House of All Nations (103 page)

‘I don't know what I'm to do, Mrs. Raccamond. What is your husband going to do when he comes back?'

‘Confidentially' (she uttered it like a battle cry though), ‘he will become general manager; he is taking over control of the London office and all the foreign accounts. He is making a thorough examination of the bank's files and accounts and if he is satisfied, he will stay there and reorganize, and if he is not satisfied, he will withdraw his accounts and those who go with him will have his protection in the Crédit. Or he may organize a bank of his own through Carrière: Carrière is proposing to found a private bank. You know what Carrière is worth.' Jacques was dumb. ‘You are working with us, Mr. Manray?'

‘But—Mr. Bertillon, Mr. William—'

‘We have them, Manray: they must work in with us, or without us; but we have the power …'

Jacques let her ring off without saying another word. He was dumbfounded. Who was deceiving him? He had allowed himself to promise his co-operation to both sides and in his timidity he was glad of it. There was ‘something rotten' in Raccamond, yet sick and hysterical, he had been able to gain this power at a single interview.

The Raccamonds rang him for four evenings and in the end he was obliged to take Campoverde and others to the counter of some near coffee bar and ask, ‘Has Raccamond been talking to you lately? What do you think of him? Do you think he's sound?' Farther than this he would not go, and his results were negative. By the fifth day Marianne was suspicious and discontented. Thereafter, he heard nothing. He worried for a day and then went on with his work in the old way.

The brothers Bertillon were almost invisible—they spent hours with Jean de Guipatin and with strange persons not seen before. This looked like new business, indeed. At the same time, several large new accounts had been opened in the bank by persons of financial or social consequence, and the employees who had suffered some moments of anguish in the past year began to look cheerful again and think that the trouble was over. Business ran more smoothly. The ‘boys,' the commission men and the clients, got their information from the usual financial journals, but markets were ‘looking better,' shares were going up in price, and some of them were only too glad to think that even inflation might help the country and even a fascist
Putsch
in Germany might help the Germans out of their marasmus. Alphendéry, with his perpetual song of ruin and the ‘decay of the system,' was not there. Even Jacques began to think the bank was more wholesome without this theorem!

Richard Plowman walked round the bank a good deal alone, but he courageously tried to keep everyone in a jolly mood by inquiring after their rheumatisms and children and by saying gaily, ‘Cheer up, the worst is yet to come, as Alphendéry would say'—sure sign that the old man thought all trouble was over. Jacques knew that old Plowman had a considerable part of his fortune in the bank and that he had never made a move to withdraw it. He had been sixty years in banking. He had seen the world. Was it likely that he would go about so peaceably if things were wrong up above?

Suddenly Jacques received a letter from London, in Raccamond's handwriting:

Dear Jacques,

I am vindicated and everything is now in my hands. I have got the London books which dovetail into the Brussels books I showed you. I am completely master of the situation. Be ready for me on Friday. I am completing the survey here and will return immediately. My subordinate here, Mr. Bomba, is with me up to the hilt, and I am sure we can count on general loyalty, especially when the facts are revealed. I am now able to reveal all, and you will have my confidence. In the meantime, line the rest of the men up, separately and sound them on the Bertillons. Tell them nothing! Say nothing to the Bertillons! If they knew what I had they might close the bank overnight. This is most important. I have terrible news, but through it I see a way to save the bank, take it out of the wrong hands, and make our own fortunes. Say nothing, but keep your eyes open and have a report ready for me when I come on Friday.

Aristide Raccamond

P.S. Have confidence: London is with us to a man and I find that Alphendéry, who was in a very real manner the inspirer of evil, has gone home to visit his mother. I see in this a dismissal.

Jacques became miserable with doubt. After a morning of wrestling with himself, he walked upstairs to Jules's room and without a word put the letter open on his desk. Jules started up. ‘Newchurch lied to me! Jacques, I want you to manage things here for me for a few days: I must go to London.'

Jacques smiled. ‘I'm so glad: I think that's the best, Mr. Bertillon. Calm him down, Mr. Bertillon. He's a funny sort of fellow.'

