William, who had never considered supporting anyone for public office who was not a Republican, wanted General Eisenhower, the candidate who had emerged on the first ballot at the convention in Chicago, to defeat Adlai Stevenson, although he was aware that a Republican administration was less likely to press for a share manipulation enquiry than the Democrats.

When General Dwight D. Eisenhower - it appeared that the nation did like Ike - was elected as the thirty - fourth President of the United States on 4 November 1952, William assumed that Abel Rosnovski had escaped any charge and could only hope that the experience would persuade him to leave Lester's affairs well enough alone in the future. The one small compensation to come out of the election for William was that Congressman Henry Osborne lost his Congressional seat,to a Republican candidate. The Eisenhower jacket had turned out to have coat - tails, and Osborne's rival had clung to them. Thaddeus Cohen was inclined to think that Henry Osborne no longer exerted quite the same influence over Abel Rosnovski that he had in the past. The rumour in Chicago was that, since divorcing his rich wife, Osborne owed large sums of money to Rosnovski and was gambling heavily again.

William was happier and more relaxed than he had been for some time and looked forward to joining the prosperous and peaceful era that Eisenhower had promised in his Inauguration.Teech.

As the first years of the new President's administration went by, William began to put Rosnovski's threats at the back of his mind and to think of them as a thing of the past. He informed Thaddeus Cohen that he believed they had heard the last of Abel Rosnovski. The lawyer niade no comment.

He wasn't asked to.

William put all his efforts into building Lester's, both in size and reputation, increasingly aware that he was now doing it as much for his son as for himself. Some of his staff at the bank had already started referring to him as the 'old man'.

:It had to happen,' said Kate.

Then why hasn't it happened to you?' replied William.

Kate looked up at William and smiled. 'Now I know the secret of how you have closed so many deals with vain men." William laughed. 'And one beautiful woman,' he added.

With Richard's twenty - firat birthday only a year away, William revised the provisions of his will. He set aside five million dollars for Kate and two million for each of the girls, and left the rest of the family fortune to Richard, noting ruefully the bite that would go in estate tax. He also left one million dollars to Harvard.

Richard had been making good use of his four years at Harvard. At the start of his senior year, not only did he look set for a Summa Cum Laude, but he was also playing the cello in the university orchestra, and was a pitcher with the varsity baseball team, which even William had to admire. As Kate liked rhetorically to ask, how many students spent Saturday afternoon playing 'baseball for Harvard against Yale and Sunday evening playing the cello in the Lowell concert hall for the university string quartet? The final year passed quickly and when Richard left Harvard, armed with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics, a cello and a baseball bat, all he required before reporting to the business school on the other side of the Charles River was a good holiday. He flew to Barbados with a girl called Mary Bigelow of whose existence Richard's parents were blissfully unaware.

Miss Bigelow had studied music, among other things, at Vasser, and when they returned two months later almost the game colour as the natives, Richard took her home to meet his parents. William approved of Miss Bigelow; after all, she was Alan Lloyd's great niece.

Richard returned. to the Harvard Business School on I October 1955 to start his graduate work. He 'too ' k up resi dence in the Red House, threw out all William's cane furni ture and removed the paisley wallpaper that Matthew Lester had once found so modem, and installed a wall - to wall carpet in the living room, an oak table in the dining room, a dishwasher in the kitchen and, more than occa sionally, Miss Bigelow in the bedroom.

32

Abel returned from a trip to Istanbul in October 1952, immediately upon hearing the news of David Maxton's fatal heart attack. He attended the funeral in Chicago with George and Florentyna, and later told Mrs. Maxton that she could be a guest at any Baron in the world whenever she so pleased for the rest of her life. She could not understand why Abel had made such a generous gesture.

When Abel returned to New York the next day, he was delighted to find on the desk of his forty - second floor office a report from Henry Osborne indicating that the heat was now off. In Henry's opinion, the new Eisenhower administration was unlikely to pursue an enquiry into the Interstate Airways fiasco, especially as the stock had now held steady for nearly a year. There had, therefore, been no further incidents to renew any interest in the scandal. Eisenhower's Vice - President, Richard M. Nixon, seemed more involved in chasing the spectral communists whom Joe McCarthy missed.