House of All Nations (111 page)

‘Yes, he's introduced me to the Crédit: he's a friend of mine. I'm glad to be out of the bank.'

‘You did well,' said Mouradzian heartily. ‘You could not do any better.'

Raccamond hunched his shoulders. ‘I had an instinct against the place: everyone told me it was a bucket shop. The way they think—they thought I was trying to blackmail, when I was trying to conciliate, to avoid a scandal for the good of all parties. I did not want to ruin them, I only wanted to save the clients and the jobs of the employees.'

‘Yes, yes, of course.'

‘Who will be in the London office?'

Mouradzian guessed cruelly. ‘Alphendéry, they told me. He never seems to be able to draw himself away: but I understand that this time it's a part-time job; he's also working as a secretary for this grain merchant, Léon. Did you ever meet him?'

‘Yes.'

‘A remarkable man, Alphendéry: I'd like to work in with him, to see how he does things. Everyone whispers that he made Bertillon's fortune for him. Queer how these rumors are born and get about, isn't it?'

* * *

Scene Ninety-eight: Interlude

W
hen Alphendéry telephoned him Maître Lemaître explained that he never ate out, but asked Alphendéry to breakfast with him at seven-thirty the next morning. When Alphendéry arrived the lawyer was ready to go out, with his satchel on a chair. They first gave a glance to politics, spoke of the end of the Meerut process, commenced in June, 1929, and the longest now in the history of India. It interested French people on account of their own social troubles in Indo-China.

Then Maître Lemaître broached the topic of the bank's troubles. ‘Do you consider Mr. Bertillon has been in a normal state of mind, the times I have seen him lately?'

Alphendéry said very rapidly, ‘I am a most devoted friend of Jules Bertillon, and I want to see him get out of this mess; also I have the highest respect for you,
cher maître
, but I don't see how you can go very far unless you have all the facts.'

‘Exactly,' said Lemaître with satisfaction.

‘The books Raccamond has are the books of the London Finance, a subsidiary, in fact, a ghost company, formed by Jules, or some unknown associates of his, in Luxemburg, to cover transactions which function like a
contre-partie
carried out by the bank against the operations of some of the clients.'

Lemaître smiled a broad smile: ‘I knew it. Raccamond showed the books, and all he has filched, to my friend Luc, of course, and he came running to me this morning, with them, to try and dislodge me from your legal department. But not only is it my duty to ask Jules Bertillon for his interpretation—but I had a personal reason: I wanted to form an opinion on Bertillon's mental processes.'

‘I love Jules,' said Alphendéry, ‘but he is a constitutional liar. I warned him to tell you the truth, but he can't tell the truth. See, all of us had acknowledged the truth to each other; but he had to lie to you. Don't take it as an offense, please,
cher maître
; he is psychologically twisted in this direction. Like a good many businessmen, he can only survive on the comforting thought that he is diabolically smart and that his game, however transparent it really is, is opaque to all other minds.'

‘I know them very, very well,' said Lemaître consolingly. ‘Almost no clients of a lawyer tell the whole truth: there is no miracle in that. But with Bertillon—' He looked with half-factitious hesitation at Alphendéry to draw him out as he saw him embarked on the sea of confidences.

Alphendéry saw the maneuver and, glad to unburden himself said, ‘Jules Bertillon is not only temperamental, he is as unstable as fire. His two or three chief characteristics are—that he is generous, thus distinguishing himself from the solid businessman who builds up a fortune out of every grain that comes his way. Jules feels that money will always flow into his pockets—he belongs to the fabulous race of the great swindlers, though he is not a great swindler. Second, he finds it impossible, almost degrading, to tell the truth; he believes every question is a challenge to his ingenuity, and he would feel flat and in cold standing water if he told the plain truth; that seems to him the cue of plodding dullards. Next, he is very neurotic, and can stand no strain. Fourth, he can only think when he is succeeding; when he is failing, he seems as threadbare as those hanging round the draggled skirts of finance. Last, he is a fisher in troubled waters; he does not rise and fall with the business world, like most people I know—optimistic, belligerent, stupidly boastful when markets are up; depressed, canaille, naïve, invertebrate when markets are down. With him it is the opposite—the world seems to crown asses when markets are up and when markets are down and everyone is talking about suicide, then Jules feels grand and he chortles at the distress of the others, and thinks it heaven's cue for him to jump in and take the principal part.'

