The Investor

Since there were no open beds at the hospital when he arrived, the man had been put temporarily in a room used for storing defective bottle caps. Seven days after his admission he lay there among the caps, his eyes bulging sightlessly at the ceiling. A bowl of Spanish shawl fish stood on the table beside him with a note against it that said, "Your favorites, from Mumsy." Four doctors conferred in low voices around him and when the specialist from Rochester arrived, they broke their circle to help him off with his coat. The specialist was a neat man with little feet, given to clasping his hands behind his back, rocking on his heels, making smacking sounds with his lips and staring off over people's shoulders. No sooner did he have his coat off than he was rocking and smacking away, his glance shooting out of the room into the midday sun.

"I'll tell you frankly," the resident doctor said to him, "I didn't want to go out of the house." He was a nervous, middle-aged man, not technically bald but with patches of hair scattered carelessly about his head. "We've done a pile of work on him and I say if you don't have a specialist in the house you're not a hospital. But it is a baffler and everyone kept saying bring in Rochester and I do agree you get freshness when you go outside. Keep going outside though and you're not a hospital. In any case, the house has done it all, doctor. Blood, intestines, heart, neurological. We don't get a sign of anything. Come over and have a look at the bugger. He hasn't moved a muscle in a week."

"Not just yet," said the specialist, rocking and smacking, his eyes high, glancing off tops of heads now so that the resident doctor found himself looking into the specialist's neck.

"I've heard that you don't look at patients immediately in Rochester," said the resident doctor. "We dart right over to them here. Oh well, I guess that's why one goes out of the house."

"Nourishment?" asked the specialist between smacks.

"Yes, I know you're big on that in Rochester," said the resident."A few nibbles of an American cheese sandwich now and then. That's all he's taken. We thought we'd go intravenous tomorrow."

"Pulse?"

"Fairly normal," said the resident. "I like your reasoning. I have to confess there was a time I wanted very much to practice in Rochester. Still, I feel this is a sound house we have here."

"The patient's temperature?" asked the specialist, looking directly overhead now as though annoyed by a helicopter.

"Irregular. It's 10l 7/8 just now. The house is using the new electronic thermometers. They're awfully good, get you all the way from 25 to 150 degrees, and they work in eighths. We're fussy about temperature and record every fluctuation. It's a program the house is developing -- Snub Pulse, Study Fever. It's our pet around here, and we thought we might even interest Rochester in converting."

"What was it yesterday?"

"Let me see -- " said the resident, studying a chart. "It was 103 5/8, down around two points today."

"And the day before?"

"One hundred even," said the resident.

"Tell me," said the specialist, lowering his eyes slightly for the first time since his arrival, "was it by any chance in the 90s the day previous?"

"Ninety-nine and three eighths," said the resident.

The specialist stopped rocking and his eyes met the resident's full this time. "It held steady at that figure three days before that, didn't it?"

"Why, yes," said the resident. "Right on the button four straight days. You're good. Funny, you think you've got something down pat, temperatures, for example, and far away in another house, there's someone running circles around you. Excellent show, doctor. You've got to go out of the house now and then, you really do."

"Plimpton Rocket Fuels," said the specialist, his eyes wide now, his mouth open.

"Fuels?" said the resident. "Are they a hive? I didn't see any sense to skin work since the whole thing's so up in the air, so I just skipped right over it. Our house dermatologist checked him though and found his skin clear."

"Electronics," said the specialist, beginning a slow rock of deep concentration.

"I'm surprised you buy that theory up in Rochester," said the resident. "Why, the radiation level is so low here in Queens, it would take ..."

"You don't understand," said the specialist. "Electronics. Electronics stock. I'm in it. For seven days your patient's fever chart has followed the exact pattern of Plimpton Rocket Fuels, which closed at 101 7/8 today. I know because I called my broker and asked him whether I should stay in."

