House of All Nations (115 page)

* * *

Scene One Hundred and Four: What Avatar?

T
he Bertillons took a beautiful country house and flourished in exile. For Jules yearned out of his harbor of refuge, like many another erring Frenchman, for his native lands and its fleshpots. It took the force and argument of the whole family, combined with the fact that his grandfather was now the richest of them all, to prevent him from casually taking a yacht, cruising round the Baltic, German Ocean, Channel, until he reached ports of France, and visited them, with his flag flying, to remind him of the days when his yacht
Purpure
caused a stir in the fashionable world of the water front.

‘That's how the police catch half the light-fingered gentry that run from France,' William reminded him unpleasantly. ‘Why, the Pyrenees aren't full of gypsies and contraband stars—they're full of crooks: toughs, horny-souled guys supposed to be pachyderm to the world, and really sighing and gasping for a breath of air trademarked Marianne. The boats and yachts that appear in hordes off Mentone and Biarritz aren't smugglers or dago refugees—they're French bankers trying to see a
bistrot
through a pair of field glasses. Don't you be such a mug as to join them. I thought you had some distinction. You're just like the flock of ordinary muffs.'

‘Well, what the devil! Do you think I'm going to sit in this hayseed paradise for the rest of my life?'

‘Yes, the police have heard that one too,' consoled William. ‘Every Frenchman thinks, “Good God! I'll never see my country again. I'd rather go back and sit in the cooler for a few years, do my time, and then be free to start pickpocketing again in the sweetest country on earth.” Why,' he cried wrathfully, ‘refugees from Guiana have only one thought—to get back to the country that sent them there, and the first thing you know is that they're bobbing round Paris or Marseille where everyone is under suspicion in the nature of things. You're not going to be such a fool. Go to America, go to England. Wait till the comic act has been played off and then go quietly to a place where you can sleep without bromides.'

Jules wrathfully got up and went outside to kick the lawn. Then he disappeared into the town. While there he telegraphed Theodor Bomba in London:

IF FREE TAKE YOUR VACATION IN THIS TOWN: SOME INTERESTING VIEWS TO SHOW YOU.

MERCURE

Then he went home smiling and they all knew he had started a secret game again. They frowned on him and he sulked; and William, who was most anxious about him, suddenly became sunny and brotherly. But Jules knew William, and Jules said nothing. William kept a weather eye open and the next day intercepted a telegraph boy at the gate. Theodor Bomba had cabled back:

MERCURE STILL MY BRIGHT STAR: NOT FREE BUT COULD BE WITH UNIVERSAL SOLVENT ENOUGH FOR FARE. WILL SEE VIEWS WITH YOUR EYES. EVER DEVOTEDLY,

THEODOR BOMBA

William tore this to pieces and went in to lunch with content.

But Jules thought William looked too lardy with content and immediately after lunch telephoned the telegraph office, found that a telegram had been sent, and asked for a copy. In a few days Bomba arrived in Reval and was lodged in a hotel of medium standing. Jules strolled down and saw him there, and was followed by the suspicious William.

‘Glad you came. I can't sit here and enjoy myself. I've got to be doing something. I'm no wood violet. But the police here, though kind, are watchful and I've got to go over borders to do any business. I say, will you go to Oslo for me and see about some office space I've been telephoning about? I want to take it just for six months and I've sent the chap my references, under the name of Mr. Jules Simla, but he won't do anything unless he sees my representative or me. I said I'd send my private secretary or my brother. But William is grouchy—he wants to sleep here the rest of his life and the twins are just pups. Don't tell Dannevig.'

‘Dannevig? He's bankrupt.'

‘Bankrupt! Where did you get that bedtime story?'

‘Why he was in Schiltz and Company, wasn't he? When they went down he was sued along with the other directors, he was thrown off the grain exchanges and later declared a bankrupt. Everyone knows he's bankrupt. He's sold his car and his house: I know for a fact that the bank he's been doing business with for fifteen years refused some bills countersigned by him and he was furious, but they stuck to their ground.'

