The Only Girl in the Game by John D. MacDonald Page A

trouble?”
    Shannard gave him a smile of confidence, but there was an uncertainty, a shifting, half-apologetic expression around his eyes that spoiled the effect. “Nothing I can’t work my way out of, Hugh.”
    “What went wrong?”
    Temple Shannard leaned back, holding his glass in both hands, frowning at it. “Quite a few things went wrong. The law of averages should have protected me from such lousy timing. Damn it, I was a tiger in the backfield, playing offense and defense. I could diagnose all the plays and pick off those passes, and I could call the right sequences and make those first downs, one right after the other. But it has been like I’d lost a half step somewhere. They’re red dogging me now and smearing me in the backfield, and on defense they’re passing just over my head. If I was part paranoid I’d begin to think it was a conspiracy, that the whole damn world was out to get me.”
    “It’s serious, then.”
    “It didn’t seem so in the beginning. Maybe I was too damn confident. I’ve moved fast, Hugh, because I’ve been willing to extend myself so far it would give a nervous man a chronic spastic colon. I’ve operated out of pure faith in the Bahama boom, and God knows, except for that strike a few years back, it hasn’t even faltered. So when a few things soured, I didn’t get too upset. A bad title mixup smeared one deal. On another an insurance company found a way to eel out of their responsibilities on a technicality, and it fell back on me.”
    He upended his drink, got up and made himself a heavier one, and began to pace as he talked. “Things like that, Hugh. Damnable, unforeseeable things, as though I had to have a run of bad luck to make up for all the good. If I’d been playing it close to the vest all along, I could have rolled with it,but it all started to hit me just when I’d stretched myself as far as I dared. And you know how fast bad news travels. So the people who would have been delighted to give me extensions have all tightened down on me.”
    “What can you do?”
    Temp gave him a fighting grin. “I had to find a way to lick the bastards. If I let them force me to liquidate right now, not only would I be dealing myself out of potential millions to be made in new projects, but I’d end up in such a lousy net-cash position I wouldn’t have a big enough lever to pry my way back into the big-time deals down there. I’d have to start again with the little stuff, and I just haven’t got the patience for that. I can’t get money down there because now they have the idea they can lay back and pick off my good holdings for less. So I made up a brand-new package, Hugh.
    “I’ve got a prospectus that would knock your damn eye out. I sold the pieces of the hotels because I could get a fair price there. I’ve put the house and the insurance and every other damn thing in hock, and I paid off just a bare minimum of the people who are leaning on me, and I’m stalling hell out of the rest of them, and I’ve got a hundred thousand bucks cash I moved to the Morgan Guarantee Trust so nobody could get too wise down there and put any kind of attachment on it. I know this much, Temp. You can’t sell a big deal unless you can show that you’re willing to go into it in a respectable way yourself. Otherwise you’re a dubious promoter. I’ve consolidated my personal holdings in raw land, all the stuff on Andros, Eleuthera, Abaco, Spanish Wells and San Salvador. I have maps, descriptions, mortgage deeds, and exhaustive reports on the future of the islands based on the past growth record. I’ve got all the papers on Island Associates, Limited, set up and ready to go.”
    “Who’s in with you?”
    Shannard ignored the question. “The way it will work, I will put my equities in the land and my hundred grand into the pot in return for thirty thousand shares worth four pounds a share … call it ten dollars a share. I take in seven hundred thousand dollars for the remaining