Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less Read Free

perfectly genuine anxiety as he stumbled through his tale would have
convinced a more critical observer of human nature than Mrs. Rennick. Readily
she agreed to let the matter drop, only too pleased to have her money back, and
as it was in the form of a draft from the Morgan Bank, she had lost nothing.
Henryk breathed a sigh of relief and for the first time began to relax and
enjoy himself. He even called for the man with the sugar and tongs.
    After a respectable period of time had passed,
Henryk explained that he must return to work, thanked Mrs. Rennick, paid the
bill and left. Outside in the street he whistled with relief. His new shirt was
soaked in sweat (Mrs. Rennick would have called it perspiration) but he was out
in the open and could breathe again. His first major operation had been a
success.
    He stood in Park Avenue, amused that the
venue for his confrontation with Mrs. Rennick had been the Waldorf-Astoria, as
it was the very hotel where John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (the president of Standard
Oil) had a suite. Henryk had arrived on foot and used the main entrance, while
Mr. Rockefeller had earlier arrived by subway and taken his private lift to the
Waldorf Towers. Few New Yorkers were aware that Rockefeller had his own private
station built fifty feet below the Waldorf-Astoria so that he did not have to
travel eight blocks to Grand Central Station, there being no stop between there
and 125 th Street. (The station is still there today, but no
Rockefellers live at the Waldorf-Astoria and the train never stops there.)
While Henryk was discussing his $50,000 with Mrs. Rennick, Rockefeller was
discussing an investment of $5,000,000 with President Coolidge’s Secretary of
the Treasury, Andrew W. Mellon.
    The next day Henryk returned to work as
normal. He knew he must cash the shares before the end of five days to clear
his debt with the Morgan Bank and the stockbroker–the account on the New York
Stock Exchange runs for five business days or seven calendar days. On the last
day of the account the shares were standing at $23.30. He sold at $23.15,
clearing his overdraft of $49,625 and, after expenses, realised a profit of
$7,490, which he left deposited with the Morgan Bank.
     
    Over the next three years, Henryk stopped
ringing Mr. Gronowich, and started dealing for himself ,
in small amounts to begin with. Times were still good, and while he didn’t
always make a profit, he had learnt to master the occasional bear market as
well as the more common boom. His system in the bear market was to sell short–not
a process for the ethical in business, but he soon mastered the art of selling
shares he didn’t own in expectation of a subsequent fall in price. His instinct
for the market trends refined as rapidly as his taste in suits, and the guile
learnt in the back streets of the Lower East Side stood him in good stead.
Henryk had discovered that the whole world was a jungle–sometimes the lions and
tigers wore suits.
    When the market collapsed in 1929 he had
turned his $7,490 into $51,000 in liquid assets, having sold on every share he
possessed. He had moved to a smart flat in Brooklyn and was driving a rather
ostentatious Stutz. Henryk had realised at an early age that he had entered
upon life with three main disadvantages–his name, background and impecunity.
The money problem was solving itself, and so he decided to expunge the others.
First, he made application to have a legal change of name by court order to
Harvey David Metcalfe. Second, he cut off all contact with his friends from the
Polish community, and so in May 1930 he came of age with a new name and a new
background.
     
    It was later that year he met Roger
Sharpley, a young man from Boston who had inherited his father’s import and export company . Educated at Choate and later at Dartmouth
College, Sharpley had the assurance and charm of the Boston set, so often
envied by the rest of America. He was tall and fair and looked as if he had
come from Viking