House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

I have made very serious, but none the less, expected discoveries. Come at once. For your own interest and for your clients’, lose no time. You will be in a key position.

  Yours,

  P (Posset)

  Raccamond admired the calm with which he received this intimation; but a few hours afterwards, seeing himself in a restaurant mirror, he found that he was pale as dough. He divined quite well what he was to learn. He put through a call to Brussels at lunchtime, from the Brasserie Universelle in the Avenue de l’Opéra, where he would not be likely to meet any of the bank’s men, and there he got the guarded information from Posset,

  ‘I have found some private ledgers which will explain a great deal. A. manages very large accounts.’ (A. was Alphendéry.)

  Aristide went to the bank and for a few hours hung about the board room, a pallid bloated brooding thing, without saying a word to anyone. The word went round that he was neurotic because he had just discovered that he had syphilis. This was natural, for almost every man in the board room, from time to time, was suspected or known, or reported by his best friends, to have just contracted syphilis or gonorrhea. Now, some more imaginative and more learned declared that they had always suspected it, and that he was certainly now in the early dementia stage of general paresis; some thought he should take insulin and some thought milk should be injected; some inclined for salvarsan, and others thought a wound in one of the feet or hands would draw off the madness from his head.

  Aristide sat in a chair near Jacques Manray’s desk, unaware of these whispers, wretchedly intent on finding out what Manray was doing, whether he was marking orders in a special way, whether he really sent orders through to the telegraph room, through the pneumatic tube, and whether these orders were sent in complete, just as the client gave them. But Manray sent every order through the pneumatic tube. It suddenly occurred to Raccamond then that it was Alphendéry, sitting within, who was the secret agent; and he figured him sitting in the telegraph room, marking the order slips malevolently, pretending to execute the orders, never telegraphing them to the stock exchanges of the world, but making up the prices himself and presently sending down confirmations to trusting clients. The clients were now sitting at ease in Jules’s fat green armchairs, in peaceful rows, in a contented daze, staring at the figures marked up by the board boys. Some few thin, fretful clients, habitual gamblers with small incomes or wasted patrimonies, walked up and down, starting every time the pneumatic tube whirred. These were the ones that bought and sold their tens and fifties of International Nickel, I.T.T., Mexican Eagle, and American Radiator, dealt in stop-loss orders, and spent their nights figuring out schemes of incredible complexity in which, by the manipulation of ten or twenty shares of a cheap stock, they would secure a handsome profit. Abernethy Gairdner, the most insensate of them all, now handed in a slip to Manray. Manray noted down the amounts, but before he sent it down the pneumatic tube, Aristide suddenly observed that the slip was covered with notations. He snatched it out of Manray’s hand, thinking he had a clue, and read:

  BUY 10 shares of Int. Nickel at 15: put in an order good this month to sell 20 shs. Int. Nickel at 20. Put in a stop-loss order to sell 10 shs. at 13; and if this is obtained, cancel the order to sell at 20.

  Signature of client:

  Abernethy Gairdner

  Aristide stood up and rushed to Gairdner with the sheet in his hand, ‘Is this your order?’

  Gairdner looked at him, outraged (he thought some question of margins had come up), looked at it, ‘Yes! Why, hasn’t it gone up yet! It ought to be on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange by now!’ Crestfallen, Aristide thrust the slip back at Manray, ‘Send it through, marked Hurry!’ Manray looked at him insolently but said nothing, and sent the order through. Aristide was ill at ease. The solution was inside, in the telegraph room, where Alphendéry sat deviling the orders. He pushed open the door behind Manray and penetrated the inside corridor. The door to the cable room was locked: inside he heard the voices of Jules Bertillon and Alphendéry. Alphendéry could usually be heard all through the corridor: just now he was talking in a very low voice. Everything seemed to hang together, though, to confirm Aristide’s suspicions.

  He went to his own room, restlessly came out again, patrolled the inside corridors of the bank, and when Jules at last came out of the cable room, Aristide approached him and said nervously that he must have leave of absence at once, to go to Brussels. His son, he muttered, his son was in trouble: he had tried to obtain money by hocking radios obtained on time payment.

  The next afternoon the phone girl gave Alphendéry the ritual warning, ‘Call from Brussels for Mr. Bertillon. Mr. Bertillon is out … will you take it?’

