Caesar or Nothing Part 66

He entered the bank and asked for the president. A clerk came out and Caesar explained to him that on arriving at his hotel he had missed a cheque for three thousand francs from the Spanish Minister of Finance.

He introduced himself as a Deputy, as an intimate friend of the Minister's, and behaved as if much vexed. The department manager told him that they could do no more than take the number and not pay the cheque if anybody presented it for payment.

"You don't handle the Minister's business here?" asked Caesar.

"No, only very rarely," said the manager.

"You don't know who his regular banker is?"

"No; I will ask, because it is very possible that the chief may know."

The clerk went out and came back a little later, informing Caesar that they said the house the Spanish Minister of Finance did his banking with was Recquillart and Company, Rue Bergere.

The street was near at hand, and it took Caesar only a very little while to get there. The building was dark, lighted by electricity even in the daytime, one of those cla.s.sic corners where Jewish usurers ama.s.s great fortunes.

There was no question of employing the same ruse as in the Rue de Provence, and Caesar thought of another.

He asked for M. Recquillart, and out came a heavy gentleman, a blond going grey, with a rosy cranium and gold eyegla.s.ses.

Caesar told him he was secretary to a rich Spanish miner, who was then in Paris. That gentleman wanted to try some business on the Bourse, but was unable to come to the bank because he was ill of the dropsy.

"Who recommended our house to this gentleman?" asked the banker.

"I think it was the Minister of Finance, in Spain."

"Ah, yes, very good, very good! And how are we to communicate with him?

Through you?"

"No. He told me he would prefer to have a clerk who knows Spanish come to him and take his orders." "That is all right; one shall go. We happen to have a Spanish clerk. At what hour shall he come?" said M.

Recquillart, taking out a pencil.

"At nine in the evening."

"For whom shall he ask?"

"For Senor Perez Cuesta."

"At what hotel?"

"The one in the Quai d'Orsay station."

"Very good indeed."

Caesar bowed; and after he had sent Yarza a telephone message, making an appointment for after the Bourse at the Cafe Riche, he took an automobile and went to hunt for the great financier Dupont de Sarthe, who lived on the other bank of the Seine, near the Montparna.s.se station.

He had a large, sumptuous office, with an enormous library. Two secretaries were at work at small tables placed in front of the balconies, and the master wrote at a big Ministerial table full of books. When Caesar introduced himself, the great economist rose, offered his hand, and in a sharp voice with a Parisian accent, asked what he desired.

Caesar told him the Minister's request, and the great economist became indignant.

"Does that gentleman imagine that I am at his bidding, to begin a piece of work and stop it according as it suits him, and take it up again when he orders? No, tell him no. Tell him the scheme he asked me for is not done, not finished; that I cannot give him any data or any information at all."

In view of the great man's indignation, Caesar made no reply, but left the house. He lunched at his hotel, gave orders that if any one brought a letter or message for Senor Perez Cuesta they should receive it, and went again to the Rue de Provence, where he said he had had the good luck to find his cheque.

With all these goings and comings it got to be three o'clock, and Caesar turned his steps toward the Cafe Riche. Yarza was there and the two talked a long while. Yarza knew of the manoeuvres of the Minister of Finance, and he gave his opinion about them with great knowledge of the business questions. He also knew Recquillart's clerk, the Catalan Pujol, of whom he had not a very good opinion.

The two friends made an engagement for the next day and Caesar hurried to his hotel. He wrote to the Minister, telling him what the fundamentals of Dupont de Sarthe's project were; and between his own ideas and those Yarza had expounded to him, he was able to draw up a complete enough plan.

"The Minister being a man who knows nothing about all this," thought Caesar, "when he understands that the ideas I expound are those of the celebrated Dupont de Sarthe, will find them wonderful."

RECQUILLART'S CLERK

After having written his letter and taken a little tea, he lay stretched out on a divan, until they brought him word that a young man was asking for Senor Perez Cuesta.

"Send him up."

Senor Puchol entered, a dark little man who wore a morning-coat and had a hat with a flat brim edged with braid.

Caesar greeted him affably and made him sit down.

"But are you not Spanish?" Caesar asked him.

"Yes, I was born in Barcelona."

"I should have taken you for a Frenchman."

"In dress and everything else, I am a complete Parisian."

"This poor man is full of vanity," thought Caesar. "All the better." He immediately began to explain the affair.

"Look," he said, "the whole matter is this: the Spanish Minister of Finance, my chief, has dealings on a large scale with the Recquillart bank; you know that, and so do I; but the Recquillarts, besides charging an inflated commission, interfere in his buying and selling with so little cleverness, that whenever he buys, it turns out that he bought for more than the market price of the security, and whenever he sells, he sells lower than the quotation. The Minister does not wish to break off with the Recquillarts...."

"He can't, you meant to say," replied Puchol, in an insinuating manner.

"Since you know the situation..." responded Caesar.

"Oughtn't I to?"

"Since you know the whole situation," continued Caesar, "I will say that he cannot indeed break off with the Recquillarts, but the Minister would like to do business with somebody else, without pa.s.sing under the yoke of the chief."

"He ought to make arrangements with another broker here," said Puchol.

"Ah, certainly. I have brought some twenty thousand francs with that object."

"Then there is no difficulty."

"But we need a go-between. The Minister doesn't care to turn to the first banker at hand and explain all his combinations to him."

"That's where I come in."