House of All Nations (52 page)

‘Liqueurs—you're in enough pickles already,' said the voice of William from the door. He was rosy from a good sleep and a hearty breakfast.

‘Don't laugh: St. Raphaël is making a fortune,' Alphendéry put in.

Jules went on,
‘
“Sell Int. Nickel”—um, um, um—yes. I've a hunch those two are both headed for the grave, or at least for a sanatarium. It might go from fifteen to five. Let's sell them.'

‘Hunches are only good in retrospect,' William advised them.

Jules took no notice.
‘
“Monte-Carlo.” Now I want you to listen to the best idea of the year. You know Monte Carlo's practically dead. No one goes there but two-penny deadbeats and stenographers on a holiday. But everyone's sick of Deauville and Le Touquet. How about making Monte Carlo popular again by making it a sort of European Reno? You know the Pope has a big interest in Monte Carlo. The Prince would never complain if the Pope agreed. Point out to the Pope that his profits will increase enormously if crowds start flowing back there and get him to make a special dispensation for Monte Carlo. He can issue a bull making divorce easy in Monte Carlo. And a special dispensation. Papal divorce business will have to be recognized by every state. He needs the money. They say Ireland is the only country he can still milk. Since the 1929 bust the Americans have stopped sending even moonshine liquor. We could also get the concession for a new hotel, absolutely up-to-date. Baron Koffer would pay us any price to buy the site from us: his heart would be broken when he found out we were there ahead of him. Then we can float it and sell it as soon as the boom has started. Think of something else. Monte Carlo is a separate principality: all sorts of people not welcome elsewhere, ex-Russians and the like would go there. They'd really have to build an extension of Monte Carlo out into the sea. How about that? Extend it to the statutory limit? Well, it's good, isn't it? I propose that you should go and see the Pope. Popes only do business with Jews.'

‘That is a good way for the Pope to lose all his Irish income.'

‘Not a bit of it. All he has to do is to resign from Rome and go and live in Ireland and they'll be too happy.'

‘Yes, but would the Pope? You didn't sleep much last night, Jules. What would you offer the Pope? A share in the hotel, I suppose?'

‘The last is the consortium of rich men I told you about. One rich man from each profession, each to contribute his own scoop, profits share and share alike. One journalist like some smart Hearst journalist, one English broker like Stewart, one man about town like Carrière, one deputy like Blériot (you know him, don't you, Alphendéry?), one man in high society like Theus (you know him, too), one French
agent de change
, and so on. Ourselves holding the strings. No shareholder in the Banque de France: they'd betray us. The bank a façade, the consortium behind it; maybe an insurance company, too, to make it look as if we were spreading into high finance. Make the papers talk about us. ‘Who are the powers behind Bertillon?' Whispering campaign—“the Société Générale Alsacienne is behind Bertillon.” What will lend it color is your being here, Alphendéry. Your wife knows the richest people in Brussels. Why not?'

‘And who will start the whispering campaign?'

‘I will.'

‘Jules, it isn't true, is it?'

He laughed roguishly, ‘Ptt! Of course
not
. Why should it be? It's enough to whisper it is. Someone comes to me: “Mr. Bertillon, I hear that the S.G.A. is behind you. Is it true?” “Where did you hear that?” say I. “On the Bourse,” says he. “Run along,” say I, “and don't ask questions like that.” Good. A confirmation. If I say, “No, it isn't true,” it's still a confirmation. Does a secret influence admit itself? He goes to the S.G.A. “I hear you are working secretly through the Banque Bertillon and Alphendéry is your agent.” “Nonsense,” says the S.G.A. Good: a confirmation. Does a bank admit who is its secret agent? No. They deny it. People begin to follow Alphendéry in the street. The less he goes near the S.G.A. the more they are sure he is working for it. It will take fifty years to kill that one whisper. And what harm do I do them? (Not that that is in my mind!)' William's face was shining with admiration. He refused to encourage his brother but they could both see he thought this very clever.

‘The only other idea I had was—sell short,' continued Jules. ‘The American market is creaking upwards but it's only getting up to the springboard for a tumble. That's when I'm counting on the final cash-in. Oh, it may go on till October, November. Say the pound goes off by then. Confidence will droop.'

