Susan escorted Porter to the front door, wanting only to head upstairs to the stock ticker. At some time today, George would reopen her short sales, and she needed to know if her gamble, the extra trade, would work out.

There were five days still to go before Killgrace’s stock trades concluded, and if everything went as planned, they would have enough that Williams could not touch them. Five days in which that triggered run could destroy the bank and potentially the company. Five days in which it could all go wrong.

She needed to plan for the worst. Porter was an optimist, talking about bankers backing steel. She knew from history that certain of them had been shorting the same stocks at the same time. While Killgrace had sufficient funds to support the bank, right now they were all in paper not cash. If the Williams run triggered they might simply have to close the bank’s door and ride it out.

Her three o’clock meeting had been cancelled, not entirely a surprise given the circumstances. Her next fixed appointment was at six o’clock in the basement, and she really did not know how she would manage it.

~

At the close of the business day, Cet assessed the report from the legal servitor, which had performed with customary efficiency. The requirement to take further action to complete deals was anticipated, although it appeared its colleague had not encountered this problem. Payment terms had been arranged with the first defaulter, gaining strategic position with the human’s industrial connections.

Mr. Xavis would find his account had been debited the amount owing, by wire transfer, and be unable to reverse it. A laser duplicator could easily have created a duplicate of the defaulter’s promised gold certificate, but that could cause forgery issues. The signed wire transfer form in the correct handwriting, coming from Xavis own office, would ensure that any problems affected Mr. Xavis and not Killgrace. Creating the forms for each defaulter the night before had been worth the energy expenditure, even if only one had been used.

The return on the closed transactions had provided sufficient funds to repay the loan to Porter & Mason, who in turn would repay the Federal Reserve. The remainder had been assigned to be reinvested in Steel.

At five minutes to six the door opened, and its humanoid colleague entered.

“Offworld,” Cet stated, gliding towards the Capsule. The humanoid female took a seat on the laboratory chair as her stress levels spiked. The alien turned back.

“Cet, I can’t,” she said quietly, not looking at it. “Can we defer the trip one week?”

“What is the issue?” It grated in frustration. It had to get offworld.

“I am holding the entire trend pattern for the New York Stock exchange in my head. I can’t afford the distraction.”

“Your actions can no longer affect those results.” It knew the protest was irrelevant, and from her answer so did the female.

“Would you leave the field of battle once you had given your orders?” Cet considered the request. The statement was logical, even if it did not like it. Re-evaluating this experience as a combat situation allowed a shift in priorities: humans were good for prolonged continuous periods of combat but crashed once away from the battle. It did not need her to crash offworld and return to the field impaired.

“When does this conclude?”

“Black Tuesday, next week, and then they have to catch up with the backlog and reduce the market hours. I think they close for a day on Thursday or Friday.”

“You have one week.”

~End Entry~

(Closing Index: 301.22)

Saturday 26th October 1929
 

Saturday morning, and there was something banging on her door. Susan sat up blearily as the landlady hammered again.

“Gentleman caller for you.” The landlady’s disapproval was obvious, and Susan swore to herself that one way or another she was moving out. She stood up, brushing the creases out of her skirt and for once she was grateful that she had fallen asleep in her clothes.

“Coming.” She opened the door to face the glare. “Did he say who he was?”

“It’s a Mr. Porter. On the telephone.” Susan was suddenly awake.

“He’s my bank manager,” she said, hurrying after the landlady to the small room with the aged telephone on its stand.

“Hello?”

“Miss Chapman, we have a problem.” Porter’s voice on the phone cleared the last of the fatigue instantly. There was only one reason he would be phoning this early, far less calling the boarding house, and he sounded disturbed.

“Williams?” she asked flatly.

“No. I know these people. This is a legitimate run.”

“Hold tight. How much will you need?” Susan turned the phone to her shoulder and said a word that did not exist in English. This was the last thing she wanted to deal with. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

“We don’t know yet, but I’ll need an owner on site.”

“I’m on my way. See you at the bank.” She rushed back to her room, picking up her coat and bag and turned, only to run headlong into the landlady.

“You aren’t going anywhere if you haven’t paid your rent. I don’t care if your young man is a bank manager–” Not in a mood to argue, Susan pulled out a twenty dollar bill and shoved it at the woman.

“I own the bank. He works for me.” she snapped back, and ran outside looking for a cab to flag down. Mercy of mercies, one stopped. She tumbled into the back, snatching breath to tell the driver:

“Porter & Mason bank, now.”

