‘Oh, you bet,’ caroled William, ‘they’re all bucket shops. No firm could live a minute if it wasn’t. If you take the same risks as the suckers, where’s the percentage? You’ve got to run a book. They may get you one time in a hundred but the whole stable can never win. The stock exchange is like Duggie Stuart, only he has to deal with real horses: that’s the snag in his business.’
Stewart went almost purple, but he could not turn his back on the eldest and weightiest of the Bertillons. Alphendéry burst out laughing and sprang into the breach. ‘This is William’s field day. What he means is, if you stand still in finance, you go backwards: you’ve got to be advancing, taking risks, taking positions. How to take them? Bet against the majority. Everyone knows that. Isn’t that how the casinos run? You don’t need to crook the wheel. Not one in ten thousand can do the hat trick. You won’t get two men in a hundred to win on the same throw. A scatter diagram: that’s all. That’s what William means. I say, Jules, Léon is here; he wants to talk to you about wheat. Mr. Stewart, will you come round to my office? I want to go over those puts with you. Let’s see, when’s settling day?—’
They both went out. Jules scowled at William. ‘What’s the matter with you, spouting that hokum when Stewart’s here? Why should I encourage him to bucket me?’
‘I love to stick a tack in the inner tube of his hypocrisy,’ said William.
‘Why don’t you get a job in vaudeville?’
William became angry and lost all his good humor and Jules saw, with relief, that he would not be ready to drop any bricks for at least half an hour.
* * *
Scene Thirty-seven: Spring Fever
Léon made mysterious signs towards William, but Jules said, unexpectedly, ‘Go ahead, Léon.’
‘Bomba, your man—Berlin—came to see me, German bonds … insurance technique. Don’t know whether I can do it—good idea though. I told my man to work on it. Where’s Alphendéry? He knows about German bonds.’
William pricked up his ears and looked suspiciously at Jules. ‘What’s this? I know nothing about this: I thought you had sacked Bomba.’
‘Oh, he was coming back here and I told him to come back via Rotterdam and see Léon. Idea is: there are lots of German bondholders scattered throughout the world; they’ve held on to German bonds, out of affection, superstition, Germany’s the coming great nation. Now, they’re broke—everyone’s broke—get them to give us their bonds on promise that our consortium has agreement with German government to market them in Germany. Germany looks hopeless. I have a hunch German bonds are going to rise for a time. We’ll give them a two-year, five-year deposit agreement; before five years are out German bonds will have gone to hell. In the meantime we can market them on a rise, sell them short, because we have the supply. Or, if they fall very low, and we see the German government is secretly buying them in, we can hold out. If they repudiate, probably the government will still try to buy them in, sub rosa, the way the Russians do, and we can get something for them. In the meantime we have them to manipulate. Idea is: the owners receive an advance from us based on present price; we credit their coupons: they pay us loan interest, or we agree to pay the unpaid interest, from now on, till maturity. What does it matter? The world won’t be here two to five years from now; or there’ll be a war and no one will want German bonds, anyhow. Good scheme, eh?’
William considered. ‘Yes, it is a good scheme. How are you going to get the bonds?’
‘Supply is the question—always the question. How?’ Léon rushed in.
‘Circularize!’ said Jules languidly. ‘Get an organization, form a new company, get a lot of good fellows, not on to the game, give it a good name—I thought of one—German Bondholders Overseas Insurance Company—how is that?—give it a big capitalization (on the books)—get some German banker out of a job, or some statesman or prince, and write all over the world, everywhere, Abyssinia, Australia, everything down to Zeeland. They’ll pour in. Look, I got up a letterhead,’ and like a magician, Jules, who had been meditating this quite privately produced not only a letterhead but a pompous, serious, pathetic letter from one Jan Witkraan, formerly of Antwerp, now out of a job, who would willingly organize the new insurance company of Mr. Bertillon at a reasonable salary.
‘I’ve engaged him,’ said Jules carelessly.
William’s face was a study. Léon said, ‘Good. Where is he? We must see him at once and get the letters out.’
