Noel Hynd - The Sandler Inquiry

"You know too much already," he said.

"You sitaround with a telephone and play detective, but you don't really understand what you're fooling with." The old man leaned forward.

"Thomas. Don't get involved. You'll get everyone killed."

"Everyone? Who?"

"You!" snorted Zenger in a mocking voice.

"You! Me! This girl, even if she is a hoax."

"In that case," said Thomas evenly, "you'd better tell me what we're dealing with. Because I'm going on with this case until someone convinces me that I shouldn't."

The old man's frail hand was shaking slightly. He picked up a linen napkin from the table and dried his palms. There was anxiety in his eyes as he looked at the younger man across the table.

"I used to think that your father was the shrewdest lawyer I could ever imagine. I might have been wrong' He paused for a moment.

"I said hot pincers couldn't get this story' out of me. And they wouldn't. But you're going to get your damned story." Zenger looked Daniels in the eye. Promise me you'll drop the case when you leave here today."

Thomas shrugged, knowing he didn't have to bargain.

"I can't make any promise" he said.

"I haven't heard anything yet" Zenger shook his head.

"God help you."

He struggled to his feet, again needing the cherry wood cane.

"I made a tactical error here today. I should have pretended that my brain had failed, too."

Zenger struggled back toward the leather armchair in the sitting room.

Mrs. Clancy appeared, to clear the' table "Follow me' he said to Thomas, The old man coughed violently as he walked.

"If I'd known how long I was going to live' he said, "I'd have taken better care of myself."

"Above all, you must remember two aspects of Arthur Sandler.

First, he had a consuming sense of family honor, very much a nineteenth-century German tradition. And second, you must bear in mind his brilliance. Brilliance," explained Adolph Zenger, 'far beyond simple genius."

Zenger's voice was weaker than it had been two hours earlier when Thomas Daniels had arrived. The old man was again in his worn leather chair, the blanket draped across his lap. Thomas sat across the cozy sitting room, bookcases to his right, the window overlooking the garden on his left.

"What sort of brilliance?" he asked.

Zenger's frail hand was on the carved handgrip of the cherry wood cane.

His eyes were sharp and spirited as he replied.

"Brilliance in every way, Tommy," he snapped.

"But particularly in the three fields that interested Sandler most.

Chemicals. Finance. Engraving."

Zenger could see that his visitor was mystified.

"You have to understand the Sandler family, Tommy," insisted Zenger.

"You must understand the family."

Zenger began to explain, citing William Ward Daniels as his onetime source of all information concerning the Sandlers.

The paternal grandfather of Arthur and Victoria Sandler arrived in a wide-open New York in the late 1850s. A young man at the time, and an immigrant from Hamburg, he quickly prospered by importing fabrics from Europe and reselling them to American sweatshops at a five-hundred-per-cent markup. Then Wilhelm von Dreissen Sandler quickly sensed the investment opportunities around him. He purchased land and property as fast as he could, living frugally and pouring every cent into either a building or a plot of land. Within ten years he was a millionaire through one enduring principle: rents.

He fell in love twice: once with a woman, once with a building. In 1864 he married and embarked on a European honeymoon with his bride.

Touring through France, Sandler happened upon the country chateau of the Baron Al'is d'Artennes. Sandler madly coveted the home, a magnificent sprawling estate which had been in the d'Artennes family since 1730. Sandler attempted to buy the estate. The baron, insulted that the wealthy parvenu American would have the effrontery to make such an offer, would not even reply. Embittered, Wilhelm Sandler returned to New York, where he was more used to getting any building he wanted. There he would have his way after all. He commissioned a replica of the chateau to be built on a strip of land he owned in what was then a tree-shaded suburban section of Manhattan. And so by 1877, when construction was complete, Wilhelm Sandler had become the Baron of Eighty-ninth Street.

There his lifelong frugality gave way to indulgence. He gained one hundred pounds in three years. He would have gained more, but in 1880 he dropped dead of a stroke.

His fortune and the family standard passed to his three children.

Wilhelm II was an adventurer; he died in the ninety-day war with Spain in 1898. A daughter, Theresia, had been endowed with thick horse like features and was reputed to be the ugliest woman in New York society.

She never married. Childless, she died in 1932, her share of the fortune reverting to the family.

The only other child, the youngest, was Joseph. Joseph led an otherwise normal and uneventful life for a man of his extreme wealth.

His only quirk was in the tradition of some wealthy European families-marrying his first cousin, Lora Nuss. They had a daughter and son. Victoria and Arthur.

"There's not too much to be said about Victoria that you couldn't already guess," said Zenger. He glanced to the floor, then back up at Thomas Daniels.

"Her mind never progressed past age nine. Arthur? Arthur was just the opposite. As shrewd and cunning a son of a bitch as you'd ever imagine. He attempted to rearrange the family fortune' "

"Rearrange?"

"Chemicals" said Zenger.

"From the time he was a boy he had a genius for chemistry. In the mid-thirties he began his own chemical firm. Was doing extensive business between here and Europe. Don't ask where in Europe." Zenger grimaced.

"Where in Europe?"

"Spain. Italy. Germany. Portugal. Get the idea?"

"All of Fascist Europe" said Thomas. The sun outside was crossed by clouds. For a moment the room was darker.

"He was making money There's no question about that. His profits were enormous. That's when he was investigated by the Federal government. He had got himself into some titanic currency and securities transactions with those foreign governments. It was alleged, and I repeat alleged, that he was in some sort of deal to help prop up the Italian lira. Back then the lira was worth more than it is now. But it was still shaky."

"What happened?" asked Thomas.

"Sandler was indicted for currency manipulation in 1939" Zenger explained.

"The government had a massive case against him, with a couple of fraud charges tossed in for good measure. And since the charges implied dealings with Fascist regimes, Sandler's usual family lawyers wanted nothing to do with the court battle.

"Victoria was so far gone by this time that she had no idea what her brother was involved in. Arthur turned his full attention to staying out of jail. Family business was ignored, even the management of the household. Servants left and were not replaced. Then more quit.

Arthur desperately looked for a lawyer who could defend him and win.

Not just get him a light sentence, but win.

"Well," chuckled Zenger,

"Arthur found one. A man just about as old then as you are now. After a several-month delay, Arthur Sandler appeared in court with a brilliant young lawyer out to make a name for himself. The young lawyer staggered the courtroom with his booming, explosive oratory and his moumftil pleas to the jury in defense of 'solid citizen Sandler."

"I don't think," said Zenger to his visitor, "that I need to tell you what the lawyer's name was' "My father," said Thomas.

Zenger nodded.

"He won an acquittal which defied logic. It wasn't for another year that anyone knew how he'd done it."