House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

Raccamond was baffled. ‘It’s abuse of confidence.’

  Jules continued, ‘But we have not done transactions on the books for your clients. For the rest, as I was saying, if we like to assume that the client is always wrong, and we bet against him, what business is that of yours? We don’t stop you from putting in your own orders.’

  ‘You never executed my orders,’ exclaimed Aristide.

  ‘I can show you thousands of confirmations, thousands of telegrams to and from our brokers,’ said Jules coolly, ‘yours among them.’

  Aristide said stubbornly, ‘What is there to tell me that one single order has ever been put through in this house, for the clients? But I see you charge for state and local and federal taxes in various countries, and for telegraph charges! That is robbery. I can bring in the police for that.’

  ‘You can look at my files, Aristide,’ said Jules, wearily, ‘because I hate to see you in this state. I liked you. You were a good customers’ man.’

  ‘I can believe,’ sneered Raccamond, ‘that a man who has jeopardized the entire fortunes of valuable and loyal clients for years will do something especially for me because he worries about my health. And Alphendéry! Explain his role! Don’t soft-soap me. I’ve been in business before. I know rogues are smooth-tongued when their backs are to the wall.’

  ‘And what would you do with your back to the wall, Raccamond?’

  ‘Confess and make my terms with a man,’ said Aristide.

  Jules laughed. After a moment he said, ‘Then you don’t want to see the confirmations, the duplicate orders, and the rest? That’s curious, for a man who makes such a point of nicety, who is so scrupulous about the execution of clients’ orders! You have something else in mind, Aristide. Confess and make terms with me!’

  He turned as if stung, irritated by the constant perambulating of Jules, whose design, he suspected, was to get hold suddenly of the books. ‘Suppose you show me the duplicates! How do I know they weren’t made this afternoon to your order?’

  Jules did not trouble to appease Aristide. ‘You know something about running clerks yourself. Your record would look nice, you paying a clerk in my Brussels office to steal my books and the private papers of clients and bringing them yourself to another country to blackmail me.’

  ‘Blackmail! No one can say that of me,’ cried Aristide, looking at Jules with revulsion. ‘You are trying to frighten me. I won’t be put off. I know your resources, men of your type. Bluff is your only weapon.’

  ‘You can talk to Berthellot in the morning,’ said Jules. He took no pleasure in this caterwauling, and his delicate head was beginning to ache. ‘In the meantime, leave the books here, and I assure you you’ll have the satisfaction you want.’

  ‘How do I know that Berthellot isn’t your agent, too? How do I know that all the employees in your Paris office are not bought and trained to conceal your special methods? Berthellot! I never liked him; I suspected him. And Mlle. Gentil! She never co-operated. She refused to let the accounting departments give me information. I had to bribe to get information I expected to get freely. I didn’t want to. As for your accounts, I can imagine how reliable they are! These lawsuits haven’t been collecting round the bank for nothing. When you are brought down, Bertillon, do you think it will be any satisfaction to me? I must do it, to clean the city of a swindler; but what is there in it for me? No one will trust me any more.’ He was silent. After a moment’s thought, he said mournfully, ‘Alphendéry was working in the background for you, against me. I was nothing.’

  ‘Yes. Alphendéry was against you. I listened to him too much. You are right. But you don’t treat me humanly, Aristide. Don’t look so tragic, Raccamond. You’re the only one in the bank who could take the whole business in this way. Anyone else would spend some time confirming and running to earth before he made this sort of riot. You have almost made me sick of the whole thing: I can close the bank when I want to, you know.’

  Aristide, moved at first, was shocked by Jules’s conclusion. Unfortunate expression of lassitude! It was intended to frighten Aristide; and did so. ‘Without paying them—the clients!—then it is all over! I—my moneys—’ He saw William Bertillon, with a flushed face, coming through the doorway. ‘I know you: there’s nothing you can say to me that would interest me.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Raccamond.’ William smiled balefully at his enemy. ‘If it’s assets you want to see, you’ll see them. Assets aren’t what we lack round here; all we want is a little common sense and less drama.’

