House of All Nations (114 page)

‘Mr. Bertillon had a nervous breakdown. You will find if you look through the accounts that we are quite solvent.'

On Maître Lemaître's insistence, two million francs had been left in cash in the bank, and this was enough to surprise the investigators and hold off condemnation for weeks. Otherwise, it was found that the Silva-Vizcaïnos, the MacMahons (of Argentina), and others owed the bank nearly a million francs. An immense sum was reported by young Prince Campoverde to be in the vaults of a London bank: he had the assurance of Jules … Jean de Guipatin gave them pointers to possible treasure-troves and thus managed to prevent Jules being indicted for some weeks. Everyone read the details of Jules's domestic organization, likewise, smacking their lips: it was a real detective story.

Jules's yacht was burned a few nights after his departure, in Le Havre yacht harbor. The great automobiles were missing. The furs, jewels, clothes, and silver and gold plate were missing, and most of the servants had disappeared. One maid still lived in the apartment in the Avenue Raphael, and it was found that a great many of Claire-Josèphe's clothes were in her name (to avoid taxes). The furnishers came to claim the furniture in the new Porte de Saint-Cloud apartment owned by Claire-Josèphe, and not yet inhabited. The apartment run by Jules for tax-evading purposes was, and had always been, half empty. The concierge said that Mr. Jules Bertillon had never slept there, but Mr. ‘Michel Bertillon' had once or twice. The floor in the great apartment house, Avenue de la Bourdonnais, occupied by the twins and their wives was empty and ransacked and all sort of bills owing to jewelers, tailors, and purveyors of luxuries, as well as the first papers in a suit in divorce between Tony and Aline left there one cocktail party by mistake, were found there. Most of the furnishers were angry; the jeweler murmured philosophically, however, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Bertillon and their family made me a profit of half a million francs in the last few years; I won't join their creditors and howl for the last twenty thousand.'

The concierges had all been handsomely paid and, though they helped the police, they all said the best things they could think of about the Bertillons.

It was a cleanout. When the Bertillons went, what a golden cloud of providers, suckers, aides, and leeches was dispersed!

The Duchesse de Marengo, friend of Prince Campoverde, went to a competing fortuneteller, who informed her that she saw ‘the pillars of a great door, a bank door, and inside a vault and in the vault a heap of gold bars.' This news cheered up the Duchesse's friends for some weeks, and they had nothing much to say against Jules. But on the whole it was a bad finish, and things only got worse as time went on. The myths about the gold increased and the bitterness against Jules developed on two counts: first, in those who thought he had taken away with him all the vast riches they attributed to him; and second, in those who till this last had calculated that Jules was a smart thief and would come back and who were now coming to the conclusion that he had got away with practically nothing at all! They had cried: ‘What a cracksman!' And now grumbled: ‘What a muff!'

Brokenhearted were Achitophelous who had left Henrietta's marriage portion in the bank; a Chinese student, who had put in a check for collection the day before it closed; the printer who did all the elegant stationery for the Bertillons; the powder-puff manufacturer to whom Jules had been giving a stipend for years; the editor of a boulevard sheet,
Under the Skin
; old Richard Plowman, loyal to the very end and loyal even now, but in misery to see how his boys ended.

When Theodor Bomba came to him in the Athenaeum and told him the news, ‘The bank is closed, William's plane is missing, and so is the whole family,' Plowman had nodded, tried to smile. ‘I suppose Claire-Josèphe has the money in her name!'

Old Richard Plowman, gallant and not so dumb! thought Bomba. Richard Plowman caught his breath. ‘Poor Alphendéry! Poor you, too! You both warned me. I wouldn't believe anything. Well, I believed in the boys; one makes mistakes.' His breath failed him again.

‘Don't worry, Mr. Plowman, you'll hear from them … it's probably only a fugue. Jules is ill: it's not so bad as it looks.'

‘Oh, no, no, I know: there's nothing really wrong. Probably … Claire must have taken the train and the twins. I suppose William and Jules took the plane.'

When Plowman rang up a few days later, to say, with a broken voice, ‘They found the plane burned in a paddock,' Bomba went straight over to his house and thought the old man was dying. But later editions of the paper announcing that no remains were found, that apparently the burned plane was only a blind, a herring across the trail, Plowman revived again, smiled feebly, and murmured, ‘Well, I suppose they got away with it all then, thank God!'

