Free The Lost Prince by Selden Edwards Page A

way. This bank would never have allowed you to lose your family home.”
    “That is comforting to know.”
    “We would have thought of some solution. Our bank was glad to be of service in your enterprise.”
    So, all the borrowed monies paid back, her holdings now increased not the tenfold caused by the loan, but twentyfold, it became clear that Eleanor, barely knowing what she was doing, had made the purchase of a lifetime and was able to set up the Hyperion Fund as a more-than-significant financial entity.
    What she did not realize fully at the time was that she had just discovered, quite by accident, the explosive power—and the risk—of buying on margin.
    Of course, she was able to tell none of this to her fiancé, Frank Burden, nor was she able to convey in any way to him her very satisfactory last conversation with the moneylender.
    She had accomplished, with the infusion of a good deal of luck, her first two assignments, the selling of Prince Rudolf’s ring and the purchase of stock in Cincinnati Soap and Candle Company, at an extraordinary moment in the company’s history. The deep satisfaction from this mostly accidental transaction would revisit her, along with the apprehension, from time to time for the rest of her life.
What if I had not acted?
she would think. At one moment, she seemed a puppet, being pulled this way and that by fate and expectations, and the next she seemed to be acting totally on her own initiative, living by her wits, the mistress of her own drama. Was it all predetermined, some massive fate controlling all the details, or did she bear the heavy responsibility of causing events, or having to save the day? Was it, after all, completely up to her? One thing was for certain: She wished never again to make the journey alone.

    The assurance that she would not have to came shortly after her return from Cincinnati after the Procter and Gamble buyout, and from a very unlikely quarter. It came in the form of Harvard physics student Ted Honeycutt, whom she judged from the start, in spite of the very specific instructions, an unlikely savior. It was he who arranged to meet with her again.
    “You followed the fate of that Cincinnati Soap and Candle stock?” she said to Ted Honeycutt back in Boston.
    “I did,” he said. “It captured my attention. I observed from my distancethat it doubled in value.” There seemed to be a new curiosity in him, but his manner remained brusque.
    “Are you sorry that you did not accept a year’s salary in that stock when it was offered?”
    “I am a scientist, but even I deduced that I would have made a bundle,” he said. “I have come to hear more about what you are offering.”
    “What we will say here must be highly confidential.”
    “Of course,” he said. “I am very good with secrets, Miss Putnam. I don’t talk to people.”
    “So I have heard. That is one of the qualities I discovered in seeking you out.”
    “I want to know what you are looking for.”
    “I believe that I told you in our first meeting. With the purchase of this stock, in significant number, I need to add, I have created a fund. I will be making other purchases over the years, and the fund will grow in importance and value. I will need someone intelligent and discreet and efficient to manage it. I wish for you to be that person.”
    “And after our first disagreeable meeting you still wish that?”
    “I didn’t find our first meeting disagreeable,” she said. She was not being completely honest. “I like honesty.”
    For a second time, he asked, “What makes you so certain that I am the man you want?”
    Unable to explain the real reason for her certainty, Eleanor said this time, “Mr. Honeycutt, I am, as I have explained, highly intuitive, a good judge of character.”
    “Well, I am leaning toward coming on board,” he said quickly.
    “I do not want
leaning,
Mr. Honeycutt. I wish to have a decision.”
    Ted Honeycutt paused for a moment, looking away, and then his