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

She had risen, and was smoothing the folds of her dress.

“Well, my dear marquis,” she resumed, “it is certainly not me who will pity you.  When a man of your age, and with your name, remains poor, it is his own fault.  Are there no rich heiresses?”

“I confess that I haven’t tried to find one yet.”  She looked at him straight in the eyes, and then suddenly bursting out laughing,

“Look around you,” she said, “and I am sure you’ll not be long discovering a beautiful young girl, very blonde, who would be delighted to become Marquise de Tregars, and who would bring in her apron a dowry of twelve or fifteen hundred thousand francs in good securities,—securities which the Favorals can’t carry off.  Think well, and then come to see us.  You know that M. de Thaller is very fond of you; and, after all the trouble we have been having, you owe us a visit.”

Whereupon she went out, M. de Tregars going down to escort her to her carriage.  But as he came up,

“Attention!” he cried to Maxence; “for it’s very evident that the Thallers have wind of something.”

It was a revelation, that visit of Mme. de Thaller’s; and there was no need of very much perspicacity to guess her anxiety beneath her bursts of laughter, and to understand that it was a bargain she had come to propose.  It was evident, therefore, that Marius de Tregars held within his hands the principal threads of that complicated intrigue which had just culminated in that robbery of twelve millions.  But would he be able to make use of them?  What were his designs, and his means of action?  That is what Maxence could not in any way conjecture.

He had no time to ask questions.

“Come,” said M. Tregars, whose agitation was manifest,—“come, let us breakfast:  we have not a moment to lose.”

And, whilst his servant was bringing in his modest meal,

“I am expecting M. d’Escajoul,” he said.  “Show him in as soon as he comes.”

Retired as he had lived from the financial world, Maxence had yet heard the name of Octave d’Escajoul.

Who has not seen him, happy and smiling, his eye bright, and his lip ruddy, notwithstanding his fifty years, walking on the sunny side of the Boulevard, with his royal blue jacket and his eternal white vest?  He is passionately fond of everything that tends to make life pleasant and easy; dines at Bignon’s, or the Café Anglais; plays baccarat at the club with extraordinary luck; has the most comfortable apartment and the most elegant coupe in all Paris.  With all this, he is pleased to declare that he is the happiest of men, and is certainly one of the most popular; for he cannot walk three blocks on the Boulevard without lifting his hat at least fifty times, and shaking hands twice as often.

And when any one asks, “What does he do?” the invariable answer is, “Why he operates.”

To explain what sort of operations, would not be, perhaps, very easy.  In the world of rogues, there are some rogues more formidable and more skillful than the rest, who always manage to escape the hand of the law.  They are not such fools as to operate in person,—not they!  They content themselves with watching their friends and comrades.  If a good haul is made, at once they appear and claim their share.  And, as they always threaten to inform, there is no help for it but to let them pocket the clearest of the profit.

Well, in a more elevated sphere, in the world of speculation, it is precisely that lucrative and honorable industry which M. d’Escajoul carries on.  Thoroughly master of his ground, possessing a superior scent and an imperturbable patience, always awake, and continually on the watch, he never operates unless he is sure to win.

And the day when the manager of some company has violated his charter or stretched the law a little too far, he may be sure to see M. d’Escajoul appear, and ask for some little—advantages, and proffer, in exchange, the most thorough discretion, and even his kind offices.

Two or three of his friends have heard him say,

“Who would dare to blame me?  It’s very moral, what I am doing.”

Such is the man who came in, smiling, just as Maxence and Marius de Tregars had sat down at the table.  M. de Tregars rose to receive him.

“You will breakfast with us?” he said.

“Thank you,” answered M. d’Escajoul.  “I breakfasted precisely at eleven, as usual.  Punctuality is a politeness which a man owes to his stomach.  But I will accept with pleasure a drop of that old Cognac which you offered me the other evening.”

He took a seat; and the valet brought him a glass, which he set on the edge of the table.  Then,

“I have just seen our man,” he said.

Maxence understood that he was referring to M. de Thaller.

“Well?” inquired M. de Tregars.

“Impossible to get any thing out of him.  I turned him over and over, every way.  Nothing!”

“Indeed!”

“It’s so; and you know if I understand the business.  But what can you say to a man who answers you all the time, ‘The matter is in the hands of the law; experts have been named; I have nothing to fear from the most minute investigations’?”

By the look which Marius de Tregars kept riveted upon M. d’Escajoul, it was easy to see that his confidence in him was not without limits.  He felt it, and, with an air of injured innocence,

“Do you suspect me, by chance,” he said, “to have allowed myself to be hoodwinked by Thaller?”

And as M. de Tregars said nothing, which was the most eloquent of answers,

“Upon my word,” he insisted, “you are wrong to doubt me.  Was it you who came after me?  No.  It was I, who, hearing through Marcolet the history of your fortune, came to tell you, ‘Do you want to know a way of swamping Thaller?’  And the reasons I had to wish that Thaller might be swamped:  I have them still.  He trifled with me, he ‘sold’ me, and he must suffer for it; for, if it came to be known that I could be taken in with impunity, it would be all over with my credit.”

After a moment of silence,

“Do you believe, then,” asked M. de Tregars, “that M. de Thaller is innocent?”

“Perhaps.”

“That would be curious.”

“Or else his measures are so well taken that he has absolutely nothing to fear.  If Favoral takes everything upon himself, what can they say to the other?  If they have acted in collusion, the thing has