Arthur Hailey - Overload

"Sometimes," Van Buren told Nancy Molineaux, "the same people want lower rates and a bigger dividend. It's hard to explain why you can't have both."

Without commenting, the reporter moved on.

At 1:40, twenty minutes before the meeting would begin, there was standing room only in the second hall and new arrivals were still appearing.

"I'm worried as hell," Harry London confided to Nim Goldman. The two were midway between the ballroom and overflow room where the din from both made it hard to hear each other.

London and several of his staff had been "borrowed" for the occasion to beef up GSP & L's regular security force. Nim had been sent, a few minutes ago, by J. Eric Humphrey to make a personal appraisal of the scene. The chairman, who usually mingled informally with stockholders before the annual meeting, had been advised by the chief security officer not to do so today because of the hostile crowd. At this moment Humphrey was closeted behind scenes with senior officers and directors who would join him on the ballroom platform at 2 p.m.

"I'm worried," London repeated, "because I think we'll see some violence before all this is through. Have you been outside?"

Nim shook his head, then, as the other motioned, followed him toward the hotel's outer lobby and the street. They emerged through a side door and walked around the building to the front.

The St. Charles Hotel had a forecourt which normally accommodated hotel traffic-taxis, private cars and buses. But now all traffic movement was prevented by a crowd of several hundred placard-waving, shouting demonstrators. A narrow entryway for pedestrians was being kept open by city police officers who were also restraining demonstrators from advancing further.

The TV crews which had been refused admittance to the stockholders' meeting had come outside to film the action.

Some signs being held aloft read:

Support

power & light

for people

The People Demand

Lower Gas/Electric

Rates

Kill the Capitalist

Monster

GSP&L

p & lfP

Urges

Public Ownership

Of GSP&L

Put People

Ahead of Profits

Groups of GSP & L stockholders, still arriving and moving through the police lines, read the signs indignantly. A small, casually dressed, balding man with a hearing aid stopped to cry angrily at the demonstrators, "I'm just as much 'people' as you are, and I worked hard all my life to buy a few shares . . ."

A pale, bespectacled youth in a Stanford University sweatshirt jeered,

"Get stuffed, you greedy capitalist!"

Another among the arrivals-a youngish, attractive woman-retorted, "Maybe if some of you worked harder and saved a little .

She was drowned out by a chorus of, "Screw the profiteers!" and "Power belongs to the people!"

The woman advanced on the shouters, a fist raised. "Listen, you bums! I'm no profiteer. I'm a worker, in a union, and . . ."

"Profiteer!" . . . "Bloodsucking capitalist!” . . . One of the waving signs descended near the woman's bead. A police sergeant stepped forward, shoved the sign away and hurried the woman, along with the man with the hearing aid, into the hotel. The shouts and jeering followed them. Once more the demonstrators surged forward; again the police held firm.

The TV crews had now been joined by reporters from other media among them, Nim saw, Nancy Molineaux. But he had no wish to meet her.

Harry London observed quietly, "You see your friend Birdsong over there, masterminding this?"

"No friend of mine," Nim said. "But yes, I see him."

The bulky, bearded figure of Davey Birdsong-a broad smile on his face as usual-was visible at the demonstration's rear. As the two watched, Birdsong raised a walkie-talkie radio to his lips.

"He's probably talking to someone inside," London said, "He's already been in and out twice; be has one share of stock in his name. I checked."

"One share is enough," Nim pointed out. "It gives anyone a right to be at the annual meeting."

"I know. And probably some more of his people have the same. They've something else planned. I'm sure of it."

Nim and London returned inside the hotel unnoticed. Outside, the demonstrators seemed noisier than before.

* * *

In a small private meeting room off a corridor behind the ballroom stage, J. Eric Humphrey paced restlessly, still reviewing the speech he would shortly make. Over the past three days a dozen drafts had been typed and retyped, the latest an hour ago. Even now, as be moved, silently mouthing words and turning pages, be would pause occasionally to pencil in a change.

Out of deference to the chairman's concentration, the others present-Sharlett Underhill, Oscar O'Brien, Stewart Ino, Ray Paulsen, a half-dozen directors-bad fallen silent, one or two of the directors mixing drinks at a portable bar.

Heads turned as an outside door opened. It framed a security guard and, behind him, Nim, who came in, closing the door.

Humphrey put down the pages of his speech. "Well?"

"It's a mob scene out there." Nim described tersely his observations in the ballroom, overflow hall and outside the hotel.

A director inquired nervously, "Is there any way we can postpone the meeting?"

Oscar O'Brien shook his head decisively. "Out of the question. It's been called legally. It must go on."

"Besides," Nim added, "if you did there'd be a riot."

The same director said, "We may have that anyway."

The chairman crossed to the bar and poured himself a plain soda water, wishing it were a scotch but observing his own rule of no drinking by officers during working hours. He said testily, "We knew in advance this was going to happen so any talk of postponement is pointless. We simply have to do the best we can." As he sipped his soda: "Those people out there have a right to be angry-at us, and about their dividends. I'd feel the same way myself. What can you tell people who put their money where they believed it was safe, and suddenly find it isn't after all?"

"You could try telling them the truth," Sharlett Underhill said, her face flushing with emotion. “The truth that there isn't any place in this country were the thrifty and hard-working can put their money with an assurance of preserving its value. Not in companies like ours anymore; certainly not in savings accounts or bonds where the interest doesn't keep pace with government-provoked inflation. Not since those charlatans and crooks in Washington debased the dollar and keep right on doing it, grinning like idiots while they ruin us. They've given us a dishonest fiat paper currency, unbacked by anything but politicians' worthless promises. Our financial institutions are crumbling. Bank insurance-the FDIC-is a facade. Social Security is a bankrupt fraud; if it were a private concern those running it would be in jail. And good, decent, efficient companies like ours are pushed to the wall, forced into doing what we've done, and taking the blame unfairly."

There were murmurs of approval, someone applauded, and the chairman said drily, "Sharlett, maybe you should make the speech instead of me." He added thoughtfully, "Everything you say is true, of course. Unfortunately most citizens aren't ready to listen and accept the truth, not yet."

"As a matter of interest, Sharlett," Ray Paulsen asked, "where do you keep your savings?"

The financial vice president snapped back, "In Switzerland-one of the few countries where there's still financial sanity-and the Bahamas -in gold coins and Swiss francs, the only honest currencies left. If you haven't already, I advise the rest of you to do the same."

Nim was looking at his watch. He went to the door and opened it. "It's a minute to the hour. Time to go."

"Now I know," Eric Humphrey said as he led the way out, "how the Christians felt when they had to face the lions."