House of All Nations (64 page)

When Parouart reviewed the dubious collection of reformed and active ruffians, fools, and commercial pigmy brains that Jules kept, he assumed that all these people had ‘something on' Bertillon. His tongue had been hanging out for a long time now and it was dusty. His knowledge of men gained in shady occupations, in doss houses, suspicious quaysides, and police courts in various countries told him that Bertillon was lucky rather than careful, and too overweening to be safe.

Henri Parouart was modest. His feet were always on slippery ground. He knew that if he asked too much, it would pay his victims to shoot him, or to send a modest check to the police and ask them to shove him over some frontier. Now by this date there were almost no frontiers left over which he could have been shoved, with safety to himself; and the complaisance of the French police, based on a little mean sleuthing that he did for them, a little stool-pigeoning, was dear to him. He had calculated that Bertillon could be stung for about four thousand francs a year— ‘very little to Bertillon but the rent to me,' he said to himself.

The chief rumor spread about stock-exchange houses is that they bucket the orders, and this whisper is current about every house in existence that deals in stocks.* Parouart had been a small client of the bank for some seven or eight years, being a gambler in all varieties, pathetically hoping to earn his bread and butter on the turn of fancy of the great ‘pools' (or gambling syndicates). He now suddenly demanded proof of the actual buying and selling in some transactions done five or six years before, and as such proof was not immediately forthcoming, on account of the time that had elapsed, he immediately threatened to go to the Parquet with a charge of ‘abuse of confidence.' He further pretended that a sale had been made at a bad price and that thus while he had lost an original amount of, say, twenty-five hundred francs, what with interest mounted up in these five or six years and with accumulated moral and other damage and the loss of capital, his real loss now amounted to about ten times that. He further pretended that the price quoted to him on another distant day was a bad one and he had been cheated, so that he had lost a further, say six hundred fifty francs, which, of course, in five or six years, also mounted up.

* In ‘bucketing' (American usage) the broker instead of passing the orders to buy and sell to the stock exchange, acts in the same way as a race-course tout. If you lose he wins.

Naturally, Parouart, as well as Jules Bertillon, knew perfectly well that a claim of some forty thousand francs, which was what he now put in, was entirely absurd. It was simply a way Parouart had of saying, ‘Let us pretend I have a capital of forty thousand francs and that it yields ten per cent per annum. You pay this ten per cent, Mr. Bertillon, and you will hear no more scandal from me; but if you don't, I can make things sticky for you, for I know, as well as you do, that no banker can afford to have his books looked into.'

Parouart had for his lawyer a man of intelligence who had got into some foul affair with a politician who had dropped him. He still clung on in politics and was vaguely connected with Dr. Jacques Carrière. Jules, when he found this out, hoped that Carrière would kick Parouart into the gutter for him. But Carrière said ‘it could not be arranged: Parouart had some secret power, someone behind him.' Jules laughed. One day he got a blue paper from Maître Lallant, Carrière's lawyer. On the heels of this blue paper, today, came Henri Parouart, mean, hungry, crafty, neurotic, dirty, and foul-smelling, with a ragged pallor and holes in his shoes. Petty blackmail does not feed her man. He walked straight upstairs without being announced and went into Jules's office, where he sat with an uneasy but hardened impertinence.

‘Did you get my letter?'

‘My secretary attends to letters, Mr. Alphendéry, you've met him …' said Jules sweetly, knowing Parouart feared the cleverness of Alphendéry.

‘I have influence, Mr. Bertillon: unless you agree to cover my entire loss, I will show up your business for what it is. Look at my rags! Can I see this Persian carpet without grinding my teeth? You can't blame me!'

‘Oh, ptt!—you don't mean to say you're still talking about that fantasy of yours you were gagging about a month ago? You're crazy, Parouart … no court in France or anywhere else would listen to you.'

‘The American Stock Exchange would listen to my complaint, even if no court here would. And as to the latter—don't worry; I have taken advice. Your correspondents in the New York Stock Exchange would get into a nice mess if this charge were made and proved. I can prove it. This republic favors the poor. I can make the charge. You have to prove you are innocent. The onus is on you. In France, the poor victim is protected against the rich victimizer: I will bleed you to death in lawyers' fees.'

Jules looked at him shrewdly, ‘And who is paying yours? In this republic—since you are making ham speeches—no lawyer is allowed to take up cases on speculation!'