Jules twinkled darkly and the cunning Bomba immediately assumed an expression of great foxiness and winked. Jules said shortly, ‘He sold his house and immediately rented it back from the same man. Ptt! People are easily fooled … Now, Bomba, are you going to work with me? I need a man and I need secrecy at the beginning. Later on, people will be glad to know it's me.'

Jules rather feverishly pushed some visiting-cards (the lawyer's and the landlord's) and some correspondence across the table. He added to them a couple of pages of new letterheads with the title, Oslo Deposits Corporation, beautifully engraved, and with the address tentatively printed underneath.

‘There you are, there's the name and the address: there's the letter with the name of the renting office, the landlord's lawyers, and so on. When can you go? I'm still being watched by detectives; the crowd is still convinced I've got their money hidden somewhere. If you're afraid, I'll telegraph to Alphendéry—' he looked at Bomba with an appealing imperiousness which touched Bomba's heart, as much as his cupidity and jealousy.

William, listening at the door, following the light and shade of his brother's conversation as if he had been in the room, bit his lip to see Jules so little himself. The secretly admired and loved brother begged for Bomba's courage as he had never begged for William's loyalty. He thought to himself, ‘This damned hue and cry has ruined Jules's nerve: will he ever be himself again?' He distrusted the business which began with the leech Bomba. He would rather have seen Jules magnificent in ruin, rash, splendid, wild, mad, as he had been for a day or two at first, than humbly crooked, raggedly proud, menially enterprising like any twopenny swindler, like a Parouart, some jail-shocked confidence man grubbing for a crust. He did not like to cross him openly, for he knew his brother's irritable temper and pride, and he feared that he might run away altogether to get away from the family and get into danger, confide in someone less reliable than Bomba who, after all, was bought and loyal for a salary.

So he was pleased when Bomba swept the papers into his hand and said, ‘Sure, I'll go and if I can't do it at the last minute, I'll telegraph Alphendéry myself, if you want me to. Alphendéry got out before me, and if I'm recognized in Oslo, Alphendéry would not be. I'll keep in touch. Pay my checks into the Oslo Banking Company …'

Curious evasion, thought William, and looked calmer still, in his fear. In whose pay was Bomba?

But Bomba was erratically loyal, according to his needs for friendship and drama: and the same afternoon William had a telephone call from him.

‘I must see you—about Jules's new business,' in a little voice, shot with secret pride, intimate with virtue.

He came and put the papers in William's hand. ‘Keep them, William: I don't want to go into this business yet and I don't think Jules should; I see Jules isn't in form. You keep in touch with me and tell me when I should move. Jules insists on giving me a stipend. If I didn't accept it, he'd think it pretty strange, but if you like I'll return you
half
: I don't want to fatten on a man who isn't in trim: it's not good nature, simply bad luck!'

Bomba then was one of these temperamental, Sarah-Bernhardt crooks. William breathed freer. ‘O.K. Thanks. I'll keep in touch with you.' He put the papers in his pocket. ‘And well forget this, in any case; let him secrete a few more ideas first. You'll be in the swim, evidently. No need to think I'm sabotaging you …'

Bomba crinkled his eyes. ‘Ah, someone gave me away! You have paid me back in your coin—calm and confidence. Thanks, William. I'm your man. Don't hesitate to call on me. And what shall I do about the half-salary?'

‘If you get it—' said William, shamelessly, ‘you can send me half back until you do some work. I'll chalk it up against what you owe the firm.'

‘Still the old William: he grumbles but he has a heart of gold.' And Bomba could be seen to be already regretting his generosity! William smiled maliciously.

‘My heart may be of gold; it has never been
touched
. I'll be seeing you around, Bomba, one of these days. Good-by for the present.'

‘Then it's friendly warfare.' Bomba tried to be gay.

‘It's my brother Jules that counts and nothing else—that's all,' William said stiffly as he held open the door.

He went immediately to Jules, irritated, going beyond his plans. ‘Where are you going to get the money to pay Bomba?'

‘Oh, hang that: a man can't sit about without making some money. We've got to eat. I can't retire.'

