“And you inherited all these?”
“No, a few days before her sudden death, when she appeared to be in excellent health, I contracted with her to buy the collection for twenty million dollars, to be paid at the rate of a million dollars a year for the rest of her life, the remainder upon her death.”
“Which was Sunday night?”
“That’s correct.”
“So now you owe her estate twenty million dollars?” The banker’s eyes were wide.
“Correct again.”
“Do you have twenty million dollars?”
“Of course not. Why do you think I’m here?”
“You want to borrow twenty million dollars from us?”
“What’s the matter, James, don’t you have twenty million dollars?”
“Of course we do, but… what sort of collateral can you offer?”
“The collection itself. I put its value at between forty and fifty million dollars.”
“Have you had an independent appraisal?”
“That would take weeks, perhaps months. I know as much about these pieces as anyone in the country; I am certain of their value, and I must close this deal in ten days.”
/> “Barton, do you know what you’re asking?”
“Of course I do. I would only need the loan for a short period, perhaps as little as three months.”
“It’s not the term of the loan that worries me, Barton; it’s the ten days before you must have the money.”
“I know this is unusual, James, but it’s also the greatest opportunity of my lifetime, one that will make me very wealthy.”
“How would you realize the value of the collection? Auction it?”
“It would take at least a year to pull off an auction this big,” Barton said. “I have a different plan.”
“I’d like to hear about that,” Foster said.
“It’s my intention to offer the collection to some of the biggest museums in the country,” Barton said, “intact. They would pay for the collection by soliciting large donors, and they would display it, permanently, in replicas of some of the rooms of the Strong house.”
“It sounds as though you’re talking about building a wing onto a museum. That would take a lot longer than an auction.”
“No, there are several museums that could make room for the collection in their present space.”
“Barton, I really think it would be better to auction the collection piece by piece. You’d get huge publicity for such a sale, wouldn’t you?”
“Certainly,” Barton said, “but I don’t think you’d realize as much money from such an auction.”
“You expect to get more from a museum?”
“The whole of the collection is worth more than the sum of the parts,” Barton explained, “and only a museum could raise sufficient funds to buy it intact. You have to understand that the availability of this collection is an historic event, one that will never occur again.”
“Well, I suppose you have a point there, Barton, but you’re talking with a bank here. The loan committee could not approve such a large loan; it would have to go to the board, and it couldn’t even be presented to them until the whole collection had been appraised by an established authority, like an auction house, perhaps more than one. There are also questions of security and insurance that would have to be satisfied.”
“I understand that this is an unusual request, James, but I’ve been a client here for a long time, and I have put much more than twenty million dollars in cash flow through this bank during those years.”