‘Never mind about that, never mind about that. I have backing. Enemies of yours who would like to see you K.O.-ed.' He sneered and looked so rotten with poverty and craft that Jules found a ghost of pity in his heart. Or was it superstition?

‘How much do you—think you've lost, Parouart?'

Oh the thin and bitter eagerness in his face! Jules had decided, at this moment, to give him some money, not being able to bring himself to fight against a man with torn collar. There was superstition in this, too. Jules noticed the unusually pale face, the trembling hands, and crouching stand. Drugs. ‘This poor rat hasn't a chance if I really go out to get him,' thought Jules. And Parouart said harshly, ‘At least forty thousand francs.'

‘Wha-at! It's impossible, Parouart. Be sensible, Parouart. I know you're running a tiny blackmail business. And I'm not trying to put you out of business. You don't seem to be doing very well at it, I can see. I don't mind being on your list of keepers, if you're reasonable. But yours is a repeat business. You want to be reasonable. You don't want to kill the goose, you know. You're after all just a common blackmailer, Parouart. A blackmailer ends by tying a knot in his tongue and hanging himself.' He looked straight at Parouart. He suddenly got into a pet. ‘You're a police rat, Parouart. The police have been cleaning out the lowlives and fourflushers from the Paris cafés ever since the depression started. And a bundle of bones like you still haunts the Café de la Paix with a bunch of swarthy Venezuelan crooks and Greek conspirators that would frighten the gargoyles off Notre Dame. Now, if you're still there, with the company you keep, then you're a police rat. It's plain. You can skip. Let the Prefecture keep you.' But common sense showed itself the next instant; Jules softened, smiled, as if he had just been playing with a paper knife, the moment before. He drooped his lids, rolled up his glance, and pronounced in plain tones, ‘I'll give you five thousand francs for a complete written release on everything prior to this date and the opportunity to sue you in court if I catch you whispering your fairy tales round Paris.' He ended in a tone of lordly contempt, leaning back in his chair, his fine, fair face looking over Parouart's head.

Parouart flushed. He made as if to stamp his foot. The veins stood out on his temples. ‘No. The total loss. I have influence with a chain of newspapers. I'll ruin you. I'll see your finish.'

‘You haven't even influence with the sewer rats you belong to: don't make me laugh. I'm making you a fair offer—because I don't owe you a sou. But I'd rather pay you, you poor croaking raven, and tell you to get to hell out of here, than see you drag out of here with your melodrama and your miserable threats. Don't make me laugh.'

Jules looked at him, as he played with his pencil and wondered if Parouart had been born with or had manufactured that scurrilous mask that covered his face. It could not represent the mind of any creature that he could conceive. To Jules's mind this face showed the futility of all mere scheming. Parouart's face was evidence that Parouart had spent all his life plotting, undermining, blackmailing, selling himself and others to get money. And at present he stood there in a frayed collar and a belligerent cowardice, his thin quarters feeling in prospect the boot, his thin elbows the pavement. More was needed than brass and cunning, more than crookedness, more than ‘knowing what the game was about,' Jules's intuition told him. Jules was not accustomed to study his fellows. It must have been the sudden revelation of a spearhead of evil pointed against himself, and his very existence that made him rub his eyes. Jules had the honesty to recognize Parouart, even at this moment, as a dissolute, worthless brother of his, in the confraternity of thieves. He was in many ways a democrat and never, never a Pharisee. He thought of his business as a crooked roulette wheel, a confidence trick, and of himself as a clever pirate, and no more. In the same way, like a gangster, he regarded morality as a poor trick of mean brains to excuse their failure. He despised good-humoredly the people who allowed him to pick their pockets, but he thought it was right, proper, natural, he should do so. This system was what he favored with the term, ‘human nature.'

Jules added now somnolently, ‘I know what your game is, Parouart! You want to make a little chicken feed out of me so that you can eat and buy whatever dope you take. I don't object to that. Why don't you come to me straight, like a white man, and make me a straight proposion? Why do you put on these Grand-Guignol airs? You chaps from the Eastern Mediterranean must always be sirupy. I'm willing to let you welch me of a trifle: that's one of the axioms of my business. Only, be reasonable. If you petty gangsters start to give me headaches, I don't have to work for you, you know. I can go out of business. I can live at Nice. You don't frighten me with the Parquet. Who's to stop me closing tomorrow morning? Five thousand francs for complete written release. Take it or leave it.'

