THE week following the August Bank Holiday is very rarely indeed a busy or anxious time in the City. In the ordinary course of things, it serves as the easy-going prelude—with but casual and inattentive visits eastward, and with only the most careless glances through the financial papers—to the halcyon period of the real vacation. Men come to the City during this week, it is true, but their thoughts are elsewhere—on the moors, on the blue sea, on the glacier or the fiord, or the pleasant German pine forests.
To the great mass of City people; this August in question began in a normal enough fashion. To one little group of operators, however, and to the widening circle of brokers, bankers, and other men of affairs whose interests were more or less involved with those of this group, it was a season of keen perturbation. A combat of an extraordinary character was going on—a combat which threatened to develop into a massacre. Even to the operators who, unhappily for themselves, were principals in this fight, it was a struggle in the dark. They knew little about it, beyond the grimly-patent fact that they were battling for their very lives. The outer ring of their friends and supporters and dependents knew still less, though their rage and fears were perhaps greater. The “press” seemed to know nothing at all. This unnatural silence of the City's mouthpieces, usually so resoundingly clamorous upon the one side and the other when a duel is in progress, gave a sinister aspect to the thing. The papers had been gagged and blindfolded for the occasion. This in itself was of baleful significance. It was not a duel which they had been bribed to ignore. It was an assassination.
Outwardly there was nothing to see, save the unofficial, bald statement that on August 1st, the latest of twelve fortnightly settlements in this stock, Rubber Consols had been bid for, and carried over, at 15 pounds for one-pound shares. The information concerned the public at large not at all. Nobody knew of any friend or neighbour who was fortunate enough to possess some of these shares. Readers here and there, noting the figures, must have said to themselves that certain lucky people were coining money, but very little happened to be printed as to the identity of these people. Stray notes were beginning to appear in the personal columns of the afternoon papers about a “Rubber King” of the name of Thorpe, but the modern exploitation of the world's four corners makes so many “kings” that the name had not, as yet, familiarized itself to the popular eye.
City men, who hear more than they read, knew in a general way about this “Rubber King.” He was an outsider who had come in, and was obviously filling his pockets; but it was a comforting rule that outsiders who did this always got their pockets emptied for them again in the long run. There seemed nothing about Thorpe to suggest that he would prove an exception to the rule. He was investing his winnings with great freedom, so the City understood, and his office was besieged daily by promoters and touts. They could clean out his strong-box faster than the profits of his Rubber corner could fill it. To know such a man, however, could not but be useful, and they made furtive notes of his number in Austin Friars on their cuffs, after conversation had drifted from him to other topics.
As to the Rubber corner itself, the Stock Exchange as a whole was apathetic. When some of the sufferers ventured cautious hints about the possibility of official intervention on their behalf, they were laughed at by those who did not turn away in cold silence. Of the fourteen men who had originally been caught in the net drawn tight by Thorpe and Semple, all the conspicuous ones belonged to the class of “wreckers,” a class which does not endear itself to Capel Court.
Both Rostocker and Aronson, who, it was said, were worst hit, were men of great wealth, but they had systematically amassed these fortunes by strangling in their cradles weak enterprises, and by undermining and toppling over other enterprises which would not have been weak if they had been given a legitimate chance to live. Their system was legal enough, in the eyes alike of the law and of the Stock Exchange rules. They had an undoubted right to mark out their prey and pursue it, and bring it down, and feed to the bone upon it. But the exercise of this right did not make them beloved by the begetters and sponsors of their victims. When word first went round, on the last day of February, that a lamb had unexpectedly turned upon these two practised and confident wolves, and had torn an ear from each of them, and driven them pell-mell into a “corner,” it was received on all sides with a gratified smile.
Later, by fortnightly stages, the story grew at once more tragic and more satisfactory. Not only Rostocker and Aronson, but a dozen others were in the cul de sac guarded by this surprising and bloody-minded lamb. Most of the names were well-known as those of “wreckers.” In this category belonged Blaustein, Ganz, Rothfoere, Lewis, Ascher, and Mendel, and if Harding, Carpenter, and Vesey could not be so confidently classified, at least their misfortune excited no particular sympathy. Two other names mentioned, those of Norfell and Pinney, were practically unknown.