  ‘Hello, hello! Why, is that you, Cornelis? … About Raccamond? … What do you say, I don’t hear … He’s taken the books; what books? … Are you sure they were the books? … How did he get them? … Fire that man at once. Where is Raccamond? … Now, look, now look, Cornelis, don’t worry, calm down, and tell me what happened: he’s rather a neurotic you know, blows off … he’ll cool down. It’s blackmail obviously: he’ll come to terms, and we’ll meet him if we can’t get them back in the meantime … Don’t worry, Cornelis: his police record isn’t so hot—you know he was on the wrong side in the Claude Brothers—What? … Did he? Yes, come if you want to; but no, wait till we telephone you again—at your house tonight. Don’t worry, Cornelis: we’ve had these gangsters before … Thanks very, very much, Cornelis. I’ll telephone. Thanks, very, very much. Don’t worry …’

  Alphendéry, pale but collected, gathered himself together and bounded out of the room. He bumped into Jules who, with negligent elegance, and too lazy to work, was taking an airing up and down his corridors, gently whistling.

  ‘They told me there was a Brussels call: I expect it was Raccamond. You took it? Say, you look as if there were a moratorium.’

  ‘It was Cornelis: Raccamond has stolen the books of the Brussels office.’

  ‘What books?’

  ‘The books of the anonymous numbered accounts and the contre-partie books …’

  ‘He can’t get away with that: that’s a crime. I’ll jail him.’

  ‘Listen, Jules: Raccamond has been to Legris, to the gold brokers, to Vanderallee, to the Scheldt en Dogger Bank, to our own lawyers, and to one of Cornelis’s family friends and has told them that we are crooks, that we cheat the fisc, bucket the clients’ holdings, and are on the verge of bankruptcy! How’s that for a bunch of news for an innocent client? He told Cornelis’s friend that we’ve been making a fortune out of the ruin of our clients, as with the K. & T. position.’

  ‘He’s crazy. Do you think we can get him shut up?’

  ‘Let’s get the books first. The contre-partie position. Cornelis says he’s like a madman: he expected him to fall down in a fit on the floor.’

  ‘We should have thrown him out the first time he ratted on us. Tell Cornelis to arrest him.’

  ‘Cornelis says give him the word, and he’ll do it; give him forty-eight hours in jail to think things over. The police scare him blue. But there are the books. The police will get them! Think of that! The best is to let him come here and show his hand.’

  ‘Why didn’t Cornelis get the books from him?’

  ‘He had them under his coat; he stood there, shouting and denouncing with the books under his coat. While he was in Byng and Company’s office, young Byng rang up Cornelis and asked him if he should arrest him. Cornelis said yes. Only it might drive him battier. You can’t tell. Suppose he has got syphilis! Everyone says he has. He’s the factor X.’

  ‘What the deuce did you let him go up there for? You’re supposed to be looking after him,’ raved Jules.

  ‘I tell him? He said you told him.’

  ‘He lied. I told Brouwer to keep that safe locked if he had to sleep there all night.’

  Alphendéry nodded in a melancholy style. ‘Yes, bu
t this fellow he introduced there, Posset the accountant, well he knew him in Léon and Méline’s business.’

  Jules’s eyes flashed, ‘Léon! that guy is nothing but hard luck. Is he in this?’

  ‘Jules, Jules! Let’s stick to realities. Our meek and hard-working friend Raccamond, whom we took out of the gutter, has been paying Posset a bonus out of his own perquisites and Posset got the books on a ruse. He nearly got them two months ago but Brouwer thought it was impudent curiosity. The only thing is to let him come here as if we were unwarned, and steal the books from him. Brouwer says that Raccamond has been laying for us for months, that he’s not just a victim of moral indignation as he pretends.’

  ‘I’ll get him if I have to shoot him myself,’ said Jules. They had gone into Jules’s room and shut the door. ‘Where is he now, Michel?’

  ‘Disappeared: perhaps on the train. Cornelis says he’s amok at present; he doesn’t even know his own mind. He nearly went out of his mind; he rushed in with the book open in his hand and screamed, “You’ve been eighty thousand shares short, pyramiding all the time. I’ve been swindled. My clients might have been ruined: you’re a bunch of thieves.”’

  ‘I hope he drops dead,’ said Jules. ‘Go and get William.’

