‘I am more than grateful to you for your portrait,’ said Maître Lemaître. ‘I had guessed part. It lacked confirmation. Now I know how to proceed.’
Then he leaned forward and said in a low and rather sad tone, ‘Make the best arrangements you can with Bertillon. I have absolute knowledge—and you know how cautious I am, Monsieur Alphendéry!—that this bank cannot last much longer under any circumstances. A combination of circumstances, of personal and professional enemies, which the unfortunate amount of scandalous publicity has brought you, has brought you near a wall you cannot scale. I advise you to give Raccamond certain assurances to keep him calm, and then prepare yourself quickly for a decent bankruptcy or for any other arrangement. In fact, it is now too late for you to go bankrupt. If that advice had been taken a year ago there would have still been time. In any legal matter, I am willing to be consulted.’ He leaned forward and said very earnestly to Alphendéry, ‘I know, for sure, that the tax authorities will close the bank for examination of its books, for a few days.’ He was silent, looking at Alphendéry curiously, but friendly; then continued, ‘Are you going to try to restore some of the shares? With Luc, who is the dearest friend of a friend of mine, and by influencing Lallant, as I know how, we can bring pressure to bear on Raccamond and explain to him in divers ways that to spread scandal now will mean danger to him. We can hold him off for six months and by then—he will be nonsuited.’ He smiled.
‘The Bertillons have been going through their papers,’ Alphendéry said cautiously, ‘preparing for—eventualities.’
Actually the night before, the two brothers and Alphendéry had been through gold brokers’ confirmations and extracted all those mentioning sale of gold, or withdrawal of gold, and leaving only those showing buying or deposit of gold, or transfer to the banks or vaults. True, the checkup of the gold brokers’ books would show another reckoning different from both the affirmative receipts and the reckoning just made by Alphendéry but that would take a very long time and their time was short; their object to make the gold-holdings seem larger, and call in Raccamond. They had all three decided that the only thing to do was to cool him off, soothe his vanity, load him with importance and statements, and get him off on some mission while they decided what the future of the bank and of themselves would be.
Alphendéry smiled, turning the subject, ‘Raccamond has gone back to witchcraft. He met me yesterday in the street and said, “I know you claim you don’t love profit. I am sure you feathered your nest, just the same—but that was a side issue: you love scheming for its own sake. If you were a poor man, a pauper, you’d do the same. How can these brothers equal you? You never rest; you never tire; it is in your blood. As long as your blood beats in your temples, this swarming of schemes will stream through your head. Your head is not a brain, it is a beehive—it is a beehive that turns and turns—” He put his hand to his head; the sweat was pouring from his forehead and neck. He stooped, exhausted by his passion.’
Alphendéry had stared at him, pitifully, shaken by so much hatred and fear of himself. He said in an undertone, gently, ‘My own fault—’
Lemaître laughed keenly, ‘Yes, you inspire passions of all kinds.’
‘I fear passion,’ said Alphendéry.
‘I don’t think so,’ smiled the lawyer.
* * *
Scene Ninety-nine: Judges Like Serials
Meanwhile everyone was making preparations. Richard Plowman complained once again that he could never see his dear friends Jules and William, although Claire-Josèphe was now always at home, more accessible than ever. ‘I am glad you have left the bank,’ he said to Alphendéry. ‘You were keeping the brothers apart; now William and Jules are always hobnobbing—even I never see them. You meant well … don’t misunderstand me. Personally, I think you’re a charming fellow—but now they are united, there’s a shoulder-to-shoulder air about them that I, personally, find altogether sane and most promising for the future.’
This puzzled Alphendéry, although he put it down to Jules’s aviation and oil monopoly and other projects.
He made a friendly call on Maître Lemaître, who said, ‘I hear that Legris are ready to ditch him: this Raccamond created too much of a stink and there has been an investigation of Legris and Company from the Bourse of Amsterdam … Then Carrière’s opponent in the elections knows that Carrière still has his foreign accounts with Bertillon, and he is only too anxious to get at their books and show up Carrière as a tax evader. Oh, a nest of trouble is being put together assiduously. I like Bertillon, although I think he’s short in the thatch and although he lied to me outrageously. I don’t want him to sit in the Santé.’
