietly, he sat back. “Do you want the stock?”
“James, let us make you an interest-free loan so that you won’t relinquish part-ownership of the mills,” suggested William. But Harvard was already shaking his head.
“No. I want out, Willie. If I’m going to ruin my life, I want to do it with my own money. Thanks anyway.” He turned to John. “Do you want the stock?”
“Of course,” said the elder brother. “We never want family stock sold to outsiders. I’ll take half and William will take half. Are you sure you want to sell all you’ve got left?”
“Yes. What’ll it come to, roughly?”
William took a wafer-thin calculator from his vest pocket and began entering figures. “If I recall correctly, you have seven thousand shares left. At the current market value of fifty-one, it comes to three hundred fifty-seven thousand.”
Harvard nodded slowly. After he deposited a hundred fifty-six thousand to cover the check he had written earlier, he would have just over two hundred thousand left. Rising from the table, he forced himself to keep his shoulders back and chin up. “Can you draw up the transfer today?”
“Of course, Jim. I’ll have everything ready by noon in our Loop office.”
The servants began bringing breakfast to his two brothers, so Harvard excused himself and walked through the mansion to his own small wing and into his bedroom. Getting down his matched Hartmann luggage, he began to bring clothes out of his closet to pack. All the time he was thinking: Where shall I go with the two hundred thousand I have left? The names of cities flashed into his mind. London. Monte Carlo. Nassau. Las Vegas.
He smiled to himself. Why not decide by chance? From a desk drawer in his adjoining study, he took a deck of his personal, high-quality, monogrammed playing cards, leather encased. Without sitting down, he began to deal the cards one by one, facedown, into four talons, or stacks. Mentally, he designated the talons alphabetically, from left to right, as Las Vegas, London, Monte Carlo, and Nassau. When each talon had thirteen cards in it, he began turning them up, one at a time across the board. Ace of spades takes it, he decided.
The ace of spades showed up on talon number three. Monte Carlo.
Harvard returned to his bedroom and resumed packing.
At six that evening, Harvard was comfortably settled in a first-class seat on an Air France 747 about to depart Chicago’s O’Hare Airport for Nice, France. In a zippered pocket of the carry-on bag at his feet was a certified cashier’s check for $201,000 — the last of what had once been a considerable inheritance and interest in Harvard Mills.
Sipping a martini before takeoff, Harvard became aware of a whip-thin woman with burnished red hair who entered the cabin with a group of several others, all taking seats in a section across the aisle from him. The redhead was vaguely familiar but he could not quite place her. She was expensively dressed in an Eric Bergere pantsuit for traveling, and had on a pair of Ferragamo boots which she unzipped and removed as soon as she sat down directly across from Harvard. He turned his attention away from her, but presently became aware that she was staring at him.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but haven’t we met?”
“That’s supposed to be the man’s line,” Harvard said, looking over at her again.
She shrugged. “Okay, you use it.”
Suppressing a smile, Harvard said, “Excuse me, but haven’t we met?”
Tilting her chin up slightly, she looked down her nose at him and replied aloofly, “I can’t imagine where.” Then she laughed a throaty laugh. “You’re James Harvard, aren’t you? I’m Adriana Marshall—”
“Of course,” said Harvard. “Henry Marshall’s daughter. Our fathers were friends. You and your family were at some charity event at our place five or six years ago.”
“Yes. It was for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, I think.” She paused a beat, then said, “We were all terribly sorry to hear about your father’s heart attack.”
“That’s kind of you. Your parents are well, I trust.”
“After a fashion,” Adriana said, raising one eyebrow. “They’re divorced. Mother is in Buenos Aires with some lothario she met in San Juan last year. Father is in robust good health, still single-handedly running Marshall Chemicals, which, as I’m sure you know, is the oldest and most reliable manufacturer of household cleaning products in America. When you use a Marshall product, you help stamp out grime.”
“I use them all, faithfully, every day,” Harvard assured her.
A cabin attendant brought Adriana a cocktail and she and Harvard touched glasses across the aisle. “Are you on your way to the film festival?” she asked.
“Film festival? What film festival?”
“The Monaco Film Festival, which you obviously aren’t attending.”
“No,” Harvard replied, frowning slightly. “I didn’t even realize it was being held.”
A tall man, handsome except for a somewhat slack jaw, came up and said, “Adriana, darling, come on back here. There’s a vacant seat and Buffy’s getting up a trivia contest.”
“Oh, good,” Adriana said, “I love trivia.” With her cocktail, and in her stockinged feet, she started down the aisle. “Join us if you like, James,” she invited over her shoulder.
“Perhaps later,” Harvard said, forcing a smile. Damn, he thought. A stupid film festival. If he had known that was going on, he would have chosen some other place to go to gamble. Instinctively, he hated crowds, hated people standing too close to him, casually brushing up against him. He was convinced that it brought bad luck, and spread germs besides. He made up his mind that if the casino was uncomfortably crowded, he would go on to London and the always tranquil private gaming clubs there.
As he sat finishing his martini, Harvard thought about Adriana Marshall. She had a reputation for being fiercely independent, and was completely liberated. Harvard knew of two serious affairs in which she had been involved, both of which supposedly cost her father considerable sums, and there had been a rumor several years earlier about an abortion. Adriana’s upbringing, like his own, had been the finest: finishing school in Virginia, college in Switzerland, art studies in France. In spite of it all, she managed to become involved with chauffeurs, gigolos, and professional rebels of various persuasions. Here she was now, traveling with a group of obviously idle rich, with nothing better to do than take in a foreign film festival.