House of All Nations Read online

  ‘Got to run,’ apologized Méline.

  ‘Are you going to Bertillon’s?’ asked Henri Léon with sudden suspicion.

  ‘I might run in. I’ll have a look at what the market is doing. See you soon.’ Méline went off, cheerful in the thought that Léon would spend the entire afternoon wondering what he was doing in the Bertillon Bank and what his game was in Paris.

  Léon looked through the glass again at Henrietta Achitophelous. She was a Southern beauty of Assyrian cast, with a long pronounced nose and jaw of perfect mold attached to a small rounded skull, low forehead, brilliant sensual eyes, brows like plumes, a bisque face framed entirely in small black curls. Her shoulders, upper arms, and bust swelled from the slender parts as if formed by the gust of some longing potter. Léon was overcome for a moment by a fragrant intoxicating cloud, peculiar to him when he saw a passionate female beauty. Achitophelous, his great friend and enemy, was dining discreetly in a corner of the farther court. He could see him accidentally between the players in the orchestra, but the cold light from the glass roof fell straight on Henrietta’s face.

  Marianne had tried for several years to contact Hollywood through the actors and American moneyed men going and coming in Paris in the stock-exchange houses and in the Parisian theatrical world. While Léon was still footling round the lobby as if he had affairs with invisible beings there, Marianne bent to Mrs. Weyman. ‘Do you like Paris, Madame?’

  Mrs. Weyman tossed off a laugh. ‘Oh, I come here every so often: I knew Paris as a young girl. I like it in a way. I have roots everywhere. Or none.’

  Her eyes glittered towards Aristide. ‘Are you interested in getting foreign accounts, say in the U.S.A., for your bank? I have many friends among novelists, Hollywood artists, and the planetary rich!’ She laughed a head laugh. ‘They’ve got the big money of today. I can put you in touch certainly with some of them. Paris attracts them. You can do me services. I’d like to meet the head of your bank: I hear he’s the white-haired boy of society here.’ She leaned forward nervously, vibrating with the thought of business.

  Aristide was intent: they wandered hand in hand through a desert of stock-exchange conversation. Aristide and Marianne exchanged glances which said, ‘This is a valuable friend: we’ll make up to her.’

  They all at once saw Léon dialing numbers out of the tiny memorandum book in which he kept the names of women, houses, and streets. He came out slapping the book into his vest pocket with a satisfied air and approached with a rapid military stagger. He grasped Mrs. Weyman’s arm. ‘You’ve got a beautiful figure, Margaret.’

  In the end Léon succeeded in bundling them out of the hotel into a taxi, which sailed off, headed for the Scribe Bar, leaving him unexpectedly standing on the mat. He turned quickly into the hotel. The manager at the desk, watching him, frowned. Léon had sent four girls up to his rooms in twenty-four hours. And on an all-in rate: not even a market tip to the manager.

  After Mrs. Weyman left them at the Scribe, Aristide had his notebook in his hand, ‘Hotel Westminster. I’m to have lunch with Mrs. Weyman tomorrow. It looks like business.’ He gave Marianne a marital glance, full-bodied with meaning. Marianne said in a lower tone, ‘Well, I saw Mme. Quiero.’

  Aristide frowned a query. She leaned forward. ‘You know, the handwriting expert that Mme. Bertillon uses? She said your handwriting shows you have a difficult temperament but this will be a lucky year for you.’

  ‘Lucky in money?’

  ‘Lucky in money, advances, and favors from friends. She said a blond man (that’s Bertillon evidently) will make your fortune this year and a dark-faced man next.’ She hesitated.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She said you run in cycles—always the same, beginning to end. She said what you’re afraid of will come about.’

  ‘Did she mean war? Perhaps it means the officers of reserve will be called up. Did she use the crystal, too? I don’t believe in them unless they can do that. Did you ask her about stocks and currencies? Did you ask her about the pound and the dollar? I suppose nothing on that—they’re worthless for exact figures—’ He drooped. ‘Who knows if they’re not just police agents? They don’t seem to know much else.’

  Marianne recited, ‘What is secret will be found out within the twelvemonth.’

  Irritably Aristide knocked on the cab window saying, ‘Can I sell or buy the market tomorrow on information like that?’

  Marianne smiled a little, her self-reliant conceited smile. ‘She said you would lose old friends and make new enemies.’

  ‘You pay the taxi,’ said Aristide. ‘I have no change.’

  ‘Neither have I: I’m just going in to cash a check.’

  Raccamond paid, giving twenty-five centimes for a tip. The chauffeur looked up at the bronze doors of the bank, standing inwards. On each leaf shone Mercury’s staff, in bronze. The chauffeur spat.

  * * *

  Scene Two: A Check Technique

  On one side of the doorway was a brass plate with the name Banque Mercure and on the other side, facing it, the name Bertillon & Cie. s.a.

  A woman went into the bank before Aristide. He plunged forward, bowed: ‘Good day, Princesse.’ She smiled cozily, went in chatting. Raccamond followed doggedly. Marianne restrained him in the square entrance and murmured, ‘Who is it? Tell me please, Aristide.’

  ‘Princess Delisle-Delbe,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve taken over her account. Let me go, Marianne: I must go.’

  He unhanded himself and fled after the Napoleonic Princesse, a young widow with a large estate who put plenty of money into the American and English markets. He intercepted her before Urbain Voulou, the elephantine, smiling blond chief customers’ man of the bank, had reached her. The three stood together a little while, until Aristide with his dark atmosphere of earnest insistence drew her eyes away from the smile of Voulou; and Voulou, saying, with good sad simplicity, ‘Things don’t look too good, Princesse: I think things are going down, Princesse,’ withdrew.

  Aristide went on as if Voulou had never been there, ‘The figures for the first two months of 1931 show a decline in trade: an increase in tariffs is sure. Mr. Alphendéry, our technician, you know, thinks you should sell about half of your long position in U.S. Steel and Air Liquide. He says he calculates Air Liquide will lose eventually about one-third of its value. There are queer rumors from the U.S.A. The banking situation is bad. We recommend selling short rather than buying.’

  The Princesse, settling the pretty little black hat on her black hair, said, ‘Is that Mr. Bertillon’s opinion? I think Mr. Jules Bertillon is a genius in markets. Is he in?’

  ‘Not yet, Madame. Yes, I believe that is his opinion. He and Mr. Alphendéry are generally of the same opinion.’

  ‘I just want to sell a foreign check,’ smiled the Princesse, dismissing him. ‘Will you see if Mr. Bertillon is in?’

  ‘The telephone, Mr. Raccamond,’ said Jacques Manray, the stock-exchange clerk, respectfully.

  On the telephone. Aristide heard, ‘Aristide! Are you and Marianne coming out with me tonight? Sure? All right. I’ll be round. H’m. I put off the business dinner. Is—is Bertillon there now? I’m coming round.’

  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.’