"I don't know what to do about a thing like that," said the resident. "You think it's mental, eh? I tell you if it's psycho we shoo them right on. We're a good house, but we're a small house and we're not equipped to do head people."

"It's a glamor issue, too," said the specialist, peering at the sun. "That means wide swings. Christ, if only he'd been on a good, solid blue chip. All right, I'll have a look at him."

The patient was a neutral-looking man who might have played hotel clerk parts in movies. The specialist took his wrist and rocked back and forth with it a few times as though trying to lead him from the bed into a tango.

"Of course you see more of these in Rochester than we do," said the resident, "but it seems to me all he has to do is liquidate his holdings. Such a man has no business in the market."

The specialist passed his hand over the man's eyes and the resident said, "I don't know, sometimes I feel by your silence you're rapping the house. I'll stack it up against any house its size on the Eastern seaboard."

The specialist kneeled now and whispered to the patient. "Are you in Plimpton?"

The patient was silent.

"How many shares of Plimpton do you own?" the specialist whispered.

The patient continued to stare gold-fishlike at the ceiling, but then his hands fluttered.

"Pencil and paper," said the specialist.

"We've got everything," said the resident, diving into the bedside table. The patient's hands took the equipment and in a weak scrawl wrote:

Stock Market not for our kind. Drummed into me from childhood. Work too hard for our money. Had a thousand, wanted to put it into Idaho Chips. Remembered Mom's words. Not for our kind. Would have been rich. Once lost a hundred on cotton futures. But no stocks. Thanks for your interest, Jerry.

"But why Plimpton?" the specialist said to the window, crumpling the note. "Of all issues to get on. Gorch Gas and we'd have a chance. All right, it won't affect anything, but try to get some liquids into him. There won't be any till the board opens tomorrow, but keep me informed as to any changes in temperature."

"We check temps every 12 minutes around the clock," said the resident doctor. "You'll have to twist our arms to get a pulse reading from us, but we're champs at temps."

• • •

The specialist visited the patient at four in the afternoon the following day. "I know, I know," he said to the resident, "she jumped two and three eighths today. That stock will give you fits. If you think that's a swing, watch it for a while. You've got to be out of your mind to stay with Plimpton. Still, it's exciting, a crap game every day. Tell me, did he go with it?"

"Right to the fraction. You remember, the stock opened a little soft and he was up taking applesauce. But that wave of late-afternoon buying finished him right off. I've got him in ice packs now. I was up all night with our temps and the Dow Jones index. I thought there might be some more of this. The house is terribly sensitive about epidemics. I came up with an ulcer patient in the ward who was on Atlas Paper Products for three days, but I checked the market today. Atlas went off four even and our ulcer man closed at 103 1/2. So I guess the Plimpton fellow is all we've got. You must see much more of this in Rochester than we do."

"I don't want to talk about Rochester," said the specialist. "We've got a sick man and if I know Plimpton, there isn't going to be much time. If I was on one, I wouldn't want it to be Plimpton. Get his wife down here. Maybe she can tell us how this started."

The patient's wife had a vapid but pretty face and a voluptuous figure. "I guess you know your husband's hooked up to the market," said the specialist, rocking and smacking a bit, his eyes wandering off down the hallway. "So we thought we'd get you down here. Do you know of anything he had to do with the stock market that might have gotten his fever tied on to Plimpton Rocket Fuels?"

"Jerry doesn't like anything white collar," said the woman, flouncing and rearranging her figure on the chair. "I'll give you our whole marriage. He married me 'cause I had red hair, green eyes and big boobs. He got me on the phone once by accident and we got to talking and he asked me what I looked like and I told him red hair, green eyes and big boobs. So he come right over and we got married. I don't know if he goes to the stock market. He goes to the burly a lot. He'll go to any burly, even in Pennsylvania. He says he likes the comedians but I suspect he's looking at boobs."

"You don't feel he's ever plunged around on the big board then?" said the specialist, making soft, speculative smacking sounds with his lips.

