MOBILE — The fourteenth installment of Vita Sua, the serialized memoir of a bygone Mobile published anonymously under the byline "A," moved the story from whispered telephone calls to face-to-face negotiation — and then, at the last moment, to the brink of collapse.
The plot, for readers joining late, involved a group of Mobile stockbrokers determined to leave the branch office of a firm the memoirist calls SR, and the branch manager he calls X, whose petty tyranny had made their working lives intolerable. Their escape route ran through E.F. Hutton’s New Orleans office and its senior partner, a courtly and immensely wealthy financier identified only as G.T.
The Cadillac and the conference room
The Hutton principals came to Mobile in G.T.’s chauffeured Cadillac and set up headquarters at the Battle House, where they arranged for a conference room. The five conspirators trooped over one by one, after the market’s close, to avoid suspicion.
The visitors were sufficiently impressed with their prospective recruits to set a second meeting — this one on a Saturday morning at G.T.’s summer home on the beach near Biloxi.
A pirate’s soul
The old man, the memoirist observed, had a bit of the pirate in his soul. He was one of the country’s foremost sailors, and owned a magnificent square-rigged vessel called the Windjammer — one of perhaps a dozen then in active service in the United States. It was an expensive hobby: G.T. kept a four-man crew on duty year-round to man her.
The memoirist was convinced this explained the whole enterprise. Adding a small office in Mobile was, given G.T.’s resources, of almost no financial consequence, particularly with the market in a sour stretch. Had dollars and cents been his sole motivation, the writer believed, he would never have bothered. He was in it because he relished the plotting.
The Mobile men were received warmly on the coast and seated at umbrella-shaded tables on a spacious lawn. G.T. introduced his son, E, a man of about 30 who would follow his father into the brokerage business and earn a considerable reputation of his own.
The agreement was struck at that meeting. The new employer would match their current salaries. The date of the move was left to them.
Waiting for a check
The memoirist wanted to wait a little. It was now well into July. His production at SR was running well ahead of his draw, and he had planned to ask X to authorize a payout at the end of the month. He was plainly entitled to the money — but he doubted the firm would hand it over if it knew what he was planning.
He asked. X wrote New York authorizing it.
By this point X should have known something was wrong. Even during market hours, two or three of the brokers would gather and confer in whispers. The memoirist simply counted the days.
On the last Saturday of July he drove into town through a driving rain, checked the post office box, and found his check. He deposited it Monday morning, waited two or three days for it to clear, and was ready to proceed.
A seventh-floor office and a change of heart
Meanwhile, BH — one of the conspirators — had used a friendship with DC, the manager of the Waterman Building, to secure an option on seventh-floor office space in that downtown landmark. Maintenance crews began converting the space into a brokerage office.
And then the memoirist lost his nerve.
As the day of departure approached — a parting from an employer of ten years — he began to have what he called sober second thoughts. He was making a good living. He was supporting his family well and saving money. He was a fixture at his firm.
"SR was a comfortable firm for which to work," he wrote. New York left the branch virtually alone, which explained both how X had become such a tyrant and why the brokers were spared the continual inspections and probing of head-office outriders. "Had it not been for X, I would have had few complaints. I liked the managing partners and the firm’s relaxed way of doing business."
The die is cast
One afternoon he told the other four he might not go through with it. He ran into a hornet’s nest.
The others were ready to move without reservation, and the memoirist was pivotal: he had the top production in the office. Had he stayed, he acknowledged, the plot would likely have collapsed.
Seeing their determination, he dropped his objections and agreed that, right or wrong, he was with them.
"The die was cast," he wrote.
With G.T. pressing for a date, the memoirist traveled to New Orleans under the pretense of taking a few days’ vacation, to meet the key personnel there. The visit was conducted in considerable secrecy; only a handful of senior employees were told who he was or why he had come. He learned what he could about the Hutton operation and returned to Mobile.