There was some surprise, however, at the statement that the old and respected and extremely conservative firm of Fromentin Bros. was entangled in the thing. Egyptian bonds, minor Levantine loans, discounts in the Arabian and Persian trades—these had been specialties of the Fromentins for many years. Who could have expected to find them caught among the “shorts” in Mexican rubber? It was Mexico, wasn't it, that these Rubber Consols purported to be connected with?
Thorpe's Company, upon its commercial merits, had not been considered at all by the gentlemen of the Stock Exchange, at the time of its flotation. Men vaguely and with difficulty recalled the fact of its prospectus, when the “corner” in its shares was first talked about. They looked it up in their lists and files, later on, but its terms said nothing to them. Nobody discussed the value of the assets owned by this Company, or the probability of its paying a dividend—even when the price bid for its shares was making the most sensational upward leaps. How Thorpe stood with his shareholders, or whether he had any genuine shareholders behind him at all, was seen by the keen eyes of Capel Court to be beside the question. Very likely it was a queer affair, if the truth were known—but at least it had substance enough in it to be giving the “wreckers” a lively time.
By the end of July it was understood that the fight was better worth watching than anything that had been seen in a long time. The only trouble was that there was so little to see. The papers said nothing. The sufferers were the reverse of garrulous. The little red Scotchman, Semple, who was the visible avenging sword of the “corner,” was more imperturbably silent than anybody else. His fellow-members in the “House” watched him now, however, with a new respect. They discovered unsuspected elements of power in his thin, tight mouth, in the direct, cold glances of his brown-grey eyes, in the very way he carried his head and wore his hat. He came to be pointed out, and nodded about behind his back, more than anyone else in the “House,” and important men sought his acquaintance, with an awkward show of civility, who were notorious for their rude exclusiveness.
It might be, of course, that his “corner” would break under him at any fortnightly settlement, but already he had carried it much further than such things often went, and the planning of the coup had been beyond doubt Napoleonic.
Had this small sandy Scot planned it, or was he merely the weapon in Thorpe's hand? Both views had their supporters on the Exchange, but after the wrench of August 1st, when with an abrupt eighty-shilling rise the price of Rubber Consols stood at 15 pounds, and it was to be computed that Semple had received on that single day nearly 75,000 pounds in differences and “backwardation,” a story was set afloat which gave Thorpe the undivided credit of the invention. It was related as coming from his own lips that he had schemed it all out to be revenged upon a group of Jewish operators, against whom he had a grievance. In confirmation of this tale, it was pointed out that, of the seven men still held pinned in the fatal “corner,” six were Jews—and this did, upon first glance, look significant. But then it was objected, upon reflection, that Blaustein and Ascher had both been permitted to make their escape, and this hardly justified the theory of an implacable anti-Semitic vendetta. The objection seemed reasonable, but it was met in turn by the point that Blaustein and Ascher had been bled white, as Bismarck's phrase went, before they were released, whereas the five Christians had been liberated with relatively moderate fines. Upon the whole, a certain odour of the Judenhetze clung thereafter about the “corner” in Rubber Consols.
On an afternoon of the following week, Mr. Stormont Thorpe was alone in the Board Room of the offices in Austin Friars. He had risen from the great roller-topped desk over between the windows, and walked now with a lethargic, tired step to and fro before the empty fireplace, yawning more than once, and stretching out his arms in the supreme gesture of fatigue. After a dozen listless rounds, something occurred to him. He moved with a certain directness of purpose to the cabinet in the corner, unlocked it, and poured out for himself a tumbler of brandy and soda. He drank it without a pause, then turned again, and began pacing up and down as before, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent in thought.