"Are you making those at my things?" said the woman, gathering her Persian lamb stole about her shoulders.

"I'm a doctor," shot back the specialist.

"Well, I don't know," said the woman. "Jerry delivers yogurt. He's not in the union so he has to do his deliveries on the sly. He doesn't like anything white collar. Is any of that what you mean?"

"You haven't helped us," said the specialist. "We've got a sick man."

When the woman had flounced off into the elevator, the resident said, "A house is only human. What can any house do against opposition like that?"

"She can go to beans," said the specialist. "What's Plimpton doing now, 104 1/2? That means it's all up to the President. He's coming over at 11 tonight. You'd do just as well to drop your temps and tune in on him."

In his address, the President called for an end to spiteful silences in our relations with the Russians and Plimpton took it on the chin to the tune of a five-and-a-quarter-point plunge.

"I know, I know," said the specialist, getting out of his coat and making for the patient's bed. "His fever's broken and he feels better. Look, I've had this baby since it came on the boards at two dollars a share and if you think Plimpton is going to sit at 99 you're all wet. Did he close with it?"

"Of course," said the resident. "But something's going on in him. We've never seen anything quite like it in the house. Get your ear down on his epiglottis."

The specialist did so and said, "It's a clicking sound."

"Not unlike that of a stock market ticker tape, wouldn't you say?"

The specialist got down again and said, "It goes tick-a-tack-tick-tick, tick-a-tack-tick-tick. Is that the way you get it?"

"More or less," said the resident. "It's certainly good for a house to get a wide variety of things. I may even suggest that we stop shooing off psychos. What the hell."

The patient's hand fluttered and the (concluded on page 98) Investor (continued from page 86) resident dove forward with a pad.

He wrote, in bolder, somewhat less feverish strokes this time:

No connection. Joke. Also do police sirens, foghorns, and Chester Morris. Do you like to kid around, too? Jerry.

"I'd get plenty sore," said the specialist, "but I'm gentle to patients, cruel only to relatives and visitors."

• • •

Plimpton picked up only an eighth of a point the following day, but the specialist was grave and irritable. "The worst," he said. "I know she's holding firm in the 90s, but I heard something nasty from a gynecologist friend of mine. He claims Plimpton may buy Tompkin Rocket Fuels. You get a Plimpton Tompkin merger and our friend will go up like a torch. All right, there's something bothering me and I'm doing my bit now." The specialist picked up the phone and said, "Hello, Connie, look I want to unload Plimption. No, I'm not crazy. I've got a patient whose temperature is on it and I've got to try to get it down. Maybe I'll come back in when this thing is resolved. All right, Conrad."

"I never thought I'd see the day when I'd let Plimpton soar and not soar with it," said the specialist, his eyes wandering off into a broom closet. "But you're either in the medical profession or you're not."

"I just want to say that I've never seen anything quite like that in the house," said the resident. "And I want to shake your hand and tell you that it comes not just from me but from the whole house."

"There'll be none of that," said the specialist. "Let me see now. Put a call through to the company. I say do anything if you've got a patient who's liable to go up like a torch!"

"This is a new sound in doctoring," said the resident, putting through a call to Wyoming. The specialist grabbed it away from him, smacked his lips a few times and said, "I don't want any Board of Directors. Get me the company physician. That you? Look, I want to stop that Tompkin merger if I can. I've got a patient, nice lad, whose fever is hooked up to Plimpton and this merger is going to kick him way upstairs and out of business. Yes, it's my first. Heard of a clergyman whose pulse was tied up to the '51 Cardinal fielding averages, but I think that worked differently. I'm vague on it. You won't do a thing? I didn't think so, but I thought I'd give it a try."

The specialist hung up and said, "He says if he as much as opens his mouth, it's socialized medicine. I'm not sure if he's right but I haven't got time to go figuring it out. I'd better take a look at our man."

The specialist took the patient's pulse and said, "I hope he and his wife don't have any little dividends. All right. I know. That's not funny. I always did tell baddies."