  Jules, after some hours of conference, remarked easily, ‘You may think I’m crazy, but I’m going to call in Jean de Guipatin and tell him our troubles. He got us into this: he recommended Aristide.’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ pleaded Alphendéry. ‘I don’t trust aristocrats.’

  ‘We’re sunk as it is, aren’t we, with Aristide broadcasting his news,’ said Jules, taking up the telephone. ‘Mademoiselle! Get me the Comte de Guipatin.’

  Guipatin was in his office with the works of Vicki Baum. He came in at once and smiled to see them all looking so iron-browed. ‘What’s the trouble? Markets are down.’

  Jules was cheerful at once. ‘Sit down, Jean, and we’ll tell you a bedtime story. It’s not secret. All Brussels and Amsterdam know it already. Etienne’s just carted out a wastepaper basketful of telegrams of congratulation.’ He picked up some telegrams and passed them to Jean; ‘Your bright baby, Aristide Raccamond: heard of him? He’s stolen the books from our Brussels accounting office. Aristide’s amok. They control the English accounts there—divided sovereignty. He’s on the train now, coming to Paris, either to blackmail us, or report us to the Criminal Division. What’s your bet?’

  They were watching Guipatin carefully.

  ‘Heads for blackmail,’ said Jean suavely.

  They spun a coin. It came down heads. ‘Blackmail,’ said Jules.

  Jean looked at them and asked, ‘What can he blackmail you on?’

  ‘Selling out the clients,’ Jules acknowledged frankly. ‘He’s got two of the contre-partie books. And fiscal fraud. He’s got the Brussels and Brussels-A. (that is, really, London and Zurich) anonymous accounts.’

  ‘My clients! My brother Paul-Pierre is Brussels-A8, the Comtesse de Voigrand, Brussels I.’

  Alphendéry laughed, ‘Brussels 2 is Dr. Jacques Carrière, his own client. And Reformer Raccamond has stolen his own account, Brussels-A23.’

  ‘Twenty-three,’ cried Jules. ‘My unlucky numbed!’

  ‘What can he do with the anonymous accounts?’ asked Guipatin, mystified.

  ‘Oh, that shows he’s crazy,’ Jules said testily. ‘But he’s already shown the two books of our short and long position to Legris and Company! Naturally, they do the same thing: they sell out their clients—they bet against us!—but I’d like to break his neck.’

  Helpfully, Jean de Guipatin considered. ‘But blackmailing you on income-tax frauds is really blackmailing Carrière, Voigrand, and the other big clients you have. Has he got a scheme for wholesale blackmail?’

  ‘He doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ Alphendéry suggested. ‘He just took what he could and fled.’

  Guipatin reflected, ‘The selling-out, the contre-partie—how many clients does it affect? I mean, of course,’ he put in, hastily, ‘in the books he’s stolen. How can he annoy you?’

  ‘He can’t hurt us at all,’ said Jules. Alphendéry gave him a reproachful look and said, ‘A good many clients and large quantities of shares are involved; but the account is operated properly. We have a defense in law. The point is simply that the clients would be annoyed if they found out.’

  ‘It’s operated as a bloc account,’ deduced Guipatin. ‘Don’t worry. As to your working contre-partie—I knew it, or guessed it long ago. Who didn’t? The Comtesse de Voigrand said, ‘Jules must do contre-partie’: she said that months ago. Raccamond is still in the kindergarten if he didn’t get that long ago. How do you make money otherwise? Why, Jules, everyone has always said that you bet against your clients—ever since I heard of the house. There isn’t a client who hasn’t said it one time or another. Even Abernethy Gairdner.’

  William laughed, ‘And so he sends up those jigsaw orders.’

  ‘Aristide’s a submerged volcano: he has to keep blowing up to a boil,’ said Alphendéry uneasily.

  Guipatin murmured to Jules, ‘This doesn’t upset me at all, Jules: not in the least. It’s not criminal; it’s not illegal. We’ll show him he has no case.’

  ‘We’ve got to get him here,’ said William.

  Alphendéry anxiously said, ‘What a pity he’s crossed the frontier! He didn’t steal the books in France: you can’t arrest him for larceny here.’

  Jules said, ‘I’ll send Manray to the station to wait for all the trains coming from Brussels—’

  ‘From Feignies, at the frontier,’ said Alphendéry, ‘he may have changed trains.’

