“As far as you know, no special meeting was called.”
“I expect if it were to be called to vote on the Sunshine Management offer, I’d have been notified.”
Sir Willis’s offices were spacious, paneled in pale wood, decorated with cheerful accents of primary colors. The girl ushered Sam in and pulled the door shut as she left. Sir Willis was a wispy man, white hair, pink skin, bright blue eyes. He seemed no larger than a child behind the absolutely empty expanse of pale desk. And he looked like a child who had been mercilessly scrubbed, carefully dressed, and sent off to a party with many warnings about how to behave.
“Whichever chair might suit you, Mr. Boylston. The straight one or the soft one. You heard Rodgers’s half of our conversation, I believe. This is all something to do with Kayd, poor chap, and Sunshine Management, but you are not associated with either.”
Taking the straight chair, Sam had his first chance to look directly at those old blue eyes. There was nothing childish about them. They had seen a great deal, understood most of what they saw, and had stored away only what seemed of any possible future use.
“I may startle you with what I have to say, Sir Willis.”
“I vaguely recall hearing something which startled me in nineteen fifty-eight, or possibly fifty-nine. As I recall, I rather enjoyed the experience.”
“I have no proof. So I am not making — accusations. I’m going to ask for your advice.”
“I’m most generous with it, Boylston. Generous to a fault. But, of course, the supply is unlimited. Old men have vast stores of it.”
“Did Angus Squires request a special meeting of the Board of Ventures, Limited, to consider another cash offer from Sunshine Management?”
Without hesitation, Sir Willis said, “He did indeed. Last Wednesday. One week ago yesterday. And suggested tomorrow. Friday seems to be the traditional day for Board meetings for some reason which defies logical analysis.”
“There will be such a meeting, sir?”
“My young ladies out there are indignant. They properly notified the other nine members of the Board. Then Squires phoned again on Tuesday, day before yesterday, shortly before noon, and withdrew his request. You understand that any Board member can ask for a special meeting. And so my young ladies had to telephone the other nine chaps and cancel. At least they did not have to inform young Rodgers. They had not gotten around to notifying him.”
“Do you know what Sunshine Management was offering?”
“I believe Squires’s expression was ‘interesting enough to merit consideration.’ ”
“Eight million seven hundred thousand.”
“My word! That would have been a waste of time. I see no reason why we should go lower than ten million five. Kayd knows that was our firm figure.”
“He was confident your Board would accept it.”
“Rather a fool then, what?”
“I don’t think anyone could safely call Bixby Kayd a fool. I did some legal work for him a few years ago. When I finished it up, I refused to do any more work for him. He was a little too tricky for my taste. He believed your Board would accept the offer.”
“But what could give him that impression?”
“I believe, sir, he had a certain amount of faith in the eight hundred thousand dollars he was carrying in cash aboard the Muñeca. It was to be a little private gift, as I understand it, for Mr. Squires and some of the others on your Board.”
Sir Willis Willard placed his little hands palm down against the top of his desk. He stared at the far wall of the room, high above Sam’s head.
“I congratulate you, Boylston. You have indeed startled me. Very cunning indeed. And quite merciless, of course. Aside from myself, three other men are quite well situated, and they are willing — as I would be under other circumstances — to take their losses, recoup a sizeable portion of their investment and put it to work elsewhere. I have voted against them because the other seven, including Squires, are not in a position to absorb such a percentage loss of investment capital. And so, to swing it, Squires would need only to corrupt two other men. It would give him six votes in favor. And it would mean a very serious loss to the other four men I have been trying to protect. Excuse me a moment, please.”
He opened a drawer in his desk, took out a folder, pencil, scratch pad. He turned to a tabulation in the folder, then did some rapid computation. “Certainly!” he said. “Assuming Angus Squires would take four hundred thousand for himself, and give two hundred thousand each to — the two I suspect would be most susceptible, accepting an offer of eight million seven would give Squires nearly a quarter of million of your dollars in profit, and give his friends fifty thousand net profit each. And by getting it all for a total of nine million five, your Mr. Kayd would be undercutting our rock bottom offer by a million dollars.”
“My informants told me Kayd had evidently been dealing quietly with Angus Squires for some time,” Sam said. “On the same day the cruiser was reported missing, Kayd was going to rendezvous with Squires at a fishing lodge Squires owns on Musket Cay in the Berry Islands. I’d guess Squires would want to make certain Kayd had the money, and perhaps take some of it along to bring here to Nassau to turn over to the men who’d agreed to sell their vote. I suppose that after the deal went through here, Squires would get the rest. He’d want some sort of safeguard. Dealing with Kayd can make anybody uneasy. My sister was a guest aboard that boat, Sir Willis. And there was over three quarters of a million dollars aboard. Four women and three men and money for a bribe. Bribe money has no past. It doesn’t appear on the records. And if nobody is left to report it missing...”
“But evidently someone is.”
“I got my information from two men who — go into things like this with cash the revenue people overlook. There were — certain reasons why they were willing to talk to me. But they won’t want to raise a fuss if it’s gone forever. They took a chance. The return was going to be high. They’ll moan a little, lick their wounds and keep their mouths shut. If somebody did go after the money, I can’t believe the information came from them, or from Kayd. I am curious about Squires. If he might be in so much financial trouble he would take — a bigger risk.”
“Who knows about all this, Boylston?”
“You and I, sir. Squires. The two men I questioned. And perhaps the two men on your Board who were going to go along with it.”
“And Rodgers?”
“I didn’t talk about it to him. My guess would be no. Kayd wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t have to know.”
“If Kayd had mentioned it, I am quite confident Rodgers would have terminated representation and come immediately to me.”
“Sir Willis, do you think Angus Squires could have...”
“Done them all in? Highly unlikely, I would say. If he needed money badly, he would have gotten more out of the whole thing by going ahead as planned. And, as you know, we have no tax upon income here. I was a bit dubious of his coming in with us on this Ventures thing. Heard some rumors, you know. But no proof, of course. He’s one of the Canadian chaps who got in on that Freeport arrangement in the beginning. And, if you meant could he have mentioned it to anyone capable of violent acts, you must remember that Squires would not talk freely about anything so certain to damage him should it come out. As it has, of course.”
“How much could it damage him?”
“Badly. Both him and the others involved. You Americans have taken quite a fancy to the phrase ‘power structure.’ Ours here is small, but very strong. One generally knows who might be doing what, and how well they are managing it. I shall merely trap the likely ones into revealing Squires’s plan and activities. It shouldn’t be at all difficult.” He smiled, made a small chopping gesture with a small hand and said, “Then we shall make quite certain everything they touch from now on shall turn out very badly indeed. Squires and friends accepted that risk. And lost. I am grateful to you for a most interesting talk.”