He followed them (in their surmised newspaper wanderings) from Constantinople, to Tripoli, to Spain, Portugal, the Argentine—everywhere they were reported in the next few weeks. Indeed, the police were not very serious: they seemed to have got up a lark with the journalists. In the end it turned out that the whole family had very simply gone to Esthonia, from which no extradition is permitted for any reason. When Plowman heard this in the end, he believed it at once. ‘They thought everything out: they're safe there!' It was clear he expected a telegram from them at any moment.

‘I will go and join them when they send for me; they'll be feeling bad,' said Plowman. ‘If they send you their address, tell it to me at once.' He had no pride. He behaved like a kind and all-forgiving father. Besides, thought Bomba, there is no doubt that he thinks they have kept his money for him: I can see that shining through!

* * *

Scene One Hundred and Two: The Money Just Went

A
fter a month's wandering and wondering, the meteoric Jules was discovered in Reval, Esthonia. He was not by any means in hiding, simply living in the finest hotel in the finest way, with his mother, children, brothers, and their wives. When the reporters found him he was lounging in a silk pajama suit on a chaise longue, reading the stock-exchange sheets.

‘Are you Mr. Bertillon?'

‘No, I am Mr. Clément Népomuk.'

‘Oh, pardon. We thought you were Mr. Bertillon.'

‘Well, yes, I suppose I am Mr. Bertillon as well—Mr. Clément-Népomuk Bertillon.'

‘Oh! Have you any brothers, Mr. Bertillon?'

‘Yes, I have Mr. Simla Bertillon, Messrs. Paul and Francis Bertillon, Mr. Aristide R. Bertillon, Mr. Michel A. Bertillon, and so on.'

‘What a lot of brothers!'

‘Oh, yes, ours is a large family. I have many more; but why mention them all? That is enough.'

‘Haven't you a brother called Jules Bertillon?'

‘Oh—him! I've quarreled with him. I prefer not to talk about him. A flighty sort of guy.'

‘Have you heard about his late adventure in finance?'

‘Of course.'

‘How would you account for the bank's closing—knowing your brother as you do, we mean?'

‘Oh, I should just say it closed from absence of liquidity: a not uncommon weakness with banks nowadays.'

To other reporters he gave different stories: he was Mr. Jules, Mr. Jacques, Mr. Simla. A fourth came along and heard he was Mr. Mercure. To a fifth he was Mr. Jules Bertillon himself. This reporter, happy man, was able to ask directly, ‘They found two million francs in your bank, Mr. Bertillon. What happened to the rest?'

Jules crossed his legs. ‘You know how those things are! The money just went!'

And as all this was done not with impertinence, but with an extreme charm and insouciance, the thing created a ripple of laughter and convinced people that he had got away with the swag, which amused the public and annoyed the creditors very much. Esthonia is a poor country. There are several ways of creating a national income: there is baccarat, divorce, and the harboring of runaway bankers. Runaway and bankrupt bankers in particular always live high and keep their families in comfort, so that even if the itch gets them and they take a flier beyond frontiers, they leave their dependents in the safe refuge. As to Esthonia itself—that has been thought of: the corsairs of international finance are not allowed to go into business in Esthonia.

* * *

Scene One Hundred and Three: The Employees

A
ll of Jules's creditors had desperate sessions with their solicitors, lawyers, attorneys, and other legal advisers. In about two months there were sixty-eight lawyers retained by individuals and corporations, and it was perfectly clear that the only people who would divide up the assets of the Banque Mercure, S.A., were these same sixty-eight lawyers—and the liquidators.

The liquidators entered and inspected the furniture, appropriated the bookcases, Persian carpets, typewriters, books, and fine chairs. ‘Look, I'm taking that carpet,' said one. ‘My wife had been asking for a carpet piece to fill up the corner of the room for years.'

‘You're up-and-coming,' said his mate, ‘but I'll let you have it; as for the bookcase, I'll take it.'

Manray observed this with a jealous eye, and waylaid the liquidators in their goings and comings. ‘I want my pay: employees have a first claim for wages.'

‘Yes, yes, tomorrow: wait till we've made an inventory.' But the days passed and Jacques, angry, trailed one of the liquidators and found him in his apartment. ‘What about my wages?'

As he spoke his eye fell on the beautiful desk on which the liquidator was writing—broad, polished, with carved garlands. ‘I haven't time to attend to that yet; we have our procedure which must be followed.'