  ‘All right. Manray will follow Raccamond and try to get the books from him. You’ll have to tell Jacques some story—that Raccamond has stolen books showing clients’ positions: Manray will be horrified,’ said Jules.

  They dispatched Manray to the Gare du Nord. Waiting for his telephone call—and they knew they might wait a long time—they discussed in detail Raccamond’s career. Jules kept saying, ‘Pttt!’ and, ‘I told you not to employ that fellow,’ and ‘I had a hunch against him from the beginning.’ Alphendéry kept saying, ‘I say, if I’d known all this dirt, I would never have—’ and, ‘All the time I was helping him, pushing him, I didn’t know his record.’ William contented himself with gloomy wisecracking, ‘When they’ve all learned to blackmail, Jules and you boys can go to work without further interruption by clients,’ and, ‘Well, now we can all take a holiday.’ Jean de Guipatin lamented his own shortsightedness.

  ‘He’s just a cunning, dopey peasant,’ opined William, ‘like one who terrorizes the village with a gun, to get back the cow he’s just sold and keep the profit, too. That’s Aristide. Don’t get so refined.’

  ‘He ruined Claude Brothers in just this way,’ said Guipatin. ‘They told me, but I thought it was their excuse.’

  ‘To think,’ exploded Alphendéry, ‘that he snoops on Jules’s money!’

  Guipatin shook his head. ‘If you treat him any differently from the common-or-garden blackmailer, you’ll get into trouble. Be short and quick with him. Aristide is a dervish: he works himself into a frenzy of self-justification and hate.’

  The telephone rang and they heard Manray’s voice telling them that Raccamond had just got off the Brussels express and carried numerous baggages with him, including a new valise. A porter took the bags and he the valise. He had taken a taxi and given his home address. Manray wanted to know what he should do now. Should he follow him home and trust to some accident to get the valise in Aristide’s own lobby?

  ‘No, come back here: we may need you.’

  Alphendéry was nervous, ‘Suppose he goes straight to the Parquet!’

  ‘No: he’s got to make out a formal complaint,’ said Guipatin. ‘Besides, are those books by themselves enough evidence?’

  ‘No, he can’t do a
thing with them. I don’t suppose he really knows what they mean himself.’

  ‘But Posset, his man, has been working on them!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jules, ‘he’s a lunatic. I’ve an idea he’ll try to get us. The only thing to do is to watch his house tonight, hustle him into a taxi, and take him for a ride through the Bois de Boulogne, out into the country for a few days until he coughs up.’

  ‘He’s a coward, coward,’ said Alphendéry.

  ‘His house is in the Rue du Docteur-Blanche,’ said William. ‘How are you going to hustle him into a taxi there? It’s full of families and there’s a street lamp right outside. And if you think Madame wouldn’t inform the police right away! She’s more than his lieutenant: she’s the field marshal. Perhaps he just wants to give us a fright. He was always gumshoeing around. He could never work out our system. Now he’s got the secret, he thinks. Michel ran the bloc account for the house! Michel was on the inside-inside and he’s only a poor outfielder! Hence the mental crash and the mixture of honest and fake indignation.’

  They digested this sensible analysis of William. William had been studying his antipathy for months and was surprised by nothing. All that happened only seemed to him natural—fate gradually squeezing the pomp and life out of one who had despised him.

  Jean de Guipatin said solemnly, ‘Suppose Aristide goes to Cleat, Placket, and Company with the books! He’s done odd business with them the last few months.’

  ‘No!’ cried Michel, turning indignant eyes on Guipatin.

  ‘I knew, I knew,’ cried Jules impatiently. ‘He got Smith, his man in London, to copy the lists of our clients, and he sent these lists to Cleat, Placket, and Company. What good did it do him? In the meantime, Smith took Aristide’s bribe, and because it wasn’t big enough, Smith wrote to me, asking me what to do! I told Smith to give Raccamond the lists of clients, always omitting important names and to take his money. Why not? Smith’s got the soul of a double-agent. He works devotedly when he has two bosses. And Raccamond has been slowly tying himself in knots. You see! Luck is with us. Now, if Smith had been faithful to Raccamond we would have been in real trouble: the key books are in London. As it is, he has only books written in what is almost a code.’