Jules spoke, ‘There’s a surplus of everything in the world from German bonds to wheat. What’s the problem? Market it. That’s all. Wheat reminds me—Léon, couldn’t we do something about all the wheat that’s stacked up everywhere with the mice eating it? You’re a wheat merchant: can’t you figure out something? I’m not satisfied to sit here on a cardinal’s chair and look grand and old-Flemish: I’ve got to make big money; I’m not satisfied with pulling the ears of the stock market: that’s millet seed to an ostrich, I want to make grand money. What do you say to the two of us making a clean sweep and getting away with everything, Léon?’
Léon laughed, twinkled, ‘I’m with you, Jules. You’re good luck, my boy—I feel it in my bones.’
William slumped against the bookcase, ‘Spring fever!’
‘I might do something in oil,’ said Jules modestly, ‘only I’ll wait till the conference next year. We’re right on the spot here—the town will be buzzing.’
‘Be a lot of phonies about,’ warned Léon.
‘Well, want to go in with me on the German bonds business?’
‘Hm, think about it, hm … see Alphendéry,’ said Léon. At the approach of a partnership with the mercurial Gentile, Leon’s assurance fainted: he feared to cross swords with a Gentile. As a result he had been mulcted entirely by Jews. He now grew uneasy, changed the subject, and finally strode out into the corridor, dishonestly stretching his neck left and right, making a show of looking for Alphendéry in a great hurry.
William grumbled, ‘This is not a bank, it’s a merry-go-round. Do you have to have your finger muddying every pie?’
Jules grinned, ‘This isn’t a bank: there’s a sign outside saying Bank and when they see it they come inside and drop their cash on the counter. If I put up the sign Barber they’d come in just as automatically looking for a shave. It’s all in the sign. This is a stage I’ve set and filled with supers for the great act of Jules Bertillon, multimillionaire, and when the climax comes, I ring down the curtain. In the meantime, they pay to see the show.’
* * *
Scene Thirty-eight: The Five Brothers Simla
The Five Brothers Simla Corporation was a Luxemburg corporation, an assets-holding company which William used for the deposit of gold and bonds earned in trading and general business by the Bertillon Bank. He knew his brothers’ natures well, and regarded himself as the keeper of the Bertillon flock. He wanted little money himself, he never intended to marry, he wanted no children, and his ideal was to retire to a little farm and keep a couple of horses and beehives.
But his twin brothers, Paul and Francis, Claire-Josèphe, Jules’s children, Jules, Jr., Charles, Edmond, and Simla, were all used to luxury and seemed to expect to live for ever on velvet. The Bertillon brother whom the few people in their intimacy called ‘the silent brother’ or ‘the mysterious fifth brother’ was Clément-Nepomuk, a year older than Jules. When Clément-Nepomuk had been born, no one expected any more sons and when Jules was announced, everyone was sure the baby would be a girl. Jules arrived, out of all reckoning, a boy and immediately became the most auspiciously favored, the brightest, most cunning, and mercurial of the five brothers.
In the female line in Jules’s family there had been four sons for four generations. Jules’s grandmother was called Simla and thereafter it became a family name. Each of the sons was called Simla as a second name.
As Jules grew, the original fourth son faded in significance and now he see
med several years younger than Jules. He lived in Germany, sat in cafés, dribbled strange, delightful, unclimactic, and endless tales to any who would listen to him. He received an allowance from Jules and blackguarded all his brothers, weaving extraordinary villainies round their names, accusing them of doing him out of his inheritance. But actually he had spent all his inheritance, and now was just as happy living from hand to mouth. He did not really believe that his brothers were unfair to him, but once the idea had occurred to him, it grew, like all his other ideas, into an epic.
William never spoke of Clément-Nepomuk Simla Bertillon and only once had mentioned him, and that to Alphendéry in a sentimental moment. He was convinced that he was the bad luck of the family and that sooner or later, the twins (who were halfway there) and Jules, the forehead and diadem of them all, would display some strange weakness, some beachcombing trait, in a line with those of Clément-Nepomuk. Thus, in long-sighted preparation for that day of wrath, he had founded the Five Brothers Simla Corporation some fifteen years ago and this was his paternal nest egg for the family. Not even Jules had anything but a faint idea of the deposits in this company; even ‘Old’ Berthellot did not see all the books. Perhaps it was this that was at the bottom of William’s ineffable calm and staidness. At the back of this all, though, was an infinite tenderness for Jules: he was quite unaware how often he nagged Jules; he nursed the illusion that he only spoke gravely to Jules once in a long while, in order to keep Jules from going too far off the track. But he was in every way prepared to see Jules go up one day in a grand conflagration, and then William would quietly succor the whole family and start Jules on his way again somewhere else, or somehow else. His utter disregard for everyone’s feelings also arose from his single-minded affection for his brother.
