Other People's Money by Emile Gaboriau (ebook smartphone txt) 📕

“Indeed!”

“It is a fact.  Jules Jottras, of the house of Jottras and Brother, was arrested this morning, just as he arrived at the bourse.”

“Why?”

“Because, it seems, he was an accomplice of Favoral; and it was he who sold the bonds stolen from the Mutual Credit.”

Maxence had started at the mention of his father’s name but, with a significant glance, M. de Tregars bid him remain silent, and, in a sarcastic tone,

“Famous capture!” he murmured.  “And which proves the clear-sightedness of justice.”

“But this is not all,” resumed M. Costeclar.  “Saint Pavin, the editor of ‘The Financial Pilot,’ you know, is thought to be seriously compromised.  There was a rumor, at the close of the market, that a warrant either had been, or was about to be, issued against him.”

“And the Baron de Thaller?”

The employes of the office could not help admiring M. Costeclar’s extraordinary amount of patience.

“The baron,” he replied, “made his appearance at the bourse this afternoon, and was the object of a veritable ovation.”

“That is admirable!  And what did he say?”

“That the damage was already repaired.”

“Then the shares of the Mutual Credit must have advanced.”

“Unfortunately, not.  They did not go above one hundred and ten francs.”

“Were you not astonished at that?”

“Not much, because, you see, I am a business-man, I am; and I know pretty well how things work.  When they left M. de Thaller this morning, the stockholders of the Mutual Credit had a meeting; and they pledged themselves, upon honor, not to sell, so as not to break the market.  As soon as they had separated, each one said to himself, ‘Since the others are going to keep their stock, like fools, I am going to sell mine.’  Now, as there were three or four hundred of them who argued the same way, the market was flooded with shares.”

Looking the brilliant financier straight in the eyes,

“And yourself?” interrupted M. de Tregars.

“I!” stammered M. Costeclar, so visibly agitated, that the clerks could not help laughing.

“Yes.  I wish to know if you have been more faithful to your word than the stockholders of whom you are speaking, and whether you have done as we had agreed.”

“Certainly; and, if you find me here—”

But M. de Tregars, placing his own hand over his shoulder, stopped him short.

“I think I know what brought you here,” he uttered; “and in a few moments I shall have ascertained.”

“I swear to you.”

“Don’t swear.  If I am mistaken, so much the better for you.  If I am not mistaken, I’ll prove to you that it is dangerous to try any sharp game on me, though I am not a business-man.”

Meantime M. Latterman, seeing no customer coming to take the place of the one who had left, became impatient at last, and appeared upon the threshold of his private office.

He was a man still young, small, thick-set, and vulgar.  At the first glance, nothing of him could be seen but his abdomen,—a big, great, and ponderous abdomen, seat of his thoughts, and tabernacle of his aspirations, over which dangled a double gold chain, loaded with trinkets.  Above an apoplectic neck, red as that of a turkey-cock, stood his little head, covered with coarse red hair, cut very short.  He wore a heavy beard, trimmed in the form of a fan.  His large, full-moon face was divided in two by a nose as flat as a Kalmuck’s, and illuminated by two small eyes, in which could be read the most thorough duplicity.

Seeing M. de Tregars and M. Costeclar engaged in conversation,

“Why! you know each other?” he said.

M. de Tregars advanced a step,

“We are even intimate friends,” he replied.  “And it is very lucky that we should have met.  I am brought here by the same matter as our dear Costeclar; and I was just explaining to him that he has been too hasty, and that it would be best to wait three or four days longer.”

“That’s just what I told him,” echoed the honorable financier.

Maxence understood only one thing,—that M. de Tregars had penetrated M. Costeclar’s designs; and he could not sufficiently admire his presence of mind, and his skill in grasping an unexpected opportunity.

“Fortunately there is nothing done yet,” added M. Latterman.

“And it is yet time to alter what has been agreed on,” said M. de Tregars.  And, addressing himself to Costeclar,

“Come,” he added, “we’ll fix things with M. Latterman.”

But the other, who remembered the scene in the Rue St. Gilles, and who had his own reasons to be alarmed, would sooner have jumped out of the window.

“I am expected,” he stammered.  “Arrange matters without me.”

“Then you give me carte blanche?”

Ah, if the brilliant financier had dared!  But he felt upon him such threatening eyes, that he dared not even make a gesture of denial.

“Whatever you do will be satisfactory,” he said in the tone of a man who sees himself lost.

And, as he was going out of the door, M. de Tregars stepped into M. Latterman’s private office.  He remained only five minutes; and when he joined Maxence, whom he had begged to wait for him,

“I think that we have got them,” he said as they walked off.

Their next visit was to M. Saint Pavin, at the office of “The Financial Pilot.”  Every one must have seen at least one copy of that paper with its ingenious vignette, representing a bold mariner steering a boat, filled with timid passengers, towards the harbor of Million, over a stormy sea, bristling with the rocks of failure and the shoals of ruin.  The office of “The Pilot” is, in fact, less a newspaper office than a sort of general business agency.

As at M. Latterman’s, there are clerks scribbling behind wire screens, small windows, a cashier, and an immense blackboard, on which the latest quotations of the Rente, and other French and foreign securities, are written in chalk.

As “The Pilot” spends some hundred thousand francs a year in advertising, in order to obtain subscribers; as, on the other hand, it only costs three francs a year,—it is clear that it is not on its subscriptions that it realizes any profits.  It has other sources of income:  its brokerages first; for it buys, sells, and executes, as the prospectus says, all orders for stocks, bonds, or other securities,