In 1858, the Lexington-Knoxville Railway passed close enough to Darlington to send off a spur, the primary purpose of which was the transport of coal from the rich Juniper mines. By the end of the century, however, output from the Junipers had fallen to a trickle, and the railbed was left to rot. Darlington was once again in danger of becoming a ghost town. Shops closed. The schoolhouse and Baptist church burned down and were not rebuilt. Town government dwindled and then disappeared. In the end, where once there had been well over a thousand, only a handful remained. Fortunately for the town, one of those was Elton Darling, self-proclaimed descendant of Gault. In 1897, Darling engineered a massive hoax utilizing three pouches of low-grade gold ore, two confederates, and a remarkable ability to seem totally inebriated when stone sober. Rumors of the "Darlington Lode" spread quicky through cities from Chicago to Atlanta, and Darlington acquired an instant citizenry, many of whom stayed on, either out of love for the beauty of the area or out of lack of resources to move elsewhere. Having single-handedly repopulated his town, Elton Darling set about giving it an industry, making use of the area's only readily available resource, the sulfur-rich water of Pinkham's Creek, a tributary of the Cumberland River. In less than a year, with some food coloring smoky-glassed bottles, an attractive label, and an aggressive sales force, the vile water of Pinkham's Creek, uninhabitable by even the hardiest fish, had become Darling's Astounding Rejuvenator and Purgator, an elixir alleged effective against conditions ranging from dropsy to baldness. Over the years before his death in 1939, Elton Darling made such changes in his product as the market and times demanded. He also made a modest fortune.
By the time his son, Tyrone, took control of the family enterprises, the rejuvenator had been replaced by a variety of vitamin and mineral supplements, and Darlington Pharmaceuticals was being traded, though lightly, on the American Stock Exchange. Far from being the visionary and businessman his father was, lyrone Darling spent much of his time, and most of his money, on a string of unsuccessful thoroughbreds and a succession of city women, each of whom was more adept at consuming money than he was at making it. Darling's solution to his diminishing cash reserves was simple, issue more stock and sell off some of his own. In the fall of 1947, at the annual Darlington stockholders meeting, the ax fell. Intermediaries for a man spoken of only as Mr. Redding produced proof of ownership of more than fifty-three percent of Darlington Pharmaceuticals and in a matter of less than a day, took over the company on behalf of Mr. Cyrus Redding of New York, New York. Stripped of influence, as well as of a source of income, Darling tried to negotiate. To the best of anyone's knowledge, he had not succeeded even in meeting with the man who had replaced him when, on the following New Year's Eve, he and a woman named Densmore were shot to death by the woman's husband. Thus it was that the fortunes of Darlington, Kentucky became tied to a reclusive genius named Cyrus Redding and to the pharmaceutical house that now bore his name. In the years to follow, there were a number of minor successes, Terranyd, a concentrated tetracycline, Rebac, an over-the-counter antacid, and several cold preparations.
Redding Pharmaceuticals doubled in size, and the population of Darlington grew proportionally. Then, in the early 1960s, Redding obtained exclusive U. S. patents to several successful European products, including the tranquilizer that was, following a blitzkrieg promotional campaign, to become one of the most prescribed pharmaceuticals in the world. A year after release of the drug, Darlington was selected an All american City, and shortly after that, the Darlington Dukes minor league baseball franchise was established.
Marilyn Wyman sipped at a cup of tea and risked a minute glance at her gold Rolex. Ten minutes to go and another Second Thursday would be over for Redding's director of public relations. From across his enormous desk, Cyrus Redding appraised her through his Coke-bottle spectacles.
"There are exactly eight minutes and thirty seconds to go, Marilyn," he said. "Does that help?"
"I'm sorry, sir." Wyman, in her midfifties, had been with the company longer than had any other department head. Still, no one had ever heard her refer to her employer as anything other than Mr. Redding or, to his face, sir. She had close-cut gray-brown hair and a sophisticated sensuality that she used with consummate skill in dealing with media representatives of both sexes. "We have one final piece of business. No small piece, either. It's Arthgard."
"I thought it had been taken off the market."
"In England it has, but not yet here. It has been only eight weeks since we released it and already it is in the top forty in volume and the top twenty-five in actual dollar return."
"That's a shame. The feedback I've gotten from pharmacists and patients has been excellent, too. Still, the British have proven it responsible for how many deaths so far, sixty?"
"Eighty-five, actually."
"Eighty-five." Reflexively, Wyman shuddered. Arthgard had been released to the American market almost immediately after the patent had been acquired by Reddinz. Though she had no way of knowing how it had been accomplished, the FDA-required testing periods, both laboratory and clinical, seemed to have been circumvented. It was not her place to ask about such things. Testing was the provinoe of Arlen Paquette, and the exchange of information between department heads was not only frowned upon by Redding but, in most cases, forbidden. "Well, we still have Lapsol and Carmalon, " she said. "The figures I looked at yesterday showed them both in the top ten of antiarthritic preparations. I'll write a press release announcing the suspension of our Arthgard production and then see what I can do to remind the public about both of those other products."
"You will do no such thing, Marilyn."
"Pardon?"
Redding pulled a computer printout from a file on his desk. "Do you have any idea how many millions it cost us to buy the Arthgard patent, test the product, go into production, advertise, get samples out to physicians, and finally distribute the product to pharmacies and hospitals? Correction, Miss Wyman. Not how many millions-how many tens of millions? " Marilyn Wyman shook her head. Redding continued. "The projections I have here say that, at our present rate of increase in sales, the product would have to stay on the market for another ten weeks just for us to break even. That is where you will be concentrating your efforts."
"But…" Redding's icy look made it clear that there was to be no dialogue on the matter. She stared down at the toes of her two-hundred-dollar Ferragamo pumps. "Yes, sir."
"I've got some preliminary data from that survey firm you contracted with showing that less than forty percent of physicians and less than ten percent of consumers are even aware of what's going on in England. I want those numbers to stay in that ball park for the next ten weeks."
"But…"
"Dammit, I am not looking for buts. I am looking for ten weeks of sales so that we can get our ass out of this product without having it burned off. Our legislative liaison will do his job with the FDA. Now if you want to give me buts, I'll find a PR person who does her job.
And need I remind you that her first job will be to do something creative with that M. Wyman file I have locked away?"
Wyman bit at her lower lip and nodded. It had been several years since Redding had mentioned the collection of photographs, telephone conversations, and recordings from the company hotel suite she had vacationed in at Acapulco. Beneath her expertly applied makeup, she was ashen. Redding, seeing the capitulation in her eyes, softened. "Marilyn, listen. You do your part. I promise that if there's any trouble on this side of the Atlantic with Arthgard, we'll pull it immediately. Okay?