‘I am more than grateful to you for your portrait,' said Maître Lemaître. ‘I had guessed part. It lacked confirmation. Now I know how to proceed.'

Then he leaned forward and said in a low and rather sad tone, ‘Make the best arrangements you can with Bertillon. I have absolute knowledge—and you know how cautious I am, Monsieur Alphendéry!—that this bank cannot last much longer under any circumstances. A combination of circumstances, of personal and professional enemies, which the unfortunate amount of scandalous publicity has brought you, has brought you near a wall you cannot scale. I advise you to give Raccamond certain assurances to keep him calm, and then prepare yourself quickly for a decent bankruptcy or for any other arrangement. In fact, it is now too late for you to go bankrupt. If that advice had been taken a year ago there would have still been time. In any legal matter, I am willing to be consulted.' He leaned forward and said very earnestly to Alphendéry, ‘I know, for sure, that the tax authorities will close the bank for examination of its books, for a few days.' He was silent, looking at Alphendéry curiously, but friendly; then continued, ‘Are you going to try to restore some of the shares? With Luc, who is the dearest friend of a friend of mine, and by influencing Lallant, as I know how, we can bring pressure to bear on Raccamond and explain to him in divers ways that to spread scandal now will mean danger to him. We can hold him off for six months and by then—he will be nonsuited.' He smiled.

‘The Bertillons have been going through their papers,' Alphendéry said cautiously, ‘preparing for—eventualities.'

Actually the night before, the two brothers and Alphendéry had been through gold brokers' confirmations and extracted all those mentioning sale of gold, or withdrawal of gold, and leaving only those showing buying or deposit of gold, or transfer to the banks or vaults. True, the checkup of the gold brokers' books would show another reckoning different from both the affirmative receipts and the reckoning just made by Alphendéry but that would take a very long time and their time was short; their object to make the gold-holdings seem larger, and call in Raccamond. They had all three decided that the only thing to do was to cool him off, soothe his vanity, load him with importance and statements, and get him off on some mission while they decided what the future of the bank and of themselves would be.

Alphendéry smiled, turning the subject, ‘Raccamond has gone back to witchcraft. He met me yesterday in the street and said, “I know you claim you don't love profit. I am sure you feathered your nest, just the same—but that was a side issue: you love scheming for its own sake. If you were a poor man, a pauper, you'd do the same. How can these brothers equal you? You never rest; you never tire; it is in your blood. As long as your blood beats in your temples, this swarming of schemes will stream through your head. Your head is not a brain, it is a beehive—it is a beehive that turns and turns—” He put his hand to his head; the sweat was pouring from his forehead and neck. He stooped, exhausted by his passion.'

Alphendéry had stared at him, pitifully, shaken by so much hatred and fear of himself. He said in an undertone, gently, ‘My own fault—'

Lemaître laughed keenly, ‘Yes, you inspire passions of all kinds.'

‘I fear passion,' said Alphendéry.

‘I don't think so,' smiled the lawyer.

* * *

Scene Ninety-nine: Judges Like Serials

M
eanwhile everyone was making preparations. Richard Plowman complained once again that he could never see his dear friends Jules and William, although Claire-Josèphe was now always at home, more accessible than ever. ‘I am glad you have left the bank,' he said to Alphendéry. ‘You were keeping the brothers apart; now William and Jules are always hobnobbing—even I never see them. You meant well … don't misunderstand me. Personally, I think you're a charming fellow—but now they are united, there's a shoulder-to-shoulder air about them that I, personally, find altogether sane and most promising for the future.'

This puzzled Alphendéry, although he put it down to Jules's aviation and oil monopoly and other projects.