 

Porter had been wrong; Susan knew it as the cab approached the bank. The queue could be seen from the end of the road, and she recognised many faces as people she saw walking into the Williams factory, day in, day out.

“Stop here, please.” She got out far down the street, wondering how many in the queue would know her by sight. Paying the driver, she walked quickly down the side alley and in through the rear entrance. From the back, she could see the four cashier positions already busy. Money was piled conspicuously behind them, but she knew that this time that tactic would not work. Porter was talking to one of his clerks in lowered voices.

“Sir, I’ve done a quick headcount. There are three hundred people in that queue.”

“It’s going to get longer,” Porter said. “How are we managing for small bills?”

“We’re going to run out. We’ve got more than enough cash, just not in the right form.”

“Charles, take four fifty dollar bills to the bank at the end of the street. See if they can change them down for dollar bills if possible, it makes the amount look larger.” He caught sight of Susan standing patiently by the door. “Miss Chapman. Glad to see you.”

“Unfortunate circumstances,” she said in reply. “And you were wrong. A lot of the people in the queue work for Williams.”

“Williams,” Porter said with distaste, and his mouth pursed like an old lady’s.

“We could crowd them out,” the senior clerk suggested. It was a desperation tactic for a bank: pack the queue with friends and family to make prolonged transactions, tying up cashiers until the bank closed.

“That only works if the customers have lost faith, not if they’re desperate for funds,” Susan said grimly. Or, she thought, if they were being paid to create a bank run. Porter & Mason could close the doors, reopening on the following Wednesday, but that would destroy confidence in the bank utterly. They could not sit this out. They had to fight through it. “Split out a queue for those who want drafts or cheques.”

“Already done. There weren’t many,” Porter said, and Susan grimaced. Very few people would trust a cheque from a bank perceived to be in trouble. “Charles, get a move on. We need small notes.” The clerk jumped, grabbed his coat and hurried out.

As voices were raised at the front, they both looked round. Porter stepped in to defuse the situation as one of his harried cashiers tried to deal with an irate and shouting customer. Susan stepped back out of the way and into Porter’s office, picking up the telephone to call Cet.

“There’s a problem with Williams at Porter and Mason,” she said, the moment they connected. It was vitally important not to use the word ‘run’: if the operator heard it and told the press, a bank run now could cause panic. She could hardly hear her business partner’s question over the noise of the crowd in the bank lobby. “It’s not stopping, but it’s nothing to do with the bank. Most of this is Williams. The rest are people in trouble because of Thursday.” She listened for a moment, trying to concentrate on Cet’s voice. “The only advantage we have is that the bank has large cash reserves at present. We can pay out all the deposits and still have funds and a loan book left.”

“Unacceptable. The bank must be preserved.” There was a click from the line as the connection went dead. She put the handset down, talking a breath and started to call the police. The phone was not reacting. She put the handset down and picked it up again. Nothing.

“Excuse me, I need the phone,” Porter said as he entered, and she stood up with a sharp shake of the head.

“It’s dead,” she said, and Porter paused, thinking.

“Then I’ll have to go to the bank down the street. Watch the front for me. The cashiers don’t need the help, but they feel better when someone is in charge.”

“What are you doing?” Susan asked as he picked up his hat and coat.

“Calling in help.”

“From who? The police?”

“Better. The big boys — J.P. Morgan, Chase — if they’ve got someone in who can cash a cheque.” Porter vanished into the alley as Susan blinked. Destabilisation of the banking sector was in no one’s interests right now. She had seen what they had done on Thursday, but she couldn’t shake the thought that the banks would be so busy recovering that they would cut Porter & Mason loose.

It was counter-intuitive, but since the run was driven by the need for funds rather than lack of confidence in the bank, Susan decided to work with it.

“All the Williams accounts were opened with five dollars, correct?” Susan asked the closest clerk.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then we can guess how much will be paid out for each. Make up sets of account closure paperwork, and clip a money envelope to the top. Let’s see how fast we can get these paid out.”

“How many do we need?”

“Assume all of them,” Susan said tiredly. She had not slept well at all and all she wanted was this over with.

“But the queue?” he said.

“Once someone doesn’t have an account anymore, the police can move them on.” She was never sure if it was business sense, exhaustion, or pure vindictiveness that made her turn back to the tellers. “And each time you close one of these accounts, be sure to tell the customer how sorry you are to hear that Williams is in trouble.”

~