The Inner Sanctum Read Online Free PDF Page A

mouth.
    "My God." Helga's cheeks were wet with tears.
    "What is it?" Jesse flipped off the computer screen.
    Helga sobbed, unable to speak.
    Jesse rose from her chair. "What is it, Helga?" she asked more firmly, moving out from behind the desk to comfort the older woman.
    Helga dropped her hands from her face. "I have terrible news," she said hoarsely. "It's Neil Robinson. He died of a heart attack last night in the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel."
    ** Chapter 3
    The Hughes Building--a modern, glass-encased edifice--rose fifteen stories above the heart of Towson, an upper-middle- class Baltimore suburb located just north of the city limits. On a clear day David Mitchell could see Baltimore's skyscrapers rising out of the downtown area twenty miles from his ornate top-floor office. He could see Glen Owens too--the poverty-stricken east Baltimore row-house neighborhood where he'd grown up.
    When David had first joined Sagamore Investment Management Group four years ago, he'd brought his widowed mother up to his tastefully decorated office to see its dark wood paneling, antiques, and rich Oriental rug. The blue bloods had enjoyed the apple-pie gesture--and his mother's polyester pantsuit--but David paid no attention to their snobbish smirks as she turned away after shaking their hands. She wanted to see what her youngest son had made of himself, and he wanted to show her.
    David had kissed her good-bye in the lobby after her short visit. She had been so proud. He shut his eyes tightly. What would she think of him now if she knew? He hated to think about it.
    Sagamore managed almost $200 billion and would have ranked as one of the country's largest investment funds, except that the firm shunned publicity and didn't publish the figure. In their endless search for financial information, Forbes and Fortune used every means available to determine the number, but only a few people at the firm knew, and they would not divulge it during the infrequent interviews they gave the press.
    Sagamore did not accept money from just anyone, and so it didn't have to make the public filings required of Fidelity, Vanguard, and the other huge money managers. Sagamore took cash exclusively from wealthy individuals and corporate pension plans in private transactions, and only after the executive committee deemed the investor worthy. The investor list was a closely guarded secret too, known only by the same short list of people who knew the amount of money the firm managed.
    Investors had to pass an extensive application process before Sagamore would accept their money, but it was worth enduring such unusual treatment because of the firm's extraordinary success. Begun in 1979, the firm had struggled initially. But in the last fifteen years it had beaten the return on the Dow Jones Industrial Average every year, and usually by a wide margin. A million dollars invested with Sagamore in 1984, its first year of stellar results, would have been worth almost $100 million today.
    David had joined Sagamore at twenty-eight, upon earning his M.B.A. from the University of Virginia. After two grueling years of the case method he had graduated number three in his class. Numbers one and two had hurried to Wall Street, but Sagamore had enticed David home to Baltimore with a generous compensation package, the important attraction of avoiding the hardships of a New York City lifestyle, and the implicit guarantee that the pressure to perform at Sagamore would be nothing compared to what was required by the Street. David particularly liked that aspect. It wasn't that he couldn't take the pressure, he simply had no desire to devote every waking hour to his job.
    As was customary at Sagamore, he had spent a year as a portfolio assistant, then become one of fifteen full portfolio managers, initially responsible for $5 billion dollars of the firm's money, then, six months later, $10 billion. The work was stimulating, exciting, and, though the senior people had advertised differently