'Thank you,' said William, jubilantover the news.
Thaddeus Cohen's report was on William's desk at nine the next morning and after William had read over the contents very carefully, he called another board meeting. The directors agreed with the course of action William wanted to take. Thaddeus Cohen was instructed to draft a carefully written press release to be issued that evening. The Wall Street journal ran a piece on their front page the following morning.
Mr. Williarp Kane, the chairman of Lester's Bank has reason to believe that the sell orders placed by Guaranty Investment Corporation in November 1952 on Interstate Airways shares, a company underwritten by Lester's Bank, wei;e issued for the sole purpose of making an illegal profit.
It has been established that Guaranty Investment Corporation was responsible for placing a million dollars worth of Interstate stock on the market when the exchange opened on Monday, 12 May 1952. A further million dollars worth was on the market six hours later. A third million dollars worth was placed on a sell order by Guar - anty Investment Corporation when the exchange reopened on Tuesday, 13 May 1952. This caused the stock to fall to a record low. After an S.E.C. enquiry showed there had been no illegal dealing within either Lester's Bank or Interstate Airways, the market picked up again with the stock trading at the depressed price.'Guaranty Investment was quickly back in the market to purchase the shares at as low a price as possible. They continued to buy until they had replaced the three million dollars worth of stock they had originally released on to the market.
The chairman and directors of Lester's Bank have sent a copy of aU the relevant documents to the Fraud Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and have asked them to proceed with a full enquiry.
The story below the statement gave S.E.C. Rule 10b - 5 in full and commented that this was exactly the sort.of test case that President Truman had been looking for; a cartoon below the article showed Harry S. Truman catching a businessman with his hands in the cookie jar.
William smiled as he read through the item, confident that that would be the last he would hear of Abel RosnovskL Abel Rosnovski frowned and said nothing as Henry Osborne read the statement over to him. Abel looked up, his fingers tapping in irritation on the desk.
'The boys in Washington,' said Osborne, 'are determined to get to the bottom of this one.'
'But Henry, you know very well I didn't sell Interstate shares to make a quick killing on the stock market" said Abel. 'The profit I made was of no interest to me at all.'
'I know that,' said Henry, 'but you try and convince the Senate Finance Committee that the Chicago Baron had no interest in financial gain, that all he really wanted to do was settle a personal grudge against one William Kane, and they'll laugh you right out of court - or out of the Senate, to be more exact!
'Damn,' said Abel. 'Now what the hell do I do?'
'Well, first you'll have to lie ver~y low until this has had time to blow over. Start praying that some bigger scandal comes along for Truman to get himself worked up about, or that the politicians become so involved in the election that they haven't time to press for an enquiry. With luck, a new admirustration may even drop the whole thing. What - ever you do, Abel, don't buy any more shares that are connected with Lester's Bank, or the least you're going to end up with is a very large fine. Leave me to swmg what I can with t,he Democrats in Washington!
'Remind Harry Truman's office that I gave fifty thousand dollars to his campaign fund during the last election and I intend to do the same,for Adlai.'
'I've already done that,' said Henry. 'In fact I would advise you to give fifty thousand to the Republicans as well.'
'They're making a - moun'tain out of a molehill,' said Abel. "A molehill that Kane will turn into a mountain if we give him the chance - ' His fingers continued to tap on the table.
31
Thaddeus Cohen's next quarterly report revealed that Abel Rosnovski had stopped buying or selling stock in any of Lester's companies. It seemed he was now concentrating all his energy on building more hotels in Europe.
Cohen's opinion was that Rosnovski was lying low, until a decision had been made by the S.E.C. on the Interstate affair.
Representatives of the S.E.C. had visited William at the bank on several occasions. He had spoken to them with complete frankness, but they never revealed how their enquiries were progressing. The S.E.C. finally finished their investigation and thanked William for his co - operation. He heard nothing more from them.
As the Presidential election grew nearer and Truman seemed to be concentrating his own efforts on - the dissolution on the Du Pont industrial combine, William began to fear that Abel Rosnovski might have been let off the hook. He couldn't help feeling that Henry Osbome must have been able to pull a few strings in Congress. He'remembered that Cohen had once underlined a note about a fifty thousand dollar donation from the Baron Group to Harry Truman's campaign fund and was surprised to read in Cohen's latest report that Rosnovski had repeated the donation for Adlai Stevenson, the Democrats' choice for President, along with another fifty thousand for the Eisenhower campaign fund. Cohen had underlined the item again.