House of All Nations (98 page)

‘Say that word again,' said Jules in a low menacing tone.

‘I say, of fraud,' cried Aristide. ‘The bank is no bank but a miserable bucket shop: it exists for no other purpose. I have been robbed, the clients have been robbed, systematically, over years. I know, besides, where to lay my finger, to put it on the instigator.' His face darkened; he looked round at the empty room. In two panels in the wall two splendid Greuzes hung.

‘Have a drink?' said Jules.

‘No, no, nothing. I will not drink in this house, till I get some explanation, some satisfaction—'

‘Wait a minute, Aristide,' said Jules in his brittle high voice. ‘You haven't told me what you were doing in Brussels the days you were supposed to be looking after your son and the clients. Why don't you sit down, put down your hat, and behave normally. You're a most abnormal man; never the smallest thing happens but you're instantly at boiling point. I think you must be ill. If you are, say so and we'll give you leave of absence.'

‘My clients!' said Raccamond wildly, as if he were going to sob.

‘Your clients have never suffered with our house. Your clients have often had money restituted to them when they have lost. Your clients! Find another house in the city to treat them the way we do.'

‘You have good reason,' said Raccamond viciously, looking straight at Jules. ‘You have good reason—you should restitute all. I'm going round to see them—to tell them—to blazon your name, to make your name a byword. I'll let them know what you have been doing with that Jew.'

Jules had a forced laugh. ‘You'll make yourself ridiculous, Aristide.'

‘Yes? And these books? They talk, I think.'

Jules said decidedly, ‘You're going to leave them here: they're my property.'

‘Never!' He paled frightfully, looked behind him. ‘Never! These are to bring you and your accomplices to justice.'

‘Aristide, what is it you want? Tell me: I'll make some arrangement with you.'

‘How can I believe a word you say? Liars, liars, swindlers. One moment after I leave here it will be new combinations, new plots, new conspiracies, and my clients are to suffer. I will be ruined! My God, what did I let myself in for? You never kept a straight account! Every time they put in an order to buy, you sold; every time to sell, you bought. Those orders never reached the stock exchange. My God, when I think what's been going on! Mr. Bertillon, I always thought of you as an honorable man … how could you have done it? I can't believe my own ears and eyes. But I have the books,' he suddenly ended cunningly. ‘They convince me.'

‘Sit down,' urged Jules.

‘No, no, I can't sit down here. I don't trust any of you. You have all told me lies; you have never told me a thing. I asked for a statement, I got jokes. I asked for special attention for my clients, when all the time behind my back you and your brother, and I don't know who else, were fleecing them. How can I believe a single word you say? Away from me, away from me!'

‘It's hard to get away from you in my own house,' commented Jules irritably. ‘Although it would be a pleasure,' he said to himself. ‘If you can't talk like a human being in business and not a prima donna, there's no doing anything for you. Now what do you want?'

Meanwhile he was walking round the room, apparently carelessly, with his face towards Raccamond and his eyes on the books. ‘I don't know what you're talking about,' Jules decided to say. ‘Aristide, show me these books! I have certain connections, certain arrangements which I am not obliged to reveal to you nor to anyone. Mr. Alphendéry conducts the whole Brussels side of the business. Perhaps he has done things without consulting me; that is possible: he has the power.'

‘If he has, if he has—he'll pay for it: I'll denounce him to the police,' cried Aristide.

‘I'll ask him myself,' said Jules. ‘If either of us has been swindled, if your clients have lost a sou, even a sou, I'll discharge him.'

A faint color mounted into Aristide's cheeks, but he said painfully, ‘It isn't a question of loss—not in financial terms. It is the security of our house!' He suddenly cried out, as if in the greatest trouble, ‘The security of the house is at stake! You must call him to account. If you don't I'll know that you and your brother are in league with him. Think of my position vis-à-vis my clients! Suppose the house fails tomorrow morning with this—frightful, frightful position! What am I to say? They'll blame me; they'll bring in the police! Where am I to go for my bread and butter? Who will believe I didn't know myself?'

‘You mean,' said Jules equably, ‘because of the immense salary you get?'

Aristide stared at him and became furious. ‘You're threatening me now? I knew you weren't sincere. You're all conspiring to ruin me and my clients. I always knew it!'

‘You're a fool,' returned Jules with irritation. ‘Your clients haven't lost anything. What damage has been done them, eh? Eh?'

‘I'm charging
abuse of confidence
.' said Aristide, looking terrible. ‘You know there are laws against that? You and your gangsters haven't spent years poaching on the law, for nothing: you know the law … you know where the shoe pinches. You'll come to terms with me, or I'll call in the police.'

‘What do the books prove?' asked Jules. ‘Can you read them?'

‘I know what they prove; I know what I have.'

‘The fact is,' said Jules, ‘your clients have never lost a penny: their losses have sometimes been paid back to them, and you're this minute wondering what you came here for? I'll tell you what—for blackmail. But you have nothing to blackmail on; you have a few innocent, but strictly private books in code.'

‘I can read these books,' said Aristide, with cunning, ‘because I have in my hands the records of orders passed through—confirmations of orders received from various brokers, plus transactions in these books, tally with orders sent in by clients.'

‘You couldn't have found that out in a week,' said Jules.

‘No. I have a right to safeguard my clients' interests.'

‘Listen, Aristide. Your clients put their money in the market; they lose it to the market. If a broker simply sits on his heels and doesn't give a word of advice, his clients will ruin themselves, simply on the turn of the wheel. All their money is gone: it goes into the market. Supposing, for the sake of argument, the broker does not execute the orders given to him. A client wants 100 International Nickel at 15. The broker gives it to him at 15. That is, he writes down in his account books: Mr. Smith, Jones, or Robinson, owns 100 shares of International Nickel at 15. Where is the loss? A month later the client comes and says, “Give me my 100 Nickel at 15,” and he gets his 100 Nickel at 15. Where is the loss?'

‘It's abuse of confidence,' said Aristide. ‘And if the market goes up, you have to pay him 100 Nickel at 17, perhaps. You are ruined.'

Jules smiled caustically. ‘Aristide, the market goes down. The market always goes down for the wise.'

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!'