House of All Nations Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    â€˜ Alphendéry ,’ said Alphendéry, ‘Alphendéry.’
    â€˜Nice furnishings—’ said Léon ‘—looks good. Respectable: looks businesslike but elegant.’
    â€˜Jules Bertillon did it all himself. He has superb taste! He always says that money should live in the Ritz-Carlton.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Right,’ said Léon, settling back his head and eying the back of Alphendéry’s small, square head with augur look. ‘And charm.’
    â€˜Charm is a cunning self-forgetfulness,’ confided Alphendéry.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜The great Belgian financier?’ inquired Léon hotly.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You better go and see him,’ Jules said crisply to Alphendéry.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Yes?’ Léon looked at Alphendéry with interest. ‘What do you think of sterling? Will it hold? Will it go off?’
    â€˜How long ahead are you looking?’
    â€˜This year? What’s the secret of sterling? Do you think it will go off? I