Two Jakes Read Online Free Page A

grandly-named Shields Foundation for Investors , a unit that produced
print and electronic investment newsletters. Scarne himself was often solicited
for them and now recalled Sheldon’s name on S.F.I. promotional flyers. Since
annual subscriptions started at $1,000 – money better spent on a new set of
golf clubs – the solicitations went into the circular file.
    Randolph
Shields held the real power in an organization that had grown exponentially
since 1923 when their grandfather, Cornelius Shields, published Shields ,
the nation’s first pure business magazine. The broad-based conglomerate now
owned a dozen other magazines and newspapers, two cable television stations, a
movie studio and some of the priciest real estate in Manhattan. Not to mention
an ocean-going yacht and a Boeing 727.
    Despite
his ceremonial role, Sheldon surely had access to other investigative outlets.
Scarne assumed the call involved a personal matter: perhaps something
potentially embarrassing to his brother – although “Randy” Shields, as the
tabloids dubbed him, was a hard man to discomfit. He called Tierney, who was at
a meeting. His secretary said she’d relay the message.
    Scarne
went back to his shelving. The cabinet contained every book written by
Churchill. The cabinet and its collection had belonged to Scarne’s grandfather
who, despite spending much of his career trying to torpedo ships of the Royal
Navy, was an Anglophile.
    “Very
great race, the British,” the old sailor once told him. “Seafarers have to be
hard. Practical, too. They kept Winston on ice until their backs were against
the wall. Trotted him out to fight. After they won they threw him aside. Better
system than ours. Some men are made for war; some for peace.”
    Scarne
smiled as he looked at Volume 4 of Marlborough: His Life and Times , the
last section of the British Prime Minister’s million-word biography of his
famous ancestor, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. The volume was
marred by a perfectly round hole in its spine that obliterated the last three
letters of the Duke’s last name.
    “People
will think it is about cigarettes,” his grandfather had said as he surveyed the
damage after calmly and carefully removing the target arrow. The shaft had
flown through the open window of his study, narrowly missing the old
gentleman’s head as he sat reading court briefs. “But I suppose I should be
grateful you weren’t using hunting points. The tome would have been ruined.”
Then, turning to the speechless nine-year-old, he promised not to tell his
grandmother if Scarne would confine his future jackrabbit hunts to the ranch’s
outer acres – as well as promise to read the skewered book. Which he did.
    Not
until years later, when reading an essay by Larry McMurtry, the Lonesome
Dove author and book collector, did Scarne learn of the potential value of
the Marlborough set. There were 155 copies of a limited first edition
inscribed to the Prince of Wales, who was briefly King of England before
abdicating in December 1936 to marry his divorced American mistress, Wallis
Simpson. Scarne had immediately pulled his grandfather’s Marlborough from the packing crate in which it languished in a (thank God!)
climate-controlled storage facility. Sure enough, on a front page of each
volume, the inscription: “To the King, from Winston Churchill, October 30.
1936.”
    Even
after the economic meltdown of 2008-9, such an edition, albeit arrowless,
brought nearly $100,000 at a Sotheby’s auction. Scarne often wondered how such
a rarity wound up in his grandfather’s collection (although he suspected it was
obtained prior to the outbreak of World War II when his grandfather had been a
naval attaché in London). He also marveled at the old man’s equanimity in the face
of his grandson’s desecration. Scarne now kept the undamaged first three
volumes in his safe. But he enjoyed looking at Volume 4. He doubted anyone
would steal a book with a hole in it.