The intervening six months had effected visible changes in the outer man. One noted most readily that the face had grown fuller in its lower parts, and was far less browned than formerly. The large, heavy countenance, with its square jaws masked now under increased flesh, its beginnings of a double-chin, and its slightly flabby effect of pallor, was no longer lacking in individual distinction. It was palpably the visage of a dictator. The moustache had been cut down to military brevity, and the line of mouth below it was eloquent of rough power. The steady grey eyes, seemingly smaller yet more conspicuous than before, revealed in their glance new elements of secretiveness, of strategy supported by abundant and confident personal force.
The man himself seemed scarcely to have grown stouter. He held himself more compactly, as it were; seemed more the master of all his physical expressions. He was dressed like a magnate who was also a person of taste. There was a flower in the lapel of his well-shaped frock-coat, and the rustle of his starched and spotless white waistcoat murmured pleasantly of refined toilets.
“The Marquis of Chaldon—and a gentleman, with him.”
The announcement, from a clerk who had noiselessly opened the door, imposed itself with decorum upon Thorpe's reverie.
“Who is the gentleman with him?” Thorpe began austerely to ask, after an instant's hesitation. But this briefest of delays had brought the callers into plain view behind the clerk, and with a slight gesture the master assented to their entrance.
This large apartment was no longer called the Board Room by anybody. By tacit processes, it had become Mr. Thorpe's room. Not even the titular Chairman of the Company, the renowned and eminent Lord Chaldon, ex-Ambassador and ex-Viceroy, entered this chamber now with any assumption of proprietorship in it. No hint of a recollection that there were such things as the Company and the Board, or that he was nominally the head of both, expressed itself in his Lordship's demeanour as he advanced, his hand a little extended.
The noble Chairman was white of beard and hair, and extremely courteous of manner—a small, carefully-clad, gracious old gentleman, whose mild pink countenance had, with years of anxiety about ways and means, disposed itself in lines which produced a chronic expression of solicitude. A nervous affection of the eyelids lent to this look, at intervals, a beseeching quality which embarrassed the beholder. All men had liked him, and spoken well of him throughout his long and hard-worked career. Thorpe was very fond of him indeed, and put a respectful cordiality into his grasp of the proffered hand. Then he looked, with a certain thinly-veiled bluntness of enquiry, past the Marquis to his companion.
“You were very kind to give me the appointment,” said Lord Chaldon, with a little purring gloss of affability upon the earnestness of his tone. “I wish very much to introduce to you my friend, my old friend I may say, Monsieur Alexandre Fromentin. We slept together under the same tent, in the Persian country beyond Bagdad—oh, it must have been quite forty years ago. We were youngsters looking to win our first spurs then—I in my line, he in his. And often since we have renewed that old friendship—at many different places—India, and Constantinople, and Egypt. I wish heartily to commend him to your—your kindness.”
Thorpe had perfunctorily shaken hands with the stranger—a tall, slender, sharp-faced, clean-shaven, narrow-shouldered man, who by these accounts of his years ought not to have such excessively black hair. He bowed in a foreign fashion, and uttered some words which Thorpe, though he recognized them as English in intent, failed to follow. The voice was that of an elderly man, and at a second glance there were plenty of proofs that he might have been older than the Marquis, out there in Persia, forty years ago. But Thorpe did not like old men who dyed their hair, and he offered his visitors chairs, drawn up from the table toward his desk, with a certain reserve of manner. Seating himself in the revolving chair at the desk itself, he put the tips of his fingers together, and looked this gentleman with the Continental name and experience in the face.
“Is there something you wish me to do?” he asked, passively facilitating the opening of conversation.
“Ah, my God! 'Something'!”—repeated the other, with a fluttering gesture of his hands over his thin, pointed knees—“everything, Mr. Thorpe!”
“That's a tolerably large order, isn't it?” Thorpe asked, calmly, moving a slow, inscrutable glance from one to the other of his callers.
“I could ask for nothing that would be a greater personal favour—and kindness”—Lord Chaldon interposed. His tone bore the stress of sincerity.
“That means a great deal to me, as you know, my Lord,” replied Thorpe, “but I don't in the least understand—what is it that your friend wants?”
“Only that I shall not be buried in a bankrupt's grave,” the suppliant answered, with a kind of embittered eagerness of utterance. “That I shall not see disgraced the honoured name that my father and his father bequeathed to my care!”