‘You’re tenderhearted for a lawyer, maître.’
‘Well, no. None of my clients is an angel, not even the injured parties, but Bertillon is outside the law—he does nothing legal. His affairs must be in the most unspeakable tangle; I don’t want to be mixed up in it. I’m his lawyer. Let him fly. I don’t want to defend him. I like him and I’ve considered it from all angles—let him take some of the books with him and fly. That would be the best for all of us, including you. And as for you, I hope you are leaving Paris, Mr. Alphendéry.’
‘Yes, tonight,’ said Alphendéry. ‘I am not even waiting to get my back salary.’
‘You are right. There is very little time left to us. Tell Mr. Bertillon. Not from me, but let him understand. Maître Luc, although Raccamond’s lawyer, told me the same. He wishes Bertillon would fly. Bertillon has our sympathy. He will end badly. Why? Why go to the bitter end ? The game is ended. If he could wait another five years, he might beat Carrière at his own game; he might make another fortune on exchanges, on tourists, on anything—but he can’t: he hasn’t the youth, the elasticity, the freshness. I know men, Mr. Alphendéry, and Mr. Bertillon has spun his thread. He needs refreshment. There, I only do this for you, as a friend, and Bertillon is your friend. There, write to me: I disagree with you entirely on everything. Thus we have much to say to each other. Put every agreement with Mr. Léon on paper and have it witnessed! Ah, ah, you won’t though. Well … good luck.’
Alphendéry told all this to Jules, ‘But there are two million tied up for Raccamond, and the money not yet released from the Parouart case,’ said Jules. ‘I have five million here and there in various companies, the Spanish oil, the French aviation—I’ve put up a million for each already—you don’t know the half—’ he smiled between sheepishness and cunning. ‘I can’t go away and leave all that money behind.’
‘It’s that or the Santé,’ said Alphendéry calmly. ‘Think who sent you the message, Maître Luc.’
‘Raccamond’s lawyer.’
‘Just so—his lawyer asks you to fly. Raccamond doesn’t want you to fly. But Luc is a friend of Lemaître, and Lemaître is a friend of yours. There’s the sequence.’
‘Those lawyers are always playing safe: they don’t understand a type like me,’ said Jules fretfully.
‘Take their advice, Jules, and as for what’s lying round here—leave it. Collect what you’ve got in Legris in Amsterdam, clean out the branches, leave enough to pay the boys here, and a few sacks of gold in the safe. That will puzzle them. When they descend on the bank they’ll find money there. Strange escapade, they’ll call it, not a fugue. The great point in all these things is mystery: the liquidators want mystery till they’ve laid their hands on the carpets and bookcases, just what they wanted to fill up the spare room at home; the journalists want mystery—it’s a substitute for a bad serial; the judges want mystery—they don’t have to make up their minds; the expert accountants want mystery—it’s their job. Start the idea of mystery in the minds of all and you have a smoke trail that will not clear away but that will go on thickening for years. When it finally clears, you will doubtless be clear, too—’
‘Transparent,’ chuckled Jules, amused, his eyes fixed in the distance.
‘Still, there will be
a crowd to believe in your innocence and see a secret hand, a hidden force, a fatalism even. Carrière, Raccamond will be blamed, not you …’
‘I’m not trying to shift the blame—I like blame,’ cried Jules petulantly.
‘You’ll get enough to satisfy you: then you’ll be glad of the mysticism of people—in the end you’ll find people suing Jean de Guipatin or Mlle. Dalbi, or Campoverde or Mouradzian—and in the end you’ll be glad. You’re a shadow, Jules; you’re not a focus for blame. There’s something unhuman about you; people prefer a grosser-grained, a fatter-boned culprit—me—or Raccamond—or William. You’ll see.’
‘Pttt!’ said Jules. ‘You’re imaginative, Michel. Will you like your new job?’
‘Léon is a petty tyrant—but I’ll get along all right. I may not stay there long.’
‘Ah, you’ll come back to me, Michel; you’ll be back with me before you know it. You need me. I give you rein. You’ll find out.’