He made a friendly call on Maître Lemaître, who said, ‘I hear that Legris are ready to ditch him: this Raccamond created too much of a stink and there has been an investigation of Legris and Company from the Bourse of Amsterdam … Then Carrière's opponent in the elections knows that Carrière still has his foreign accounts with Bertillon, and he is only too anxious to get at their books and show up Carrière as a tax evader. Oh, a nest of trouble is being put together assiduously. I like Bertillon, although I think he's short in the thatch and although he lied to me outrageously. I don't want him to sit in the Santé.'

‘You're tenderhearted for a lawyer,
maître
.'

‘Well, no. None of my clients is an angel, not even the injured parties, but Bertillon is outside the law—he does nothing legal. His affairs must be in the most unspeakable tangle; I don't want to be mixed up in it. I'm his lawyer. Let him fly. I don't want to defend him. I like him and I've considered it from all angles—let him take some of the books with him and fly. That would be the best for all of us, including you. And as for you, I hope you are leaving Paris, Mr. Alphendéry.'

‘Yes, tonight,' said Alphendéry. ‘I am not even waiting to get my back salary.'

‘You are right. There is very little time left to us. Tell Mr. Bertillon. Not from me, but let him understand. Maître Luc, although Raccamond's lawyer, told me the same. He wishes Bertillon would fly. Bertillon has our sympathy. He will end badly. Why? Why go to the bitter end ? The game is ended. If he could wait another five years, he might beat Carrière at his own game; he might make another fortune on exchanges, on tourists, on anything—but he can't: he hasn't the youth, the elasticity, the freshness. I know men, Mr. Alphendéry, and Mr. Bertillon has spun his thread. He needs refreshment. There, I only do this for you, as a friend, and Bertillon is your friend. There, write to me: I disagree with you entirely on everything. Thus we have much to say to each other. Put every agreement with Mr. Léon on paper and have it witnessed! Ah, ah, you won't though. Well … good luck.'

Alphendéry told all this to Jules, ‘But there are two million tied up for Raccamond, and the money not yet released from the Parouart case,' said Jules. ‘I have five million here and there in various companies, the Spanish oil, the French aviation—I've put up a million for each already—you don't know the half—' he smiled between sheepishness and cunning. ‘I can't go away and leave all that money behind.'

‘It's that or the Santé,' said Alphendéry calmly. ‘Think who sent you the message, Maître Luc.'

‘Raccamond's lawyer.'

‘Just so—his lawyer asks you to fly. Raccamond doesn't want you to fly. But Luc is a friend of Lemaître, and Lemaître is a friend of yours. There's the sequence.'

‘Those lawyers are always playing safe: they don't understand a type like me,' said Jules fretfully.

‘Take their advice, Jules, and as for what's lying round here—leave it. Collect what you've got in Legris in Amsterdam, clean out the branches, leave enough to pay the boys here, and a few sacks of gold in the safe. That will puzzle them. When they descend on the bank they'll find money there. Strange escapade, they'll call it, not a fugue. The great point in all these things is mystery: the liquidators want mystery till they've laid their hands on the carpets and bookcases, just what they wanted to fill up the spare room at home; the journalists want mystery—it's a substitute for a bad serial; the judges want mystery—they don't have to make up their minds; the expert accountants want mystery—it's their job. Start the idea of mystery in the minds of all and you have a smoke trail that will not clear away but that will go on thickening for years. When it finally clears, you will doubtless be clear, too—'

‘Transparent,' chuckled Jules, amused, his eyes fixed in the distance.

‘Still, there will be a crowd to believe in your innocence and see a secret hand, a hidden force, a fatalism even. Carrière, Raccamond will be blamed, not you …'

‘I'm not trying to shift the blame—I like blame,' cried Jules petulantly.

‘You'll get enough to satisfy you: then you'll be glad of the mysticism of people—in the end you'll find people suing Jean de Guipatin or Mlle. Dalbi, or Campoverde or Mouradzian—and in the end you'll be glad. You're a shadow, Jules; you're not a focus for blame. There's something unhuman about you; people prefer a grosser-grained, a fatter-boned culprit—me—or Raccamond—or William. You'll see.'

‘Pttt!' said Jules. ‘You're imaginative, Michel. Will you like your new job?'

‘Léon is a petty tyrant—but I'll get along all right. I may not stay there long.'