  ‘Don’t try to be clever with me. Unless you can show that you have sufficient assets to cover all the equities of all the clients, I am going to call the police.’

  ‘We’ll show you,’ said William.

  ‘I’m damned if I’ll show you my private business,’ cried Jules suddenly out of his calm. ‘Who are you to call me to account? Go to blazes! I’ll run my own bank in my own way. I’ll run you out of town if you try to threaten me. You miserable bourse runner! Where did you get all the poppycock that you’re full of! You aren’t a customers’ man, you’re an actor. You run round all day thinking of nothing but your own importance. Pipe down, man! The world will be easier for you. I’ve got assets; bonds, stocks, gold, silver, what you want … But why the dickens should I show it to you? How are you better than the rest of the customers’ men? You forget yourself. You’ve been well treated. You’ll never get the treatment anywhere else you got with me. Your accounts are nothing, especially now—they’re mostly in the red. You’d have a lot of difficulty transferring debit balances to other houses. But we’ve been more than merciful to your clients in particular, because of your peculiar temperament, Raccamond. Their margins have often gone down to two per cent or less, and we’ve neither called them nor wiped them out. Where else would they get such treatment? Some of them haven’t even got equities.’

  This unwise catalogue of his commercial impotence only angered him. He took a step nearer to Jules, who was leaning languidly on a table. He suddenly took a chair and sat down on it, leaning his head still nearer, ‘Ah, yes, why? Yes, I asked myself that question several times, without knowing the answer. I thought you were unusually nice to me, as you say. Now, I know why. It meant nothing to you. The accounts on margin did not exist. The clients kept a margin for shares which were not in your account. You had already sold them out. Or never bought them. It did not matter to you if you never called them at all. Yes, I understand such charity. Admit it. I know the whole truth.’

  Alphendéry, who was standing at the door, advanced joyfully, like a man liberated, straight upon Raccamond, who recognized his tread and bounded out of his seat.

  ‘Aristide, so you know the whole truth? What is the whole truth? Let us hear it! We should be glad to know it ourselves!’

  ‘Don’t you talk to me,’ cried Aristide, ‘don’t say a word to me: I won’t listen to you.’ He made the gesture of covering his ears, impeded by the books. ‘You lie, you do nothing but lie; I don’t think even Mr. Bertillon, even his brother, your crony, knows all your lies. You’re too clever. Don’t come here. Go away.’ He thrust his thick arms towards Alphendéry. Jules said nothing.

  ‘Don’t be medieval,’ said Alphendéry agreeably. ‘What books have you got? What do they prove? What does anything prove until you have all the books? And how do you know what you have? Do you imagine we keep all our private books at Brussels? Not likely. Mr. Bertillon has an apartment; all the brothers Bertillon have apartments. I have one. Our loyal employees have homes. We keep nothing there? There are no safety-deposit boxes in the world? Everything is in Brussels for a spying clerk to get at? Don’t go to the Parquet with your ridiculous story, Raccamond. “What, two books! You indict a house with seven branches and dozens of types of operations on two books in semicode! You’re absurd, my good sir, Good day!” That, my dear Raccamond, will be your reception at the Criminal Division. Calm down, my friend, and see where you stand. Besid
es, your fury is big and the offense you suppose, abuse of confidence, is small. There’s some other reason why you’re angry. Tell us! We can’t believe your moral story, Raccamond. It doesn’t ring true. You were in the war, you were in the tailoring business, you were in one grain and one financial house before you came here. You’re a suckling babe, I suppose! Why, I remember a certain incident: the actor Pharion wanted to buy five hundred Rio Tinto and I had recommended him against it. You came in and whispered to me, “Don’t buy it all: tell him you’ve bought it all and we’ll see later. I’m afraid.” That rings true. That won’t be doubted by anyone, for it’s just like you. You’re just as cowardly as you are treacherous, Raccamond. You’re a moral man, now! And you buy our accountants! Another trait: I remember it very well. Jean de Guipatin will bear me out. Before you came in, but after he came in to the bank, you paid one of our customers’ men and got our list of customers and you tried to take away our clients. When Claude Brothers went down you came over to us, very humble and complimentary, and showed us a list full of our own clients! We know you, Aristide! Don’t think we’ve been taken in by your mouthing and blustering all these months. In the name of morality! That’s delightful! And what do you tell clients, to get them to come to us, despite the negative rumors about us round the town? You tell them that we have an organization abroad whereby their bonds and shares will appear to be in Switzerland or England, and so escape French taxes. And now you steal their records! What an imbroglio of sentiment is here! Patriots and moralists of your breed, Aristide, are sufficiently well known, especially to the police. You’d have to queue up, my dear friend, to place your complaint. They keep a special window down there, for clerks who steal something or other from their employer’s office and run to the police! A special hole for rats: and a special filing cabinet.’ He mimed a stout policeman tearing a sheet in two and putting it in the wastepaper basket. ‘Why don’t you be an honest man, but really, for once, and say what you have up your sleeve, what you crave: for you certainly desire something very much or you wouldn’t bring this hornets’ nest about our ears.’