‘Where did you get that desk?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You pay me my wages or I'll make a stink. I'll let the creditors know you've taken Mr. Bertillon's desk.' His eye traveled over the other pieces of furniture in the office apartment, elegant pieces, part of a suite, odd members like the desk, all splendid.

‘My dear fellow, there is no intention of robbing you: you must wait till we finish our examination.'

‘You're paid for this, aren't you?'

‘You came to make trouble.'

‘Listen, Mr. Liquidator, I did come here to make trouble. I want my wages. I can't wait till your examination is finished: it won't be finished till your boy has been through the university and your girl has got herself a rich husband. I should like to have learned the liquidation game early myself. You pay yourself your salary and you have sticky hands … And I'm going to the creditors and I'm going to the newspapers; I'm going to make a hell of a lot of trouble. I'm not in a joking mood; I'm out of a job, and I'm behind in my salary …'

‘Who wants to rob you? Listen, I'll pay you out of my own pocket.'

‘I don't care how you pay me, as long as you give me my pay.'

The liquidator, conciliating, picked Jacques' wages out of his pocket-book and handed them over, Jacques gave him a receipt and went out. He would be lucky if after weeks of pounding the pavement and marking time on door mats, he landed any sort of clerk's job in another bank or stock-exchange house. Banks and stock-exchange houses are superstitious. Then again, the competitors of Jules Bertillon were naturally the only houses to which he could apply—Peney and Denari, Cleat, Placket, and Co., the Crédit, and so on. And in all these houses Raccamond had already left his traces, spreading scandal with his famous account books, pretending that he possessed all the clients of Bertillon, representing himself as the moving spirit in Bertillon's. Jacques Manray, the manager, engaging as anyone, but a little irritable and angry, would have difficulty in so much as swallowing their first insulting jokes and rebuffs.

Well, it had to be done. Jacques dissolved and reformed slowly; but an acid was at work and by hints, allusions, and exclamations within himself, his love for Jules began to fade. When he had excused himself and Jules a few more times (and it didn't do to excuse Jules too much or the bastards would say he had been hand-in-glove with him and duped the clients with his eyes open) and been sneered at by the customers' men of other houses who hated the ‘inside man' and been treated like dirt by the bosses who despised him for a lump who had not even known how to get his own cut, and who despised him more and more as time went on and it came out that even Jules had not got away with much money—and this had gone on for a few weeks, Jacques had no love left for Jules at all.

‘Although,' said his wife, ‘I suppose if Jules Bertillon came back to you tomorrow, you'd forgive him everything and go and slave for him again, and let him fleece people over your head, and let him make another fortune and still ask for nothing but your miserable wage. I know you.'

‘You never met Jules,' said Jacques Manray, with regret. ‘Perhaps I would, perhaps I wouldn't. Jules could make anyone forgive him murder, I used to say, but I don't know now. Things have gone so black with us the last few months that I don't think I could forgive Jules any more. He left a couple of million lying round the bank—he could at least have given me three months' salary. Now it is all in the hands of a swarm of crooked lawyers and the liquidators. It's always the same. I have to answer the questions, face the police; and Jules is there acting charades in his tiptop hotel in Reval. It comes down hard on me; he's let us all in for a bad time. He might have known we couldn't get jobs so easy after a crash.'

‘I don't know why you go and answer the judge. Why don't you let some of the others do it.'

‘Mlle. Gentil is down there—she's having a tough time: she kept the stock records. Henri Martin is down there, but he's in with the police. Armand Brossier is—he hates Jules now: he says he'd kill him if he could get him within hand's reach. François Vallat is there; he used to buy theater tickets and get identity cards for the clients—he knows about as much about the bank as Etienne the doorkeeper. He's nearly going crazy, he's got no place, and he really knows nothing, and his wife's ill now. The police keep after him—you'd think they like to pester timid people … Don't worry, they're having enough trouble. Poor Mlle. Dalbi has to go down. She tells all she knows and you can see, poor kid, that all the time she's thinking, “William Bertillon will never forgive me.” Meanwhile “Old” Berthellot is foxing away back there in Choisy-le-Roi, refusing to give any evidence, and his wife's nephew that he got in in his place doesn't know what's become of the books. Of course, those were the books I burned myself. It's a mess and everyone's in it.'