‘I may not see Raccamond,' Jules said quietly. ‘If he comes here while I'm away, play him, see these books, and get them if you can. If I can I'll have Raccamond arrested before he leaves England, for theft. It's possible I'll miss him. Ask my brother William to come in.' He looked at Jacques, smiled ravishingly. ‘Thanks, Jacques. Hold the fort for me.'

‘Has he got anything serious?' asked Jacques.

‘No, no; but he's a fool and he can do us a lot of damage with his bawling. Get my brother, will you?'

William and Jules Bertillon left for London by the afternoon plane. Richard Plowman, still smiling and constant, perambulated round the bank during their absence. Daniel Cambo came in bronzed from his trip to Morocco, with tales of the
ouled-naïl
and of complaisant officials. Mouradzian uneasily trotted round the bank, asking about Alphendéry and Bertillon, and young Prince Campoverde, tall, quiet, slow, and ambitious, went about his business … He had heard some rumors of further trouble for the bank, and he hoped to get a partnership out of Jules. A bank of this nature was just what he wanted to start out in life. Born during the war, he had never known anything but political excitement, trouble, and wild changes of state forms. He tranquilly perceived his chance in a shaky bank and his proper partner in Jules, another postwar pirate. Campoverde was a daredevil flier, and he and Jules had had an equal number of serious accidents on the roads. Campoverde was already forming his ‘team' for the partnership, with Jean de Guipatin, the Marquis de Chabot-Alpargatos, the son of Mouradzian, and other brilliant young fellows round the bank, full of postwar elegance, political freakery, ingrained cynicism, and derring-do. He was the one who had introduced the ‘aviation plan' to Jules just now. It was being whispered about the bank.

* * *

Scene Ninety-one: The Faithful

J
ules and William Bertillon returned from London by plane on Thursday afternoon. While they were away, Claire-Josèphe had taken a trip to Lausanne to see her boys and had brought the four children home with her ‘because they were homesick.' The brothers went straight to the bank when they arrived and found Richard Plowman there, in a new panama hat and a light gray suit, telling Jacques Manray about different kinds of sea anemones he had cultivated at home. Richard flushed with pleasure to see the brothers, ran to meet them with outstretched hands like an uncle, gave news of Claire-Josèphe and the boys, asked after Jules's latest motor injury, informed them that Jean de Guipatin had broken a collar bone again at polo, and asked William if he had seen the doctor about his low blood pressure. The children and Claire were expecting Plowman for lunch. ‘I'm going to look for a school near Paris for the children, Claire doesn't like them so far away and—' he smiled apologetically, ‘it'll be something for me to do in the week ends: take them out.'

He was following the boys up for a cozy chat, when Jules said, ‘Oh, please excuse us, Richard, we have to count in some gold that was just deposited with us by the Comtesse Campo-Formio this morning. Manray didn't want to send it to the safe deposit till we counted it. You don't mind?'

‘No, no, Jules, of course not.' He was very disappointed, wanted to know the latest news from London, whether Mrs. Fairfax still remembered him, whether Frank Durban had been to the Mayfair yet, whether they had got his herbal treatment for the liver. ‘I never see you boys now: business is booming, what!' He smiled cheerily, covering his disappointment, not to rebuke them. ‘An old man like me has nothing to do but sit round in an armchair and wonder why the brisk young fellows are too busy for him. I remember when old fellows used to sit round my outer office, smoking cigars and chatting, nice old johnnies who couldn't tear themselves away from India, couldn't go home to Cheltenham and vote for the latest tory candidate. I thought they were taking it pretty easy, too! I've had my day. I'm not grumbling. I'll just run along and see the next generation.'

‘Hope I die before I'm fifty at the most,' said Jules. ‘I can't stand the aged. Never had a minute's sympathy with them in my whole life. The first day I catch myself thinking about easy chairs, I'm going to take a first-class Fokker and loop the loop: end of a first-class Fokker …'

‘Don't worry about that yet,' murmured William. ‘Just what's this idea of showing your gold to Raccamond?'

‘I'm going to show him what we've got in Amsterdam, and what we've got in Paris, and then I'll take it out the very next day. We've taken the gold out of London where the big ass thinks he's going to sit in grandeur. They'll never think it's in Oslo because I told Bomba that Dannevig was incompetent and also broke, and I'm liquidating the Oslo office. They're so anxious to fleece me they believe anything I say if it suits their game.'

