House of All Nations (4 page)

In ten minutes Aristide heard a garble of laughter in the quiet green murmuring entrance hall. Somehow Michel Alphendéry had got downstairs and introduced himself to Henri Léon. They had got on to Spain. Léon, as usual: ‘Because I have confidence: I believe in Spain—don't you think that counts, eh? Don't you think that counts? I don't mind doing business in the country of Garcia or Hernandez: that country appeals to me.'

‘Fermin Galan and Garcia Hernandez,' Alphendéry emended.

‘The revolution began in Spain already with Fermin and Garcia Hernandez on the border: that's a great country. I'd put my money there any day, when it quietens down a bit, if those boys look as if they can hold the—reins of power,' stoutly continued Léon. ‘Any day. My boy!'

Alphendéry began a conversational oration: ‘A country that's entering into revolution is a great country: stocks fall, landlords sell, dowagers shriek and depart, squires fly, but the land continues to bear in the old, golden way, olives grow, there's electric light to sell: socialist municipalities need whitewash for the cabins and stones for the roads, there's medicine, cosmetics, hairwashes, Woolworth dodges to sell. When the permanent moneybags fly, there's the place for new wealth. When others go like this' (he stuck out his absurd little hands and shook them violently), ‘that's the time I move right in.

‘You're right, Mr. Léon: your instinct's perfectly right. Supplies are cheap, consumption is never as low as it seems, and a new market is worth a ton of money today. The Spaniards have nothing: then you have everything to sell them. It's the new colony. Life goes on, doesn't it? Everyone has an infinite capacity for consumption. Especially the Latins!'

Léon nodded energetically, his face drawn a little from a too fatiguing day and night, his eyes no longer dancing, but serious and absorbed. Aristide saw this close attention to Alphendéry, and approached with his solemn authority. ‘Léon, I—' Léon waved him aside. ‘Léon—'

‘Wait, wait, Aristide: this is—' He actually held Aristide off with his large hand, made a half-turn to shut Aristide off from the colloquy: ‘Interested!' was the word that tumbled out of his mouth.

Alphendéry went on instantly, ‘Life goes on! Life went on under the corruption of the Roman Empire. These ages look like acts of a historical drama to us, but they were sewed together by the little Andrés and little Maries who set up house together, had children and bought gadgets for the home all through the Dark Ages and today. A few go revoluting but the girls buy rouge to attract the boys and the mothers look for cheaper zippers to put on François' pants.'

Restlessly Léon egged him on to the more serious part: ‘And, yes—and—but the—Coty—'

Joyfully, Alphendéry took him up, ‘Life went on under Attila, went on in the Dark Ages. These will be the ages of night looking back from the days to come, but we're alive: we can't go dead dog. This is a new Napoleonic age, a new Commune age. Revolution! Why, it always produces new markets! All new money is made through the shifting of social classes and the dispossession of old classes. Today we have it. Property is changing hands, losing its old owners all the time. This is the time to move in.'

Léon rolled a fierce look round the people scattered near, wanting to get Alphendéry away to privacy.

At this moment, a fragile, tall, elegantly dressed young man, with a bowler hat, a fur collar, and an antique Dutch face, with long nose tip biting the air, approached nonchalantly.

‘Jules,' caroled Alphendéry, ‘meet Henri Léon, a grain—'

‘We've met,' said Léon.

‘Hullo, Léon,' said Jules Bertillon. ‘What have you been saying, Michel? That now is the time to make money? It is.'

‘I was saying that few old fortunes survived the war: you must make new money to swim through a social crisis. The old goes rusty.'

‘Like the General Strike,' said Léon. ‘In the General Strike I—did I ever tell you that story, Aristide? I must tell it to you, Alphen: the same thing. Everyone sitting round wrapped in their coats like corpses, waiting for the last day, red flag over London: I get an idea—I get an idea.' He looked around, for some spot to talk business in.

Jules said, ‘Every crisis is a storm of gold: most people run under an awning to get away from it. Do you know how to make money, Léon? If you do, spill it. Here we are sitting in a shower of gold and nothing to hold up but a pitchfork!'