‘Indeed! Within two days of the pound going off, if it does, everyone will be patting England on the back and keeping up confidence, and the American market, as usual, will go a point higher, its usual reaction to news of earthquakes, floods, death-dealing, and economic crash. I'm always a fool, and I've taught you to be too straight-thinking, Jules. It should go down, but nowadays it gets a hypodermic every time it begins to wilt. That is the mistake we have made. I am too clever. I am right on policy but wrong on time.'

‘Jules told me last night how he first made any money,' murmured William, when they had read the mail.

‘Again?'

‘Yes. He says he was in Berlin in 1921—he was, of course—and he peddled American telephone books—New York, Chicago, St. Paul, Lansing, Madison, and so on. He got them over for two dollars or less and they paid five dollars for them on the boulevards of Berlin. That was the time you paid a million marks for a piece of steak and a quarter of a million for a glass of beer, remember? Even for old ones he got four dollars.'

‘The mystery?'

‘All the Schwarzes, all the Finkelsteins, all the Grumbachers, all the Schmidts, all the Epsteins, all the Müllers, wrote to their namesakes in America and begged them to send them a couple of dollars: it was nothing to them, and it meant millions of marks to the Berlin cousin-by-necessity. They did good business. America was rich then and the Americans thought it a hell of a joke to succor starving Europe for a couple of dollars. Others were really impressed. What Schmidt really has all his cousin Schmidts tabulated? Well, the telephone books with all those Schmidts in them were worth five dollars and more to Schmidt, and Jules was the first one to think up the racket and he soon controlled twenty peddlers who worked for him. He stood out on the street himself: he doesn't care.'

‘How much could he make out of that? A few hundred dollars?' William looked carefully through some lists of bonds, ‘Oh, there were other schemes. He doesn't have to scratch his head.'

Alphendéry smiled dryly, wearily. ‘Koffer insists on having a complete list of the numbers of these bonds. They're bearer bonds.'

‘He's a mind reader.'

‘He invited me down to his hotel in Cairo the other day.'

‘That's nothing: didn't Achitophelous give you two free tickets to his house of rendezvous? And tell you you'd get champagne free? These lavish gents will give you everything you don't want and couldn't ever use. It seems Raccamond thinks Baron Koffer is his client, because Fetterling knows his wife.'

‘Let him. What do we care?'

‘The big mug,' William was almost fond, ‘snooping, poking, struggling, persuading himself already that he's on the outside of the inside. Trying to oust you.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Or enlist you in his great service,' giggled William. ‘He's as secret as a Hollywood bathing beauty. His card, Raccamond attached to the direction. One of these days you'll find on your desk a little bundle of cards, Alphendéry attached to Raccamond.'

‘He's not a bad fellow. He got me a photograph of Yvonne Printemps for Henrietta.'

‘Charming. And boasted to Printemps, doubtless, that he knew Mr. and Mme. Theus of Brussels.'

‘You don't do him justice.'

‘I hope we won't have to.'

* * *

Scene Forty-eight: A Ghostly Gathering

J
ules and Claire-Josèphe went to the wedding, at St. Clothilde, of Toots Legris and Duc-Adam Lhermite, a handsome young fellow descended from a long line of cognac manufacturers, but of a junior branch and therefore very grateful for the million francs that he received from Toots on his marriage to her. His family had a villa in Alpes-Maritimes like anyone who is anybody, and a
hôtel
at Paris in the Avenue Pierre de Serbie and, to even things up a bit, after marrying he was to be allowed to use the family château in Saône-et-Loire. A distant relative of his connected the Franco-Argentine Mortgage Bank to the Haute Banque and so he was, money apart, highly satisfactory.