Michel laughed. ‘Maybe! Who knows?’
* * *
Scene One Hundred: Last Days
They were in Plowman’s London club.
The old man raised his kind face with a flash of indignation, perhaps covering some doubt, ‘Bomba, I am surer of Jules than of my own son. I have been through tight places with him for twenty years. He knows he can depend on me. It’s a sign of sanity that instead of taking out his gold and selling it, he is calling on the bank balances of the branches—no doubt he’s in a temporary jam. He’s a big gambler, and a safe one. No doubt, he needs some margins.’
‘Ralph Stewart tells me that he has been rather slow paying his options lately and that has created a certain impression in the city, you know. No man in business should let them wait an hour. Why is it? Is he rash? Is he strapped?’
‘I don’t know. He has his reasons, no doubt. Jules has been in business for twenty years: he has always come through. I don’t ask him questions.’ He hesitated, ‘The slow payment—I know—that’s William. That’s his idea. His idea is always to keep people waiting.’
‘That’s true enough,’ sighed Theodor Bomba. ‘When I was there I had trouble enough getting ordinary office cable charges and salary lists paid. I pressed him not to ruin the bank’s name for quick payment—it was when Carrière was pressing—for the sake of a few centimes’ interest gained. Now I am away—Alphendéry has gone. Jules has gone up in the air, if you want my plain opinion. William thinks of hoarding, scraping, and saving and—quite the opposite of other days—he is full of levity and freaks. Jules is alone. Someone should stand with him. I was speaking to Alphendéry—he is in London now doing business for Henri Léon. A smart fellow. Feathers his nest in time, eh?’ Cunningly, he looked into the old man’s face.
The old man raised his fading blue eyes, faintly bloodshot. ‘Don’t urge Alphendéry to go back. Don’t go back yourself. I am staying away. I’ll tell you why. I think you’re a friend of Jules. The brothers are reunited now. Never before did the four brothers dine together in the evening. Now they do it nearly every evening. Claire-Josèphe spends most of her time out riding or motoring with her little ones. A thing that has not happened for years and years. She used to spend her whole time out with friends and at the dressmakers’. It makes me so happy.’ He wiped away a senile tear. ‘Of course, I suffer from it. When the family is so close, the old family friend is a little de trop. But for their sake and for the good of the bank, I am glad to be exiled a little. And then—since the death of dear old Frank Durban—’ another pair of tears—‘I have become a philosopher.’ He teetered. ‘The clients are impressed,’ he went on energetically. ‘They comment upon the activity of the brothers. They feel there is a firm leadership, a syndicate of brothers. Divided we fall, united we stand!’
‘So there was a syndicate of brothers in Claude Brothers! Raccamond got them, too.’
‘Raccamond is mistaken, but he’s a good man—he’ll make a good manager: I’ve been begging Jules to take him back. What a sense of organization! You see,’ he said with pathetic charm, ‘he is ambitious, but he worships Jules. I know men, my boy—I’m old … As for Alphendéry—better as it is. I always combatted the theory that he was the brains of the bank. He’s subtle—never spread it himself. To a man as sensitive as Jules, to undermine his sense of responsibility and importance is fatal.’
Theodor Bomba smiled.
Plowman put his hands in his pockets and whistled to the cash, as it were. ‘Jules is,’ he spoke softly with all his heart, ‘the greatest genius I ever met, the greatest natural, untaught, original genius.’
‘He has great charm, and he has genius, no doubt,’ cut in Bomba. ‘Well, you are convinced your money is safe? Then I am. For where a man’s money is, there his brains are.’
Rumors clustered thicker as the days went on. Stewart said that Jules had pyramided with him and that other brokers in the city were calling for their margins from Jules in vain. People began to smile when Alphendéry mentioned Jules and say, ‘I see you’ve left him; well, I suppose that’s all right. You always knew what you were doing,’ with a broadening smile. Others snickered and asked him if his friend Jules Bertillon was still in cahoots with Montagu Norman. Although William could get no information at the bank in Paris, everyone Alphendéry spoke to in London and in Amsterdam (by phone) knew that Jules’s aviation company was fantastic, not worth the paper its letterhead was printed on, that big interests who saw themselves defeated by the proposed aviation combine were out to crush him, that the taxation authorities had decided to close the bank. Jules could get no credit in London. Paul Méline no longer dragged Alphendéry through Shorters’ Court in the busy hours, to show that he had the Banque Mercure account; Ralph Stewart no longer whispered about what Bertillon was doing this week.