Thorpe's large, composed countenance betrayed a certain perplexity. “There must be a mistake,” he observed. “I don't even know this name of yours. I never heard it before.”
The other's mobile face twisted itself in a grimace of incredulity. He had a conspicuously wide mouth, and its trick of sidelong extension at this moment was very unpleasant. “Ah, Herr Je! He never heard it,” he ejaculated, turning nervously to the Marquis. “Would to the good God you never had!” he told Thorpe, with suppressed excitement.
Lord Chaldon, his own voice shaken a little, interposed with an explanation. “My friend is the head—the respected head—of the firm of Fromentin Brothers. I think you have—have dealings with them.”
Thorpe, after a furtive instant of bewilderment, opened his mouth. “Oh! I see,” he said. “I know what you mean now. With the French pronunciation, I didn't recognize the name. I've always heard it called 'Fromen'-tin' here in London. Oh, yes, of course—Fromen'tin Brothers.”
His lips shut tight again at this. The listeners had caught no helpful clue from the tone of his words. They exchanged a glance, and then M. Fromentin spoke.
“Mr. Thorpe,” he began, slowly, with an obvious effort at self-repression. “It is a very simple story. Our house is an old one. My father's grandfather organized the finance of the commissariat of General Bonaparte in Egypt. He created the small beginnings of the carpet and rug importation from Asia Minor. His son, and in turn his son, followed him. They became bankers as well as importers. They helped very greatly to develop the trade of the Levant. They were not avaricious men, or usurers. It is not in our blood. Your Chairman, Lord Chaldon, who honours me so highly by calling me his friend—he will assure you that we have a good name in the East. Our banks have befriended the people, and never oppressed or injured them. For that reason—I will say perhaps for that reason—we have never become a very rich house. It is possible to name bankers who have made large fortunes out of Egypt. It was different with us. Lord Chaldon will tell you that of our own free will—my two brothers and I—of our own choice we consented to lose a fifth of all our possessions, rather than coin into gold by force the tears and blood of the wretched fellaheen.”
“Yes—I have never known a more honourable or humane action,” put in the Marquis, fervently.
“And then my brothers die—Polydor, who lived mostly at Smyrna, and whose estate was withdrawn from the business by his widow, and Augustin, who lived here in London after 1870, and died—it is now six years ago. He left a son, Robert, who is my nephew, and my partner. He is now of an age—perhaps thirty years. He was a small child when he came to London—he has become more English than the English themselves. His activity and industry are very great; he forms plans of such magnitude and numbers that they would compel his grandfather to turn in his coffin. I am in indifferent health. I live much at Homburg and Marienbad and at Cairo. Practically speaking, I have retired from business. There remain branches of our house—in several places—but the London house has become the centre of all things—and Robert has become the London house. This I make plain to your mind, do I, Mr. Thorpe?”
The other, with his chin sunk within the collar of his white waistcoat, and scrutinizing the narrator with a steadfast though impassive glance, made the faintest possible nod of assent.
“I had great confidence in Robert,” the old man went on. His eyes were dimming with tears, and his voice quavered uncertainly. “His plans seemed wise, even if they risked more than formerly. The conditions of business are wholly altered since my youth—and it was best, I thought, to make Robert free to act under these conditions, which he understood much better than I could pretend to do. Thus it was that when he said it was necessary for Fromentin Brothers to belong to the Stock Exchange, I did not object. He was active and bold and clever, and he was in the thick of the fight. Therefore he should be the judge in all things. And that is our ruin. In the time of the South African excitement, he won a great deal of money. Then he lost it all and more. Then gambling began, and his fortunes went now up, now down, but always, as his books show to me now—sinking a little on the average. He grew more adventurous—more careless. He put many small counters upon different numbers on the table. You know what I mean? And in an accursed moment, because other gamblers were doing the same, he sold two thousand of your shares, without having them in his hands. Voila! He wishes now to put a bullet through his brain. He proposes that as the fitting end of Fromentin Freres.”
