Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer Read Free Book Online Page A

it. He decided he would not
sell immediately, but hold on, as David thought these
shares would reach twenty dollars.
    At the same time, Harvey Metcalfe began to
release a few more shares onto the market, because of the interest created by
Stephen’s investment. He was beginning to agree with Silverstein that the
choice of David Kesler, young, honest, with all the enthusiasm of a man in his
first appointment, had been a good one. It was not the first time Harvey had
used this ploy, keeping himself well away from the action and placing the
responsibility on innocent shoulders.
    Meanwhile Richard Elliott, acting as the
company spokesman, leaked stories to the press about large buyers coming into
the market, which in itself occasioned a flood of small investors.
     
    One lesson a man learns in the Harvard
Business School is that an executive is only as good as his health. David didn’t
feel happy without a regular medical checkup: he rather enjoyed being told he
was in good shape, but perhaps should take things a little easier. Miss Rentoul
had therefore made an appointment for him with a Harley Street doctor.
    Dr. Adrian Tryner was a very successful man.
Although thirty-seven, he was tall and handsome, with a head of dark hair that
looked as if it would never go bald. He had a classic strong face and a self
assurance that came from proven success. He still played squash twice a week,
which made him look enviably younger than his contemporaries. He had remained
fit since his Cambridge days, which had equipped him with a Rugby Blue and an
upper second-class degree. He had completed his medical training at St. Thomas’s,
where once again his rugby football rather than his medical skill brought him
into prominence. When he qualified, he went to work as an assistant to a highly
successful Harley Street practitioner, Dr. Eugene Moffat. Dr. Moffat was
successful not so much in curing the sick as in charming his patients,
especially middle-aged women, who came to see him again and again however
little was wrong with them. At fifty guineas a time that had
to be regarded as success.
    Moffat had chosen Adrian Tryner as his
assistant for exactly the qualities he had himself, which made him so sought
after. Adrian Tryner was good-looking, personable, well educated and just
clever enough. He settled in very well to Harley Street and the Moffat system,
and when the older man died suddenly in his early sixties, he took over his
mantle much as a crown prince would take over a throne. He continued to build
up the practice, losing none of Moffat’s ladies, except by natural causes, and
by the age of thirty-seven had done remarkably well for himself. He had a
comfortable country house just outside Newbury in Berkshire, a wife and two
sons, and considerable savings in blue-chip securities. He wasn’t complaining
at his good fortune and he enjoyed his lifestyle, but he was a bored man.
Occasionally he found the bland role of a sympathetic doctor almost intolerably
cloying. How would it be if he admitted that he neither knew nor cared just
what was causing the minute patches of dermatitis on Lady Fiona Fisher’s
diamond-studded hands? Would the heavens descend if he told the dreaded Mrs.
Page-Stanley that she was a malodorous old woman in need of nothing more
medically taxing than a new set of dentures? And would he be struck off the
list of the General Medical Council if he personally administered to the nubile
Miss Lydia de Villiers a good dose of what she so clearly indicated that she
wanted?
    David Kesler arrived on time for his
appointment. He had been warned by Miss Rentoul that doctors and dentists
cancel if you are late and still charge you.
    David stripped and lay on Adrian Tryner’s
couch. The doctor took his blood pressure, listened to his heart, and made him
put out his tongue (an organ that seldom stands up well to public scrutiny). As
he tapped and poked his way over David’s body, they chatted.
    “What brings you to work in