‘No. Now don't lose your temper. No one's asking you to retire. Only keep cool. You made such a brilliant exhibition of yourself lately that your only move is to stay undercover and let someone else begin quietly for you. Leave the theatricals, the façades, the leeches, the Bombas until later, will you? Listen, Bomba had a moment of pity for you, which I profited by. Cut him out. Pay his fare back and give him a couple of crowns if you like, but don't start paying him. I'll do this business for you. I'm cool. I'll go to Oslo and I'm really your brother, so there'll be no aliases, or anything phony at the beginning. Understand. I don't give a damn about the extradition: I'll take my chance because, you poor muff, I see you're going to land yourself in a high-class penitentiary otherwise.'

‘You give those papers to Bomba right away and see how much he'll need for expenses,' said Jules in the royal manner of old. William liked that tone.

‘I'll see to it,' he said coolly and got up to go. ‘Now stop fooling around with your harem of Bombas. I'm your chief mate, and don't forget it.' He went in to his mother, whom he loved very much, and asked her not to irritate Jules; Jules was getting ideas, and if they were not careful might fly away from them, get into some mess. ‘I suppose I'll have to shake myself and tail him if he goes off. I have nothing else to do after all; you and the twins can look after Claire and her children. He thinks I'm a dumbbell and I think he's goofy: that's how well we get on. But everyone else is after his skin. That is no way for our Jules to live. He'll go crooked or go under.'

The fresh small mother, young for her age, said irritably, ‘Jules is crazy: he never went straight. I don't know who he takes after—not after my side.'

William did not contradict his mother, who, in some mysterious way, was right, even when she was totally wrong (and she was always wrong on Jules). His eyes fell, and he thought in a flash of ‘our Jules' who was only his Jules, the irresistible, tender, harmonious creature that Jules had always been, different from the characterless, twin egotists, from the wastrel Clément, and from himself, a natural ‘Dutch uncle.' He saw him also in a flash, for years ahead, an irritable anxious baffled impish vampire, using his charm and his connections to no purpose, flying out in a dozen illegal ways, sitting presently in some birdlime of the law. He sighed.

‘Do you feel well, Will dear?' The buxom little mother smiled confidingly at her eldest son.

‘Yes. Should you like to go to Oslo, Mother? It's pretty tedious here.'

‘Oh, yes. Your grandfather is getting so old and dear Claire is busy with the children. Let's run away by ourselves.'

They went off the next week while Jules champed at Reval.

Campoverde, having burned his fingers badly and lost his father's estate in high finance (money which had been made in armaments, artificial silks, and gold mines), could not think of anything better to do than to go into finance for himself. He had hoped to inherit some of the Bertillon invisible estate, and for over a year had risked his family money to get near to Jules, whose type of banking and financing he had guessed pretty well from the very first. He was an ace aviator, always went in for the Italian high-speed trials, and always came off honorably: thus a little flier in finance was a mere morning spin to him. He had stuck to Jules at the last and held his hat ready to catch the money when Jules's pocket burst open.

When the crash came Campoverde first consulted the distinguished Mme. Quiero, was assured of Jules's wealth, and thereupon immediately began to get a team of men together to work with him. He had something on the Legris firm and would open a business in Amsterdam. Although he looked drawn and occasionally faint from the long anxiety he had gone through and the family explanations with his father, the gleam of the financier was in his eyes, and he recovered from the crash like a young dog from a hurt. He had sat now for a few months and listened to them all, stories of how Jules began, what he had done all along, how he made his money, what connections he had, how he had swindled them all, as they saw it, and he made careful notes in a large black-leather book at home of all he heard. His impatient haughty young blood was fired: Jules was a good scout, a thoroughbred, but harum-scarum; what Jules had done badly, Campoverde would do well. He was younger, he had the same ingenuity but more strictness, the same worldly disillusion and social relations but more method and less mad generosity. Campoverde saw his way very clear … In a little while when all was set on foot, he would get in touch with Mouradzian, who had believed in Jules to the last, and now lamented daily, detested him, but who had already got together another fine clientele, all Orientals, all rich, all ingenious, all disabused. When he returned from his present visit to Constantinople, Campoverde would buttonhole him.