Noel Constant

Benjamin Constant, c. 1820

Noel Constant, father of Malachi Constant, was a "Yankee traveling salesman" of copper-bottomed cookware turned financial speculator who made spectacular fortune using an investment scheme based on the Bible. Originally from New Bedford, Massachusetts, he was the son of Sylvanus Constant, a loom fixer in the New Bedford Mills of the Nattaweena Division of the Grand Republic Woolen Company. His father was an anarchist, although this caused him no trouble except with his wife. The family could trace its lineage to an illegitimate child of Benjamin Constant, a political thinker and activist of the French Revolutionary period. One night, at the age of 39, Constant was staying in Room 223 of the Wilburhampton Hotel in Los Angeles, California. He decided to become a financial speculator using $8,212, his share of his deceased father's estate, which had mostly been in government bonds. Finding a Gideon's Bible in the bottom dresser drawer and a fourteen year old page of stock quotes lining the middle drawer, Noel was inspired to begin an investment program that made him $1.25 million in its first year by investing in companies days or even hours before their values massively increased.

His system was to take the text of the Bible beginning at Genesis and divide it into pairs of letters, e.g. "I.N., T.H., E.B., E.G., I.N., N.I., N.G." and bought stock in companies with those initials on the stock page. At first Constant would put all his funds in a single company and sell as soon as its value doubled. After buying stock in Trowbridge Helicopter for the third time, he decided to purchase the entire company two days before it landed a long-term government contract, increasing its value from $22 million to $59 million. His only executive decision about the company was to change its name to Galactic Spacecraft, Inc. It was the first time Constant took an interest in one of his properties and he sold only forty-nine percent of his shares, thereafter keeping a controlling interest of "any firm he really liked". After two years, he was visited by 22-year-old Ransom K. Fern, who claimed to be from the United States Bureau of Internal Revenue and had attended Harvard Business School. Despite Constant's taxes being in order, Fern determined that he must supremely lucky since, after questioning, it was clear he had no idea what any of the companies he had invested in actually did. Fern decided to quit his job and form a company for Constant's financial dealings called Magnum Opus. Noting decisions Constant had made that failed to maximize his profits, Fern designed a holding company that would do "violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance". Misunderstanding, Constant sought to buy stock in Fern's proposal until he explained that Constant would be chairman of the board and he president of a company filled with industrial bureaucrats who would further obfuscate the company's dealings. Until then, Constant had kept track of his business in his head while also using the accounting firm of Clough and Higgins. Fern further persuaded Constant that one day his luck would run out and without proper money management he'd "crash all the way back to pots and pans". Since Constant owned the lot across the street from the hotel, which he also now owned, he proposed that the headquarters of the new company be built there, although he noted that he would be staying in Room 223.

Despite his wealthy, Constant was noted for his poor personal hygiene and he told others that he was a dealer in stamps. This included Florence Whitehill, a chambermaid who spent one of every ten nights with him for a flat fee. She eventually became pregnant and learned that Constant was a multi-millionaire. He married her and gave her a mansion along with a million dollar checking account, asking that she name the child Malachi if a boy, Prudence if a girl. She continued to visit him in Room 223 every ten days but without the child. She once sent Constant a picture of his then 3-year-old son, Malachi, playing on an ocean beach, which he displayed as the only picture in his hotel room. Father and son met only once in Room 223, on the latter's twenty-first birthday, where he was told the Biblical investment scheme. At this meeting, he also told Malachi that his own father only gave him two pieces of advice: not to touch your principle and to keep the liquor bottle out of the bedroom. Saying only the second stood the test of time, he sent Malachi away. Constant lived for five more years, dying in Room 223 at the end of the phrase "he made the stars also", his last investment being Sonnyboy Oil at 17 1/4.

His father instructed that when he died, Malachi should simply ask Fern for a chronological list of his investments to determine where in the Bible he should start. Among his inheritance was an art collection acquired by his father's agents, which became "scattered through museums all over the world" on the advice of the Director of Public Relations of Magnum Opus, Inc. When Noel Constant had found that he could not purchase Leonardo's Mona Lisa, he exacted revenge by using the image in an advertising campaign for suppositories. Like his father, Malachi had little aptitude for business, but maintained the family luck for five more years. After the collapse of Magnum Opus, Fern informed Malachi that his father had written him a letter in case the family fortune was lost, which he left under the pillow in Room 223. Malachi had not entered the room since his one visit with his father, and it had been left empty by the Wilburhampton Hotel as a memorial, nothing changed except for the linen. In the letter to Malachi, he advised his son to remain calm and look for something good or important to have happened as a result of their lucky wealth. Admitting he wasn't a very good father, he said he was dead for a long time, even before he started investing. He never saw any reason for his wealth until he receive the picture of young Malachi from his mother and he decided it must be his son who would come to understand what had happened. He suggested to his son that if "somebody comes along with a crazy proposition", he should take the opportunity. At that moment, agents from Mars entered the hotel room and recruited Malachi.