There was a wash of laughter, but Léon stood and looked at Bertillon, now moving harmoniously towards the stairway, pale marble and green-carpeted. Léon looked as if he had been faintly smacked. In another moment he was walking after him. He took two steps, then turned and called, ‘Mr. Michel? Mr.—er—er—are you coming up?' Alphendéry started and hurried after him. Aristide Raccamond strung out last, following the other three upstairs, dubious, but on the job. ‘Mr. Alphen?' called Léon.

‘
Alphendéry
,' said Alphendéry, ‘Alphendéry.'

‘Nice furnishings—' said Léon ‘—looks good. Respectable: looks businesslike but elegant.'

‘Jules Bertillon did it all himself. He has superb taste! He always says that money should live in the Ritz-Carlton.'

‘Did he say that?' inquired Léon hastily, in a confidential tone. ‘A nice feller, has charm, hasn't he? Eh? He has charm. Gets people in.'

‘Oh, the bank,' said Alphendéry easily, laughing, ‘is a sort of cosmopolite club for the idle rich and speculators of Paris, Madrid, Rio, Buenos Aires, New York, London, and points farther east and west. And Mr. Bertillon gives the best exchange rates in France. People appreciate that courtesy—it's the one thing that tells in a foreign city. A little paring of the rate of exchange and the client has big confidence.'

‘Right,' said Léon, settling back his head and eying the back of Alphendéry's small, square head with augur look. ‘And charm.'

‘Charm is a cunning self-forgetfulness,' confided Alphendéry.

‘I like the looks of it,' declared Léon.

They followed Jules into his own room, a large room overlooking the general entrance and the cashiers' windows and booths downstairs. It was furnished grandly, if somewhat gloomily, in the best Amsterdam taste, with walnut paneling and bookcases, a beautiful French desk, a high-backed carved Italian chair in which Jules sat, flanked by two branched upright Italian bronze candlesticks, six feet high. Facing the desk and Jules's great chair were three large, deep, and superlatively soft green armchairs. In those chairs people were at their very best. The walls were olive green: on the green carpet were several Persian rugs. The glass-cabinet bookcases lining two walls were empty except for several rows of blind backs.

‘Sit down,' said Jules. At Aristide, who entered with some diffidence, he frowned. ‘Do you want something?' Alphendéry interposed, ‘Baron Koffer's man will be downstairs at two-thirty: you know him, don't you?' Aristide started and hurried out.

‘The great Belgian financier?' inquired Léon hotly.

‘Yes.'

‘You better go and see him,' Jules said crisply to Alphendéry.

‘He's not there, yet,' Michel explained. Jules smiled coolly. ‘I thought you said he was. Sit down, Michel. Mr. Léon, I want you to go over with Mr. Alphendéry the idea you have about the pound. Mr. Alphendéry is my exchange expert.'

‘Yes?' Léon looked at Alphendéry with interest. ‘What do you think of sterling? Will it hold? Will it go off?'

‘How long ahead are you looking?'

‘This year? What's the secret of sterling? Do you think it will go off? I figure—sterling, gold bloc, Belgian franc, Swiss franc, French franc. What's the secret? That's just my instinct.'

‘Perfect,' laughed Alphendéry. ‘You mean, will the French withdraw the balances they have in London? Will it pay them to, or will it pay them to hold them there as permanent blackmail? Can they afford cheaper wages in England?'

Léon poured out a confusion of ideas, declared to Jules, ‘I think sterling will go off this year, or early next. That's what they think in Amsterdam. (It doesn't matter who thinks it, you can always make money.) It's an open secret that can't be used. They will hold off. They have to use money. You can think money is going off, but you've got to do business. You can't hold up payments: if you don't pay, they only wait to pounce on you—credit's no good. In the ordinary course of business you pass through checks on Saturday morning for cashing on Monday. Nothing suspicious in that. Suppose it goes off over the week end? Eh? I've got an idea. I want to know, Bertillon: I have a technique. Infallible. Will you endorse me? I give you ten per cent.'

‘Do you get it, Michel?' asked Jules offhandedly.

Alphendéry leaned forward, his eyes glossy with his personal passion, exposition, ‘Certainly. Mr. Léon will pass through checks selling sterling for X francs or X guilders, say. To prove he is not selling short, which requires margins, you, Jules, will give your guarantee that Léon actually holds in your bank the amount of sterling he is selling. Léon can say, I have sterling credits to my account in the Bertillon Bank in Paris and can turn over the sterling at a moment's notice. If they call you on the telephone, Bertillon, you say the sterling's here. You will give the accommodation to Léon, in that case, Jules. If necessary, you can transfer the amount of sterling necessary to Léon's name, under release from him, on the books.'