  ‘I won’t listen to you,’ said Raccamond, frowning. ‘I don’t want to hear your clever talk. You are all nothing but swindlers as far as I can see. You are a swindler, Mr. Bertillon; you are a swindler, Mr.William; but he is more than a swindler—he is the motivator, he is the secret spring of everything. I know! I have observed. I see the secret threads which have been pulled. Unless that man leaves the room and never re-enters it when I am here, I am going straight to the police.’

  Alphendéry laughed persuasively, ‘For everything you run to the police! If we come in, if we stay out, if the books are right, if the books are wrong. I assure you that those books you have stolen, in your moral anxiety, are by no means the whole story, and the whole story, my dear Aristide, is only here!’ He touched his forehead. ‘You will be a laughingstock at the Parquet. You will come there, slap down your books: “A scandal, a crime!” The policeman at the desk will open them, his eyes, his hands—they fall to the desk, his mouth opens, and he begins to laugh: “Oh, ha, ha, ha! Oh, look here: just another of them! Another bird telling on the boss!” They nudge each other: “A moral man, a righteous man; look at him—that stout middle-aged man down there, that’s he!” “Let me see the chief of the division,” say you. You burst in! “What?” says he. “Another of your sort! Wait your turn.” When you and the books finally come together at the chief’s desk, he keeps you waiting (that’s their only amusement, you know) while he thumbs the pages: “And what does this all mean?” You try to explain, “It means abuse of confidence.” “And the evidence, fellow?” says he. “Your theories don’t interest us. But you have no evidence. Good”: then he keeps the books, but he kicks you out. “Come back with more,” says he, “or mind your own business.” And there you are again, trying to make terms with Mr. Bertillon, but on how much worse ground are you! You will get nothing from us, nothing at all; you will be dismissed, Raccamond, and we will take care to let everyone know what you did. You will get nowhere.’

  ‘You seem very anxious to get them back,’ said Raccamond.

  ‘They are the accounts of a giant concern I represent,’ said Alphendéry.

  ‘What is its name?’

  ‘The London Finance Corporation.’

  ‘That name is there,’ admitted Aristide, ‘but its position tallies with the clients’ position, plus about eighty thousand shares sold short and that, I have calculated, is the bank’s own position.’

  ‘You calculated?’

  ‘Posset told me,’ Aristide said, in a hard tone: he knew Posset would be dismissed anyhow.

  ‘You have a nice team,’ said William.

  ‘We are trying to avoid a scandal, for our clients, but if you force us we will let the owners of our anonymous accounts know what has happened and you will be ruined. No one will ever take you in again,’ said Jules.

  ‘Ah, no! I should be sorry to disappoint you,’ Aristide cried in triumph.

  ‘You have even looked for another place while buying clerks with our money,’ commented Michel; ‘so you forgot nothing. In the great wave of pious rage which took you unawares, you first made time to run off and look for another job, leaving your clients to sink or swim in the bank’s horrid whirlpool.’