A note in the patient's handwriting was affixed to his pajama lapel. It said:

What kind of a soak are you putting on me for this treatment? I forgot to ask about the soak. If it's steep, somebody's going to get it right in the old craw. I don't see any point to being high class when you're doing biz. Yours, Jerry.

"In our confusion we forgot to submit a partial bill," said the resident.

"I don't want to talk dollars," said the specialist. "Practice medicine. Did you see me sell my Plimpton?"

"I've seen things I've never seen before in this house."

"I just don't want him going off like a torch," said the specialist.

Plimpton vaulted four points early the next day on the strength of the Tompkin merger speculation, but the rumor was quashed early in the afternoon and the stock settled back with a two-point gain. The patient's wife appeared in the room and said to the specialist, "I'm sorry I was fresh about what you did yesterday. I figure you're in there with unhealth all day and you can't help what kind of sounds you make with your mouth when you see a healthy set of things. I'll have a beer with you if you like."

"I'm trying to be a doctor," said the specialist.

"Maybe it was my fault," said the woman. "Plenty of wives go to the burly with their old men. Maybe he really did go there for the comedians. I want the old buzzard to get better."

"He's in a good house," said the resident.

Trading was brisk the following day, and the net result was fine for the market but unfortunate, of course, for the patient. Rails, utilities, industrials, all had nice gains by early afternoon. Specifically, Plimpton got right out in front by noon, racing up to 105 3/4, and then the worst happened. At five in the afternoon the specialist appeared in the hospital and did not remove his coat. "I don't feel up to examining him right now," he said to the resident.

"I want to say something on behalf of the whole house," said the resident.

"I know, I know," he said to the resident. "You're very kind. But perhaps if I'd sold just a day earlier. Or spread a rumor about bad management in the company. You don't think as clearly as you should when you're in the middle of one of these."

"This house has been privileged to see at work one of the finest ..."

"You're very kind," said the specialist. "All right, I suppose we ought to call his kin, the wife, and get her down here."

"Once in a man's life," said the resident, "he's got to break some new ground, to do something out of his deepest heartfelt yearnings. I'm going back to Rochester with you, if I may."

But the specialist's eyes were off somewhere in the isotope ward. In 20 minutes, the wife was there.

"He went at three this afternoon," said the specialist. "We did everything we could, but you can't tamper with the economy. It's too powerful. It was something we couldn't anticipate. The stock got up to 105 3/4 and then split two for one. He didn't have a chance. When he dropped to the new price, 52 7/8, we hot toweled him and he did rally a point or two, but when the board closed for the day it was all over. Look, I know I should hold back awhile, but I'm all keyed up and I'm blurting this right out anyway. You're a doll and have you ever been to Rochester?"

"My mother said all doctors were bastardos, and we paid them in crops, the main one being asparagus spears. Are you sure you're not saying all of this because of m'boobs?"

"I'm a sensitive doctor-type," said the specialist, staring off over her pompadour.

"I ought to collect up Jerry, but I'm not collecting anyone who's always hung out at the burly," said the woman, taking the specialist's arm. "I hope you're not a bastardo."

"Taking a bride is in the finest medical tradition," said the resident. "I'm backing you both to the hilt and will see to it that the house takes care of Jer."

With that the specialist flew out of the hospital with the woman, pouncing upon her once in the railroad sleeper that whisked them northward and once again the same evening, minutes after they arrived at his bachelor duplex in the Rochester suburbs. He held his pounces to two daily through their one-week honeymoon, but on the eight day of their marriage, the specialist found himself tearing home in mid-afternoon to institute a third, between hospital research and afternoon clinic. The couple then went to five, the doctor giving up afternoon clinic completely. It was only then he realized, at first in panic and then with mounting satisfaction, that they were on a new issue, something called Electronic Lunch, which had come on the big board almost unnoticed but seemed to be climbing swiftly thanks to recommendations from two old-line investment services.