‘
Check technique
,' said Léon.

‘That won't be necessary,' said Jules impatiently. ‘You better open an account here, as from today, though, so that it looks O.K.'

‘Yes,' Alphendéry answered Jules. ‘A couple of thousand francs: nominal.'

‘I can do it anyhow, I think,' said Léon, ‘but if you want do it that way, I'll let you know. I have an arrangement with—a friend, with—you know, Grosshändler in Switzerland, of the International Quayside Corporation? Him. He knows everything that goes on in Zurich, Geneva. The Federated Cantons Bank knows everything a couple of days before. They generally go off over a week end. Now if I can know on Friday, say, or even early Saturday morning—you see—I ring up, say, anyone, Meyer, I say, ‘Wolff, listen, Brandenberger, I'm selling sterling, are you a taker?' ‘I know what you're doing, Léon,' he says, ‘but I need the sterling, anyhow: I can't help it and perhaps you're wrong.' I sell, he takes the check: Monday morning, the banks give me half an hour—I'm in, say it will go off twenty francs in the pound over the week end. Say, I have a hundred thousand sterling—it's a little profit, but it will cover any losses in a bad grain year.'

‘If you get the information from this Grosshändler,' said Jules.

‘Oh, we're thick, I'm in deep with him.'

‘But do you think sterling will go off this year?' queried Jules. ‘I don't.'

‘If I'm wrong, I don't lose anything: I have my sterling, I sell it, I have my francs: a few francs one way or another. It's—certain, certain: it's one of the few safe investments!' He laughed round at them. ‘Well, what do you think of my check technique?'

‘You ring me up, Léon, and we'll fix it up,' promised Jules.

Alphendéry went out with Léon. Generously Léon said, flushed with having spoken, ‘You get percentages out of accounts here, don't you, Alphen-phendéry?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘I'll put in a small account, how much? Fifty thousand francs! You'll get the percentage: there you are, that's what I think of you,' said Léon, beaming into Alphendéry's face.

‘Jules will be anxious to work in with you,' said Alphendéry modestly. ‘Don't worry about the percentage. I work here—I work here on a different basis, do you see?'

Léon's face fell. ‘He wouldn't give it to you? I don't put it in unless you get a percentage.' He became absolute, ‘No, I don't put it in otherwise—I want you to get it, my boy. That's to show friendship. I can sense we're going to work together.' He leaned back and stared at Alphendéry's forehead, seriously. ‘You're a—' he shut his mouth strictly. ‘We'll do business, my boy.' He patted Alphendéry on the back and began to stride towards the stairs. He stopped at the stairs for Alphendéry to catch up a step. He went downstairs impulsively and when they reached the ground floor, he planted himself in the fairway looking at the well-dressed crowd of clients. They were cosmopolitans interested in speculation in the bourses of the world; in the stock and commodity markets as well as in exchanges.

‘What do they take positions in?' asked Léon, staring quickly at them all: ‘Any grain, maize, barley: or just shares? What shares? American ? There's no money, only trouble in America now. England, eh? The market's up. What do they come here for? Who's Bertillon? Has he got big money? I hear he hasn't so much. A one-man bank. There's a brother, eh, eh?'

‘They're here,' laughed Alphendéry, ‘because they want big profits in a little time: this is the same crowd you'll see at Biarritz and at Deauville and at Le Touquet. This is the International of the Upper Ten Thousand. Some of them believe in Jules's luck. So do I. Some of them hope to divide the profits of his careless audacity. So do I. Then he has branches abroad: they keep their accounts and clip their coupons there and avoid income tax here.'

Léon's eyes had brightened, his voice dimmed. ‘Yes, is that so, is that so? Some lad, eh? Smart boy. Has he got brains, eh? He's a genius?'

‘I think so.'

Léon nodded and considered Alphendéry. He nodded again to himself.

‘A mercurial money crowd,' laughed Alphendéry. ‘It flows, it registers the temperature, it never freezes.'

Léon's great laugh: ‘You'll do, my boy, you'll do.' He looked around. ‘Beautiful: he has taste: it's the finest bank in Paris, and little —you could hold it in the hollow of your hand. A hollow jewel. Perhaps not hollow, eh?'