In the last five years he had also carefully put out tendrils and communicated some of his sentiments and safeguards to Alphendéry: he held Alphendéry in a true affection because Alphendéry was so loyal to Jules and never tried to rob him. Very often Jules, tired of his ‘games,’ lightly tossed the reins into the hands of William or Alphendéry, and went off for a week end, a week, a month, three months, to spend the life of the idle rich. During those absences the bank was quiet, silent, unblooming and as if closed, like a heliotropic plant when the sun is away; there was a sterile air upstairs and the familiars of the bank, Richard Plowman and others, had a half-life, moved more like a frieze, continuously applied along the walls with a rubber roller, than living creatures. Nevertheless, a quiet continuum of life was there: Alphendéry worked for Jules’s account, transferred gold and stocks in and out, followed his own devices in the foreign markets, watched over the clients’ accounts, was master of the money-making departments of the bank, while William managed the whole of the banking routine, and Jacques Manray and Urbain Voulou the downstairs office. A man of a predatory sort would have found his golden opportunity there, but Alphendéry did not. The brothers were convinced that this was because he was a ‘scholar’ and an ‘idealist’ and a ‘Utopian’ and therefore readily listened to his ideas on Marxism, Russia, and the history of socialism even when they saw no immediate profit in it. But Richard Plowman was against all that: he preached against Alphendéry’s socialism, he fretted about it, and was sure that it was bad for the reputation of the Bertillon family, and when he heard what Adam Constant had said to the Irish lord about ‘capitalism,’ he literally wrung his hands and begged Jules to ‘speak very strongly’ to Michel. Jules laughed him away. ‘Don’t you realize we’re all keeping our pet socialists now? The Comtesse de Chamfort, the Comtesse de Voigrand, Carrière’s mother, Guipatin’s father—they’re all living with or associating with, or keeping, pet socialists now. It’s their insurance against the revolution. And it’s their weather donkey. When the tail twitches too hard, they get their umbrellas, and when it falls right off, they skip to the Isles of Gold.’
When Léon had gone for good, Alphendéry returned with a scheme he had been worrying about for a fortnight. ‘Jules, we should change the wording on our customers’ forms. For example, instead of saying, “We have bought for your account,” we should say, “We have credited to your account,” or “You are credited with.”’
‘Why not,’ said William who acted as Alphendéry’s rearguard on these occasions, ‘why give excuses for quibblers?’
‘All right,’ said Jules, ‘what does it matter?’
‘When we get new forms printed we can say that and no one will notice the change,’ Alphendéry carried on.
‘The judge is only looking for you to give him a way out,’ remarked William.
‘Oh, let it ride,’ shouted Jules suddenly irritated, ‘I’m going to make big money; you two fellows sit there all day thinking up new wrinkles like two college boys writing notes on Molière and I’ve got to make the money. You don’t make money out of codicils, riders, and word shifting. I’m going to the pictures. I’ve worked too hard …’ He jammed on his hat, walked out, and came rapidly back. ‘I won’t have that form changed, do you hear? I want it as it is.’
* * *
Scene Thirty-nine: Daniel Gambo
Daniel Cambo stretched his long thick legs and reveled in the luxury of telling the boys how devilish clever he was. There were half a dozen of them gathered in Jules’s room to discuss his bazaar venture. He was already ‘turning money away,’ for his fame as a get-rich-quick-slick had reached every client of the bank months ago. Every real money-maker feels that he was born a Machiavelli with footnotes and that he has improved himself into a Napoleon of strategy and a vulture of iniquity. When he has any time off, he shakes hands with himself for his genius, chuckles with himself over his inspirations, pats himself on the back for his bigheartedness, gets wistful over the child poetry in his heart.
‘Did I ever tell you how I got a shipment of novelties from New York for nothing?’
