Word: plum
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...last week Harald Plum, wrestled less successfully with his nerves. His butter companies (Crown Butter and Le Brun) were, he knew, verging on insolvency, due to too great and rapid expansion. More than once in such crises Harald Plum had fiddled with the pistol which he always kept at hand. He claimed that the touch of cold steel soothed him, reminded him that his first millions were made in guns. Last week the pistol went off and Harald Plum crumpled, wounded but not dead...
...shot came a few minutes before banks were due to open. That morning the doors of Plum's comparatively small Folkebank (capital $1,600,000) remained locked. Cousin Bretteville Plum, the bank's Managing Director, scouted the police theory that Tycoon Plum had intended to commit suicide. Stock of the Folkebank dropped only 15 points. Hours dragged by, with Plum the Great unconscious...
Soon the Nordisk Trust Co.-exclusively financed by U. S. capital of Danish-American extraction-also suspended payments. Nordisk is a heavy shareholder in Folkebank, which in turn has large holdings in Crown Butter and the other Plum butter company, Le Brun...
...wore on Plum the Great recovered consciousness, called for his secretary, dictated what was afterward variously described as a "statement" and a "confession," then called in members of his family and tried to explain what steps they could take to save the Plum companies. At last he demanded what had been done with his pistol, was told that the police had taken it, seemed vexed. Since his doctor prescribed sleep he was left alone. Stealthily he rose, painfully dragged himself to a cupboard where he had secreted another pistol. Merciful, the second bullet brought Death to Harald Plum...
...brought about by skyscrapers and the subsequent deflation of vast areas of "unimproved" ground, made for economic instability. Of tall architecture he said: "Most of our skyscrapers . . . [are] elongated packing boxes, the architecture of whose midriff sections had best be passed over in haste. Many make me think of plum puddings whose raisins have settled on one or two sides. Certainly no one can say that recessing back a skyscraper makes for beauty." Never an official, never pedantic, Architect Hastings believed that the creator of a design should follow it through with the draughtsmen, landscapists and constructors...