Thorpe, his chin on his breast, continued to regard the melancholy figure opposite with a moody eye. It seemed a long minute before he broke the tense silence by a sigh of discomfort. “I do not discuss these things with anybody,” he said then, coldly. “If I had known who you were, I don't think you'd have got in.”
The Marquis of Chaldon intuitively straightened himself in his chair, and turned toward the speaker a glance of distressed surprise.
“Or no—I beg your pardon,” Thorpe hastened to add, upon the instant hint of this look—“that doesn't convey my meaning. Of course, our Chairman brings whom he pleases. His friends—as a matter of course—are our friends. What I should have said was that if this had been mentioned beforehand to me, I should have explained that it wasn't possible to discuss that particular business.”
“But—pardon me”—said Lord Chaldon, in a quiet, very gentle, yet insistent voice, which seemed now to recall to its listeners the fact that sovereigns and chancellors had in their day had attentive ears for its tones—“pardon me, but why should it not be possible?”
Thorpe frowned doubtfully, and shifted his position in his chair. “What could I say, if it were discussed?” he made vague retort. “I'm merely one of the Directors. You are our Chairman, but you see he hasn't found it of any use to discuss it with you. There are hard and fast rules about these things. They run their natural course. You are not a business man, my Lord——”
“Oh, I think I may be called a 'business man,'” interposed the nobleman, suavely. “They would tell you so in Calcutta, I think, and in Cairo too. When one considers it, I have transacted a great deal of business—on the behalf of other people. And if you will permit me—I do not impute indirection, of course—but your remark seems to require a footnote. It is true that I am Chairman of the Board on which you are a Director—but it is not quite the whole truth. I as Chairman know absolutely nothing about this matter. As I understand the situation, it is not in your capacity as a Director that you know anything about it either. Yet——”
He paused, as if suddenly conscious of some impropriety in this domestic frankness before a third party, and Thorpe pounced through his well-mannered hesitation with the swiftness of a bird of prey.
“Let me suggest,” he said roundly, lifting his head and poising a hand to hold attention, while he thought upon what it was he should suggest—“this is what I would say. It seems rather irregular, doesn't it? to debate the matter in the presence of an outsider. You see it yourself. That is partly what I meant. Now I have met Mr. Fromentin,” he gave the name its English vowels with an obstinate emphasis, “and I have heard his statement. You have heard it too. If he wishes to lay more facts before us, why, well and good. But then I would suggest that he leave the matter in our hands, to discuss and look into between ourselves. That seems to you the proper course, doesn't it, Lord Chaldon?”
The French banker had been studying with strained acuteness the big lymphatic mask of the Director, with sundry sharp glances aside at the Chairman. The nervous changes on his alert, meagre old face showed how intently he followed every phase of their talk. A certain sardonic perception of evil in the air curled on his lip when he saw the Marquis accede with a bow and wave of the hand to Thorpe's proposition. Then he made his bow in turn, and put the best face possible upon the matter.
“Naturally I consult your convenience—and the proprieties,” he said, with an effect of proud humility. “There are but a few other facts to submit. My nephew has already paid, in differences upon those accursed two thousand shares, a sum of nearly 30,000 pounds. I have the figures in my pocket—but they are fixed in my head as well. Twenty-eight thousand five hundred, those differences already amount to, not to speak of interest. At the last settlement, August 1st, the price per share was 15 pounds. That would make 30,000 pounds more, if we bought now—or a total of practically 60,000 pounds. Eh bien! I beg for the privilege of being allowed to buy these shares now. It is an unpleasant confession to make, but the firm of Fromentin Freres will be made very poor by this loss of 60,000 pounds. It was not always so, but it is so now. My nephew Robert has brought it into that condition. You see my shame at this admission. With all my own means, and with his sister's marriage portion, we can make up this sum of 30,000 pounds, and still enable the firm to remain in existence. I have gone over the books very painstakingly, since I arrived in London. It can be kept afloat, and it can be brought back to safe and moderately profitable courses—if nothing worse happens. With another six weeks like the last, this will not be at all possible. We shall have the cup of dishonour thrust between our teeth. That will be the end of everything.”