‘No, how did you do that, Daniel?’ Jules stretched himself also and gave himself up to the pow-wow. William stood lolling against the bookcase, as usual clinking the coins in his pockets, pretending to take no interest in anyone, but intent as an ant gathering together bits of information against Daniel, who had the reputation of being the sharpest chiseler of them all. But William, of course, thought himself a pretty good crook, too.
‘How did you do it, Daniel?’ Francis asked. His twin brother, a perfect replica of himself, eyed him coolly. They were sleek gentlemen both and thought Cambo a great liar and rascal, but his reputation for quick-slick money and immediate turnover had lured them both; they had made it up between themselves to invest their savings with him, unknown to William or Jules, if he gave a convincing sales talk.
‘It was easy, easy. I go round to the bond division on the wharves, you know. I give the man a couple of dollars and he tells me what merchandise is lying there, on drawback, or consignee can’t pay and when I see something I can use, maybe I go and see the consignee. Maybe not. It depends. This lot, these six cases—there were two boys who wanted them for a novelties business in Twenty-third Street. But fashions change so quick in America. They got them from Czecho and by the time the shipments got there, the fashion had changed. So! no good.
‘In America you can get any amount of job lots for nothing. But you got to go carefully, otherwise they think, “Quick, here’s a sucker from Europe.” I brought over a pattern of knitted goods once to America, I showed it to a man and said, “Look, do you think this would go in America?” “Yes,” he said, “it would go good, very good, but it’s too expensive; the process is too slow; you got to put hop into a process to get things out here: it’s no good.” So I got a pattern of a machine from Lyons and brought it over to America and I showed it to an engineer. “Look,” I said to him, “can you make a better model?” “Yes,” says he: “sure I can do it. Give me four days.” And in four days he brought me back a model of a wonderful little machine. That’s American. Ha! I had it made and while it was being made he thought of a couple
of improvements. I got twenty made and put the girls to work. They turned out goods twenty times as fast as back in Lyons. I didn’t let anyone into the factory … no fear. But a boy in Chicago worked out the sort of machine it must be and next week he had an improved machine on the market and a coupla fellers went into business and beat me hollow. I had to shut up shop. That’s how it is in America. It only pays to buy the hash.
‘All right, it makes a big waste of machines and goods. All right, bring them back to Europe. Go into the business of waste. Eh? It’s the best-paying today. Well, everyone’s gone into the fire-sale, mill-ends, shoddy business, but this is something different. A real smart bazaar business with regular lines and disappearing lines: not dreck so much as sample lines, odd lines, sample shipments from Japan, Czecho, Germany. Buy everything below cost from people whose capital has been lost. Like me in the machines. See: deal in human dreck, not dreck goods! A man’s bankrupt: he’ll sell for anything. A man dies: his heirs are damn fools, don’t know the business—they sell for nothing. A man starts in business, no capital, he is dying for enough to eat: he’s glad to sell and he goes back on the unemployed lines. And you got to know how to bargain. See! And it’s nice business.’
‘What about the goods you got for nothing?’ asked William impatiently.
‘Listen, not for nothing, just for warehouse charges, and I got them back.’ He laughed, winked, and expanded, so merrily it was a pleasure to see him. ‘Well, I went round to those boys in Twenty-third Street and I found them working out a bankruptcy. I could smell it. They didn’t want the goods. No one in America would touch them. They were too good to ship South. And for the North, they were out of fashion, just rubbish and they couldn’t even pay the warehouse charges.
‘I went round to the warehouseman and I said, “Look, those boys won’t take those goods; they won’t pay the charges; those six cases are going to lie there messing up the place for months. The consignor won’t take them back so easy. You’ll have to sell them at auction and what will you get out of it? I don’t know that I want them, either. Maybe, though, I can sell them to some connections of mine in France. I’ll see. I can’t pay for them myself, not on the spot.” I slipped him a couple of dollars, see. I said, “Those goods are on drawback. Well, you send them back to the original consignor telling him they’re refused. All right, at Le Havre my man calls for them and takes charge of them. It’s not your fault. Wrong address. I get the bill of lading from the boys. Then I see if I can sell them to my friends in France. If I do, I pay the warehousing charges and something for you, see. And we’ll do some more business, some other time. I’m in that line.”’
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