And Toots had enough money for the whole world. The Legris family had only newly come to the ranks of the multimillionaires, and this was the first alliance in high society, so naturally there were very great rejoicings on this occasion. Besides Jules and Claire-Josèphe, there were present in the princely throng at the elegant Basilica, from whose grand-inquisitor towers César Franck's ghostly music had flowed into the sky, the following representatives of all that makes France great: four persons representing the great insurance companies, the Paternal, the Patrimony, the Phoenix, and the Providence; six persons connected in some more or less casual fashion with the financial societies, Raoul de Lubersac and Company, Mirabaud, De Neuflize and Company, De Rothschild Brothers, Odier Bungener and Company, A. J. Stern and Company; two directors of the Suez Company, three members of the Bloodstock Association, one relative of a director of the leading metallurgical company, forty persons representing diverse commercial companies, eight exchange brokers of Paris, four governors or regents of the Banque de France, eighty-nine individual shareholders of the Banque de France, including leading board-room princes and landed proprietors who represented the interests of the peasants in finance and saw that the proletariat of the cities did not get away with it, fifty-one members of the Jockey Club, thirteen counts, three persons with the title of marquis, seventeen countesses, nineteen princes, foreign and domestic, fourteen American millionairesses married to blue blood abroad, several ambassadors, three hundred and forty-one impoverished nobles and younger sons, intimately known to their friends as lunch detectives and sandwich snatchers, seven unlucky suitors for the Legris millions, five priests, one archbishop, one ex-king, one hundred and two bankers, and three pickpockets not of noble extraction. It was a garland of youthful vanity and superannuated cunning, hoary rank and young money, famous beggars, notorious debtors, unsuccessful rakes, lordly borrowers, impenitent usurers, princely automobile salesmen and brokers' runners of Bourbon blood, shady viscounts, distinguished pillars of cafés, illustrious readers of the
Journal des Débats
, people who trusted to the Council of State in an emergency, people who trusted to the Republican Guard, to Mr. Chiappe, and to General Pétain. All of them were news items, and a certain number had money themselves.

After the solemn service the Archbishop in white and gold sent a priest round to the apartment of François Legris asking for the money for the service, and when he was not to be found there, the priest flew round in a taxi to the house of the Princesse Delisle-Delbe where the reception was being held. But François was not there, either.

François, Anthony Legris, Maîtres Vanderallee (for Toots Legris), Nanti, and Olympe, Jules, William, and Michel Alphendéry were in Jules's room at the bank quietly celebrating and avoiding the elegant crush at the Princesse's. The dear old friends were rather gay and found everything excessively funny. Maîtres Vanderallee and Nanti were most particularly gay and were even suspected of being drunk.

Jules was in a delightfully intimate and trustful frame of mind. They all sat gossiping beside the three or four hundred books on economics from Adam Smith to Mr. Keynes, carefully selected by Michel Alphendéry, like lifelong comrades who after forty years of labor take a day off and resuscitate adolescent memories. What pleasant, carefree, ingenuous hours such old friends pass! How cheerful is the occasion of a wedding, for forgetting commerce, finance, mutual robbery, and for indulging in that frivolous chitchat which puts old friends and new at ease!

‘Willem,' said Jules to Vanderallee, ‘I can't understand you chaps playing such a dirty game. Listen, François, you know very well that when I went to Anthony and asked him to get the Scheldt en Dogger to advance me fifty thousand guilders to play the market, he did so on the understanding that it was never to be called, that, in fact, it was a sort of advance from yourselves and was only advanced from the Scheldt en Dogger (on your recommendation) so that it would look better on the books. Now I find Anthony has warned the Scheldt en Dogger Bank to call in the loan and I get a notice of it yesterday. What are you going to do about it? Didn't I arrange the marriage contract for you free of charge?'

‘Yes, I know, Jules, old fellow, but suppose you go wild and go bankrupt, where would we be, owing the Scheldt en Dogger fifty thousand guilders?' laughed François, all as a joke.

Willem Vanderallee, lawyer of the great gambling stock-exchange
firm of which François and Anthony Legris were partners, lolled back in a deep chair, one leg tossed over the arm, blowing rings from a powerful cigar (donated by Richard Plowman), his white waistcoat, tie, shiny forehead, spectacles, and diamond ring flashing as he wallowed in his deep inebriation. He scarcely followed the conversation at all, laughed at everything that Jules and François said; his eyes closed from minute to minute. He now said thickly, ‘Jules, darling, I can't speak a word. Why is the world turning, round and round and round? I say, François, your daughter serves strong liquor: she forgets we haven't all had her experience. God bless her! May she be—ever—happy.' His eyes closed. François giggled and proffered obscenities.