Parouart was furious at not getting a couple of bank notes without strings tied to them. He was aching, furious for his drug. His face creased painfully with an angry smile. ‘I'll never give you a release. When I present the check you will give me for payment covering the whole amount of my loss, that will be your release. You are guilty! You want a release.'

‘Then you won't get a centime. Get out.'

Parouart realized he had behaved ridiculously. ‘I'll put the bailiffs in yet: you'll hear from my lawyer this afternoon.'

‘If any bailiff comes I'll throw him into the gutter he came from,' yelled Jules.

Parouart backed out, sneering and spitting hate. He was ill. Jules watched him to the stairhead. At the bottom of the stairs near the stock-exchange room, fatal, desperate room for all his kind of petty speculator, Parouart saw Aristide Raccamond by himself, looking through papers he was taking out of a satchel. Parouart was pale with excitement, the bank whirled round him. Alone in the world the face of Raccamond, last seen in Carrière's house, stood in living colors. Parouart had a flash of inspiration.

‘Mr. Raccamond! I have something very urgent to tell you. Can you leave the bank for a few minutes?'

‘Of course. What is it? From Carrière's?'

‘No, no. And not here—of all places.'

Raccamond pricked up his ears and examined his interlocutor carefully. He was under the influence of some excitement—or drugged again, he supposed. He was afraid he was going to be touched. Nothing doing. However, like many of his class, Raccamond occasionally took drugs and often handled them for rich clients. Raccamond believed Parouart was some sort of miserable police spy. Moreover, Raccamond at one time had been attracted by a band of young white slavers for the South American trade—this was in Aleppo just after the war ended. Raccamond afterwards knew all of the low theaters of the boulevards of Paris and the provinces and the prostitute cafés. He had an unholy respect for even the Cinderellas of the law. He gravely looked at Parouart for a minute, with a kind of authoritative gobble, went to get rid of his papers and joined him, his face covered by an extremely dignified and occupied expression. Jules had gone back to his room and had not seen this collusion at the bottom of the stairs. He called his brother William, shut the door, and entered into a long talk with him.

‘The little louse Parouart was in here blackmailing. Did Alphendéry write to Henri Léon in Amsterdam to try and get Parouart's Dutch police file ? I lost my temper and told him to beat it. I don't believe he'll go to the police. It's too flimsy. I look like too rich a
pot-au-feu
: he'll try fishing here again. He'll try to frighten us first with a few more of his little blue billets-doux. Who do you think's backing him?'

‘Pay him off,' said William. ‘What's the use of playing with a drug fiend? Pay him enough to buy his drugs and let him doss down and be happy. It would pay you to see he had pocket money to sniff himself to sleep. What do you care?'

‘He's got delusions of grandeur now. They go mad, don't they? He may go to the Parquet; as crazy as that. No, he couldn't. What do you bet he's back here tomorrow? Come on, one hundred francs he's here before three tomorrow.'

‘You're on,' said William indifferently.

‘Before twelve tomorrow.'

‘O.K.'

Alphendéry knocked at the door and peered, brightly placating, in the crack, ‘What's biting you fellows?'

‘Come in, Michel: it's only Henri Parouart. Wants a pension.'

Alphendéry said, ‘Don't buy him off. Get something on him. Listen, my advice is simple. That little scab is forty-five or forty-seven years old. He has never done an honest day's work in his life. He's mysterious. He's not French but he's got a French name. He's been in Germany, all the Balkan states, in Russia, in the Far East. He's been seen from Edinburgh to Salonika. A chap like that must have left a trail of police photographs which if placed end to end would look like the trail of the viper out of Ireland. It's obvious. Then the boys tell me he's always meeting people in out-of-the-way corners and shaking hands with them, or pressing their hands and scuttling off. Drugs. And he's seen, loathsome little Constantinople dog that he is, talking to fine-looking young women round the Faubourg Montmartre at night. White slaving. The police tolerate him but they can't actually be in love with him. A good protest and out he'd go. Why don't you have him trailed? You boys never think of the simplest things. His record must have a whiff—eh? I'd like to see a few pages. It would be a M.A. degree in European roguery.'