Alphendéry, with all these things flying round in his head, sickened and went to bed for a week.
How then was Jules? Jules was in a deep blue funk. All of the rumors were right. Jules had sunk five million francs, by now, in the aviation combine, to please Jean de Guipatin and young Campoverde. With these two were associated Juarez de Machuca, Hervé Dumas, young Lucé, Daniel Cambo, and young Mouradzian, all of whom had been named as directors in the Aviation Combine. Jules was now ‘betting on blue blood.’ ‘Enough rads, Reds, and proletarians,’ he proclaimed.
These young bluebloods were supposed to bring money into the venture from their various high-toned families and associates, but Jules was the only one who had done so: the others were chary, wary, their families asked questions and, for the most part, it turned out that they were the least trusted, the most ridiculed member of the family, the younger son without a pension or a father’s blessing, or any hope but some doting aunt. And doting aunts don’t like aviation.
But Jules was in no state now to put pressure on these ambitious and naïve young aristocrats, snuffing up politics, position, and money with wide nostrils and long necks. He sat in his bank, transformed into a junior version of the Jockey Club and gossiped with these youths and entertained all the retired admirals and gaga generals they liked to bring along. He had felt he was in clover: he was almost ruined.
There was some anxiety in Claire-Josèphe’s young heart, too. When Jules transferred the gold from Amsterdam and elsewhere to Oslo, he had failed to segregate the gold bars which belonged to her personally, as part of her dowry. She saw him pouring money out for these ventures, and into the stock markets; she had moments of black panic, when she saw herself and her children ruined and Jules a runaway. She felt that afternoon had fallen on Jules’s world, too; it was not shining and sunny any more; it did not love him. All he could do was to hide his head or change his hemisphere! The family atmosphere was streaked with lightning.
Thereupon Jules called his brothers and Maître Olympe to his apartment one evening and said, ‘I’m through. I’m going to leave the bank with the doors open, and run. I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. At p
resent you may not notice it but I do. Every minute I snap at someone—I lose my temper. Every hour of the day is a battleground for me, a fight against screaming! Something’s gone wrong. Maybe it’s me. I want to run away from you all, even you people. You see where I am? If you don’t put your heads together and save me, there’ll be a scandal, and you’ll all have to face the music … Our money is all abroad now. It is all in two spots—Oslo and Esthonia. You must all follow me there, unless you have made up your minds about some other spot … Things are bad here. There’s no one to stand the gaff for me—I let Alphendéry go too soon. We’re short of money. Carrière takes all the profits we make on plain trading. I’ve dropped twenty million francs in markets and clients and ventures since the beginning of the year. We were ruined before the Kreuger windfall came and that only helped to stop the gap. I’ve had to pay some of Raccamond’s clients out of my own pocket. Now since Raccamond ran round to the branches with his story, they’ve become very cagey: Bomba won’t send me any money from London; Brouwer won’t let me touch the Brussels balance; the same in the other spots. They’re determined to cover themselves if I go down! They seem to forget whose bank it is! However, there I am. I haven’t enough money to run the bank. And I can’t stand another struggle for clients, and I can’t pay out the ones I’ve got. As for the employees: I’m sorry. I always intended to give them six months’ pay each, when I folded up, but I can’t. That’s flat. I’ll give one of them six months’ pay, to stay round when the inspectors come, but that’s all I can do. The others must fight with the liquidators. It’s a dirty deal—but what the deuce! I’ve got to think of myself first.’
The next morning, Jules flew off in William’s airplane, and William flew in a borrowed plane to the field where Jules’s was, and burned it. This was the only aviation which resulted from Jules’s aviation venture. As soon as William received the following telegram from Jules:
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