The Scarlatti Inheritance(12)

The first true inkling Elizabeth had about her future husband came several weeks after the picnic. Her father gloatingly announced at the dinner table that his big Italian simpleton had requested permission to come in Sundays! No additional pay, mind you; just that he had nothing better to do. Naturally, Wyckham had arranged it with his watchman, for it was his Christian duty to keep such a fellow occupied and away from all the wine and beer to which Italians were addicted.

On the second Sunday Elizabeth found a pretext to go from her elegant home in suburban Evanston to Chicago and then to the plant. There she found Giovanni, not in the machine shop but in one of the billing offices. He was laboriously copying down figures from a file marked clearly—CONFIDENTIAL. The drawer of a steel file cabinet on the left wall of the office was open. A long string of thin wire was still hanging from the small lock. Obviously the lock had been expertly picked.

At that moment, as she stood in the doorway watching him, Elizabeth smiled. This large, black-haired Italian simpleton was far more complicated than her father thought. And, not incidentally, he was most attractive.

Startled, Giovanni looked up. Within a split second his attitude changed to one of defiance.

“Okay, Miss ’Lisbet! You tell you papa! I don’t want to work here no more!”

Elizabeth then spoke her first words of love to Giovanni.

“Get me a chair, Mr. Scarlatti. I’ll help you.… It’ll be quicker that way.”

And, indeed, it was.

The next several weeks were spent educating Giovanni in the legal and corporate structure of the American industrial organization. Just the facts devoid of theory, for Giovanni supplied his own philosophy. This land of opportunity was for those just a little bit quicker than the other opportunists. The period was one of enormous economic growth, and Giovanni understood that unless his machines enabled him to own a part of that growth, his position would remain that of a servant to masters rather than a master of servants. And he was ambitious.

Giovanni set to work with Elizabeth’s help. He designed what old Albert Wyckham and his executives thought was a revolutionary impact-extrusion press that could turn out corrugated carton sides at a phenomenal rate of speed and at a cost approximating a 30 percent saving over the old process. Wyckham was delighted and gave Giovanni a ten-dollar raise.

While waiting for the new machinery to be tooled and put into assembly, Elizabeth convinced her father to ask Giovanni to dinner. At first, Albert Wyckham thought his daughter was playing a joke. A joke in poor taste for all concerned. Wyckham may have made fun of the Italian but he respected him. He did not wish to see his clever wop embarrassed at a dinner party. However, when Elizabeth told her father that embarrassment was the last thing she had in mind, that she had met Giovanni on several occasions since the company picnic—finding him quite amusing—her father consented to a small family dinner with suddenly new misgivings.

Three days after the dinner Wyckham’s new machinery for corrugated carton sides was in operation and on that morning Giovanni Scarlatti did not show up for work. None of the executives understood. It should have been the most important morning of his life.

It was.

For instead of Giovanni, a letter arrived at Albert Wyckham’s office, typed by his own daughter. The letter outlined a second machine for corrugated carton sides that made Wyckham’s new assembly totally obsolete.

Giovanni’s conditions were frankly put Either Wyckham assigned him a large block of company stock plus options for purchase of additional shares based upon current values, or he would take his second design for corrugated carton sides to Wyckham’s competitor. Whoever possessed the second design would bury the other. It didn’t matter to Giovanni Scarlatti, but he did feel it would be better kept in the family as he was formally requesting Albert’s daughter in marriage. Again, Wyckham’s answer did not really concern him, because Elizabeth and he would be united as man and wife within the month regardless of his position.

From this juncture on, the rise of Scarlatti was as rapid as it was clouded. The public facts indicate that for several years he continued to design newer and better machinery for a number of paper-producing companies throughout the Midwest. He did so always with the same conditions—minor royalties and shares of stock, with options to buy additional shares at the prices of stock prior to the installation of his new designs. All designs were subject to renegotiation of royalties after five-year periods. A reasonable item to be dealt with in reasonable good faith. A very acceptable legal expression, especially in light of the low royalty rates.

By this time, Elizabeth’s father, exhausted by the tensions of business events and his daughter’s marriage “to that wop,” was content to retire. Giovanni and his wife were awarded the old man’s entire voting stock in the Wyckham Company.