  Jules impatiently pressed a bell. But Raccamond did not see it. He was speaking to Alphendéry. ‘The time has come for plain speaking. Then, you may as well know something yourself. Everyone in town is saying that you are running the bank onto shoals. Without you, nothing of this would have been done. You are a pessimist; you believe in selling short; you believe business is rotten: all this is done on your advice, or without the knowledge of Mr. Bertillon. He says himself that everything in Brussels is done by you. He knows nothing. Then—’ he said turning dramatically, to Jules, ‘this man has swindled, cheated, and lied, Mr. Bertillon. He has tried to bring you down: he must have put hundreds of thousands in his own pocket.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Alphendéry was puzzled.

  ‘Isn’t it true,’ Raccamond pointed at him, ‘that you ran a gigantic short-position in Brussels without Mr. Bertillon’s knowing?’

  Alphendéry laughed and looked at Bertillon; but seeing Jules’s expression, he remained silent.

  ‘Well, what have you to say?’ said Raccamond tragically. ‘Answer! Answer us all!’

  Alphendéry was still silent. A suspicion dawned in Aristide’s eyes.

  Jules had half closed his eyes and was listening without a word.

  ‘If Mr. Bertillon assures me that he knew nothing about it, I will believe it; if Mr. Bertillon speaks to me, I will know he is telling the truth, but I do not believe a word that comes from you, Alphendéry, or you.’ He swung round with a gesture to William, who smiled like a stupid doll of flesh.

  ‘Or me?’ said a voice. Raccamond lowered his head in characteristic gesture and turned round slowly. ‘You have all come to scare me?’ he queried. ‘Why are you here, Monsieur le Comte? You do not know what is in those books.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Did you know what they were doing when you came into the bank?’

  ‘No, and no one told me, but I guessed as everyone else has guessed but you, Aristide.’

  ‘It is impossible that everyone has guessed that the bank is nothing but a contre-partie shop.’

  ‘It is the pet name the bank goes by, on the Bourse, my dear fellow, surely you know that.’

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ said Aristide Raccamond firmly, ‘and I never heard it said.’

  ‘What is your salary?’ said Jean de Guipatin seriously.

  ‘Monsieur le Comte—’

  ‘It is twenty thousand francs a month, is it not? And last year you drew nearly two hundred thousand francs. Is that the salary of a customers’ man? Is there any other house attached to the Bourse giving that? Where did that come from? There
is no judge in France but would believe in complicity.’

  Raccamond said, ‘No, no, I am innocent—’

  ‘Judges get five thousand francs a month,’ finished Jean de Guipatin. ‘You can make a big outcry if you like but in France the social aspect of a scandal is the most important. Suppose you drag the bank and its clients into court: what will you show? That there is not one poor person amongst its clients; that every one of them is rich, or is married to, or is one of a family of, richissimes; that the only poor persons in the bank are its employees whom you are depriving of a job in bad times; that you are depriving the French state of enormous taxes, paid by the banker; that yours is one of the six large salaries in the bank, starting with Mr. Bertillon’s, and that Mr. Alphendéry, that occult influence, receives considerably less than you.’

  The fervor of Raccamond had fallen: he looked doggedly but more calmly at the Comte de Guipatin.

  ‘A discussion of the books in open court will show that the majority of your clients are engaged in petty larceny of the fisc; naturally, for they are rich people. I am afraid, Aristide, that if you air the private affairs of your clients, no one will be grateful to you, neither the press, nor the judge, nor the masses on whose indignation you count, nor your clients, who will not only desert you, my poor friend, but will do their very best to sew up your mouth.’

  At this logic and vague menace, Raccamond felt all his force go from him. In Guipatin he recognized another member of the Bernstein drama cycle, the suave intelligence of the gilded young manhood of the seventh arrondisement, and he could not flaunt his formulas at him. Jules saw that the wind was out of his sails and came forward supply. ‘Well, Raccamond, we’re all tired: let’s get some sleep. We’ll talk this over in the morning. Come to my office, bring your books along, and we’ll come to some arrangement that will satisfy you.’

  ‘Monsieur le Comte de Guipatin is the only one I trust amongst you,’ declared Aristide, coming back to a more rugged state of mind. ‘Will he be there?’