M. Fromentin finished in tremulous, grave tones. After looking with blurred eyes for a moment into Thorpe's face, he bowed his head, and softly swayed the knees upon which his thin, dark hands maintained their clutch. Not even the revelation of hair quite white at the roots, unduly widening the track of parting on the top of his dyed head, could rob this movement of its mournful dignity.
Thorpe, after a moment's pause, took a pencil and paper from the desk, and made a calculation. He bit his lips and frowned at the sight of these figures, and set down some others, which seemed to please him no more. Then, with a sudden gesture as of impatience, he rose to his feet.
“How much is that sister's marriage portion you spoke of?” he asked, rather brusquely.
The French gentleman had also risen. He looked with an air of astonishment at his questioner, and then hardened his face. “I apologize for mentioning it,” he said, with brevity. “One does not speak of family affairs.”
“I asked you how much it was,” pursued Thorpe, in a masterful tone. “A man doesn't want to rob a girl of her marriage portion.”
“I think I must not answer you,” the other replied, hesitatingly. “It was the fault of my emotion to introduce the subject. Pray leave the young lady out of account.”
“Then I've nothing more to say,” Thorpe declared, and seated himself again with superfluous energy. He scowled for a little at the disorder of his desk, and then flung forth an angry explanation. “If you evade fair questions like that, how can you expect that I will go out of my way to help you?”
“Oh, permit me, Mr. Thorpe”—the Marquis intervened soothingly—“I think you misapprehend. My friend, I am sure, wished to evade nothing. He had the idea that he was at fault in—in alluding to a purely domestic matter as—as a—what shall I say?—as a plea for your consideration.” He turned to the old banker. “You will not refuse to mention the sum to me, will you, my friend?”
M. Fromentin shrugged his shoulders. “It is ten thousand pounds,” he replied, almost curtly.
Thorpe was seemingly mollified. “Very well, then,” he said. “I will sell you 2,000 shares at ten pounds.”
The others exchanged a wondering look.
“Monsieur,” the banker stammered—“I see your meaning. You will forgive me—it is very well meant indeed by you—but it was not my proposition. The market-price is fifteen pounds—and we were prepared to pay it.” Thorpe laughed in a peremptory, gusty way. “But you can't pay more than I ask!” he told him, with rough geniality. “Come, if I let you and your nephew in out of the cold, what kind of men-folk would you be to insist that your niece should be left outside? As I said, I don't want her money. I don't want any woman's money. If I'm going to be nice to the rest of the family, what's the objection to my being nice to her?”
“Monsieur,” said the Frenchman, after an instant's reflection, “I offer none. I did not at the moment perceive the spirit of your words, but I recognize now that it was delicacy itself. I tender you the most profound thanks—for ALL the family.”
After some further conversation the elder Fromentin took his departure. Lord Chaldon apparently proposed to accompany him, but Thorpe begged him to remain, and he put aside his hat once more and resumed his seat.
Thorpe walked about a little, with his hands in his pockets, in a restless way. “If it isn't unpleasant to you, I think I'll light a cigar,” he said suddenly, and moved over to the cabinet. He poured out a drink of neat brandy, as well, and furtively swallowed it. Then he came back, preceded by a cloud of smoke.
“It went terribly against the grain,” he said, with a rueful laugh. “I'd sworn to let no Jew off with an inch of hide left on him—and here three of them have been wheedled out of my grip already.”
“Jews?” exclaimed the Marquis, much puzzled. “Did you—did you think Fromentin was a Jew? God bless me! he's no more one than I am! Why, not even so much, for there IS a Herschell in my pedigree. Why, dear man, they were Crusaders!”
Thorpe smiled somewhat sheepishly. “I never noticed much,” he said. “It was a foreign-looking name. I took it for granted.”
Lord Chaldon bent his brows a little. “Yes-s”—he murmured, meditatively. “I've heard it mentioned that your enterprise was suspected of an anti-Semitic twist. Do you mind my talking a little with you about that?”
“Oh, not at all,” the other answered with languid acquiescence, as he seated himself.
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