‘Jules, we're finished, I feel it in my bones.'

‘So do I; so does Claire. That was smart of her to get the children. Effie wants to divorce Paul! Effie has the best nose for money in the world. That shows she thinks we're going down. Let her go!'

They laughed. ‘Where is Michel?'

‘Gone to see his mother in Alsace, I think: I don't care.'

‘Don't be silly,' said William. ‘We could use him still. Send him a nice letter, saying we want him back as soon as his health's better. Tell him we'll pay him his salary as soon as he comes back.'

‘Do what you like! What good is he? He didn't get the books from Newchurch.'

‘You're wandering: you told him to keep out of it.'

‘What difference does it make! He should have had the gumption to go against me.'

William looked through his brother, seeing a thing to come, perhaps. He did not reply to this last, but said, ‘We're in a good position if the market goes down again. We'll have enough to leave the bank about seventy-five per cent solvent. Alphendéry can explain away a lot with that much dough.'

‘Don't worry about Michel,' Jules cried, in a scot. ‘Worry about me.

‘What do you bet Michel won't come back?' William asked, jingling his coins.

‘He'll come back if I ask him.'

Aristide came back, not in triumph, but in another paroxysm. His calculations had shown him that if there was a run on the bank, the clients demanding a transfer of their positions, and the market being against Jules, there was not enough money in the bank to buy back and pay out even his own clients. Aristide saw no gold accounts; the partially informed accountants in London made him think that every share which arrived in the bank was immediately sold out, that even bonds were sold out, and even bonds on deposit and lottery bonds had been sold. On the train back, Aristide, figuring with Marianne, had seen the figures of indebtedness mounting and mounting. The bank was also a debtor of Claire-Josèphe for two million francs, to Claire's mother for half a million, to big preferred clients like Plowman and Campoverde's family for several millions. The Comtesse de Voigrand, Jean de Guipatin's client, the richest woman in France, it was said, would be paid out before Aristide's Napoleonic princesses, Chicago comtesses, and stage queens. He could not get back quickly enough. Yet he was too timid to take the airplane.

* * *

Scene Ninety-two: Carrière

H
e went first to Carrière and saw him with his secretary and his mother in his home in the Avenue Montaigne. He showed both his sets of books and showed his calculations.

‘The best thing, Dr. Carrière, is to close the bank at once, arrest Mr. Bertillon, by making a general complaint, in the hope of preserving what assets he has. How do we know he won't fly the country?'

Carrière said, ‘Where would your clients be, Aristide? You wouldn't get preference over the other men. Better to draw your clients out carefully first. If they pay them out, you'll be able to bring down Bertillon afterwards. If they don't pay them out, you can complain to the police on that ground. Don't be rash. You've given Bertillon a scare. He may have moved his movable assets in case you make a scandal. Go quietly.'

‘I haven't the strength, Dr. Carrière.'

‘Then you should never have started this, Raccamond. You can't get out of it now. Don't forget that I have an account in the bank. You're not thinking of me, are you? You know I have a foreign account with them. With the books in the disorganization they are now, and everyone upset, an incursion by the police might only reveal what we are anxious to conceal. Think of my own situation: a man about to run as Mayor, who defies the Poincaré law and avoids taxes by keeping his bonds abroad? I know everyone does it and you've got to do it to protect yourself, but the
little people
will always make a fearful stink about that sort of thing. Now, Aristide, if you're looking to me for help, you've got to consider me, too. We've got to pussyfoot for a few days. Go home. I'll call upon you this evening, if I may.'

When he had got rid of Aristide, Dr. Carrière said to his secretary, ‘Now's my chance! Jules has refused to pay me the last sterling drafts, despite the court decision. This fool Raccamond will burst out one of these days and bring down the house—I've got to get in first, for Jules is my kill. I'm going to plaster the bank for everything that's owed to me—how much is that?—a million and a quarter in all? I'm going to bring Jules down. See the lawyer—and get him to send in the bailiffs when the bank opens tomorrow morning. I'll be there too: I'll see Jules ruined.' He laughed healthily. Nothing was going right but his affair with Jules. ‘And after,' he said, ‘give Aristide chicken feed but never let him in here again. I don't want that amateur sleuth round here.'