ABSTRACT
The year 1938, which saw the trial and conviction of Richard Whitney, and the suicide of Philip Musica, also marked the end of another unorthodox financial career, which was, in its own way, greater than either Whitney’s or Musica’s. Whitney came to grief because he was a misguided man, Musica because he was a rogue; our hero, Raymond Marien, was neither. It is hard to find exactly the right word for him. Perhaps it would be best to call him an artist whose medium was the bookkeeper’s ledger. His chef d’oeuvre, which won him the awed respect of the nation’s best financial minds, was the creation on the books of the Interstate Hosiery Mills, Inc., of $1,900,000 in totally non-existent assets—a structure without foundation which stood up sturdily for four years, and in the end fell only because of an accident. It cost Marien much toil and brought him no profit. His only motive, as far as anybody can discover, was the creative urge that is in every true artist, his only reward the knowledge that he had wrought a master-work which others of his craft would admire for years to come. The S.E.C. investigators who had the task of untangling the intricacies of Marien’s fictional ledgers are unanimous in proclaiming him the greatest accountant they have ever known. Probably he is the greatest accountant in the world.
