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 Señor Pérez Cuesta.
“Send him up.”
Señor Puchol entered, a dark little man who wore a morning-coat and had
a hat with a flat brim edged with braid.
Cæsar greeted him affably and made him sit down.
“But are you not Spanish?” Cæsar 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 Cæsar. “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 Cæsar.
“Oughtn’t I to?”
“Since you know the whole situation,” continued Cæsar, “I will say that
he cannot indeed break off with the Recquillarts, but the Minister would
like to do business with somebody else, without passing 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.”
“Good, but we must know beforehand how much you are to get. Your
demands may be such that it would be better for him to stick to the
Recquillarts.”
“Recquillart gets ten percent of the profits, besides a small commission
as broker. I will take five.”
“It’s a good deal.”
“I will not accept less; the arrangement might cost me my career.
Consult him....”
“If I could consult him! The truth is that there may not be time. We
will accept five.”
“What does the Minister wish to speculate in? The same things as with
Recquillart? Foreign Loans and Northerns?”
“Exactly. Just as before.”
“All right. The investment, as you can see, is safe,” Puchol continued.
“I would put my fortune in it, if I had one. There are a lot of
newspapers bought; all the financial reviews are predicting a rise.”
The clerk took out a folded review and handed it to Cæsar, who read:
“We are assured that the plan of the Spanish Minister of Finance must
make foreign securities rise considerably. Northerns will follow the
same path, and there are indications that their rise will be very rapid
and will cover several points.”
“The field is going to be covered with corpses,” said Cæsar.
Señor Puchol burst out laughing; Cæsar invited him to dine with him,
and gave him a sumptuous dinner with good wines.
Puchol was absolutely vain, and he boasted of his triumphs on the
Bourse; it was he who guided Recquillart in the dealings he had with
Spaniards, in which they had plucked various incautious persons.
“How much will the Minister’s operation amount to?” Cæsar asked him.
“Nobody can prevent his making three hundred thousand, at the least.
With the increase he has ordered you to make, it will come to six
hundred thousand. We will gobble up the two points it falls.”
“I don’t know if there may have been some new order while I was in the
train coming to Paris,” said Cæsar.
“No, his operation is all arranged,” replied Puchol, and he got out a
note-book and consulted it. “It will be like giving away bread. We are
going to sell ten millions of Foreigns and five hundred Northerns on the
seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the twentieth.”
“And the scoop will take place?” asked Cæsar.
“On the 27th.”
“So that on those days we shall sell just as much again?”
“And we shall sell much dearer.”
They dropped that point and talked of other things.
Señor Puchol was a literary man and was writing a symbolistic drama
which he wanted to read to Cæsar.
At twelve they said good-night. Puchol was to tell his chief that he had
not been able to do any business with Señor Pérez Cuesta. In respect to
the other matter, they had an engagement for ten the next morning at a
café in the neighbourhood of the Bourse.
There were no great difficulties to overcome. They saw a broker named
Müller. Cæsar entrusted him with his twenty thousand francs, and hinted
that the speculation was being made for some rich people, who would
have no objection to making up any loss, if he should exceed the twenty
thousand francs.
The broker told him he could play whatsoever sum he wished.
As Cæsar had not entire confidence in Puchol, and did not care either
to tell the broker that he was to begin only when the stocks fell, he
brought Yarza into the deal.
Puchol was to say to Yarza: “The Minister has given the order to sell”;
and Yarza would first verify this, if he could verify it; then he would
tell the broker: “Sell.” It might go as far as handling twenty millions
of Foreigns and up to a thousand of Northerns.
In order to get all the ends well tied up, Cæsar had to get from one
place to another without a moment’s rest.