"Instead of going off quietly and secretly, like a man who is running away, and who knows that he is pursued, he tells every one where he intends to go; he writes it on all his trunks, in letters half a foot high; and then rides in great display to the railway station, with a woman, several carriages, servants, etc. What is the object of all this? To get caught? No, but to start a false scent. Therefore, in his mind, every thing must have been arranged in advance, and the catastrophe was far from taking him by surprise; therefore the scene with M. de Thaller must have been prepared; therefore, it must have been on purpose that he left his pocketbook behind, with the bill in it that was to lead us straight here; therefore all we have seen is but a transparent comedy, got up for our special benefit, and intended to cover up the truth, and mislead the law."
But Maxence was not entirely convinced.
"Still," he remarked, "those enormous expenses."
M. de Tregars shrugged his shoulders.
"Have you any idea," he said, "what display can be made with a million? Let us admit that your father spent two, four millions even. The loss of the Mutual Credit is twelve millions. What has become of the other eight?"
And, as Maxence made no answer, "It is those eight millions," he added, "that I want, and that I shall have. It is in Paris that your father is hid, I feel certain.
We must find him; and we must make him tell the truth, which I already more than suspect."
Whereupon, throwing on the table the pint of beer which he had not drunk, he walked out of the caf with Maxence.
"Here you are at last!" exclaimed the coachman, who had been waiting at the corner for over three hours, a prey to the utmost anxiety.
But M. de Traggers had no time for explanations; and, pushing Maxence into the cab, he jumped in after him, crying to the coachman, "24 Rue Joquelet. Five francs extra for yourself." A driver who expects an extra five francs, always has, for five minutes at least, a horse as fast as Gladiateur.
Whilst the cab was speeding on to its destination, "What is most important for us now," said M. de Tregars to Maxence, "is to ascertain how far the Mutual Credit crisis has progressed; and M. Latterman of the Rue Joquelet is the man in all Paris who can best inform us."
Whoever has made or lost five hundred francs at the bourse knows M.
Latterman, who, since the war, calls himself an Alsatian and curses with a fearful accent those "parparous Broossians." This worthy speculator modestly calls himself a money-changer; but he would be a simpleton who should ask him for change: and it is certainly not that sort of business which gives him the three hundred thousand francs' profits which he pockets every year.
When a company has failed, when it has been wound up, and the defrauded stockholders have received two or three per cent in all on their original investment, there is a prevailing idea that the certificates of its stocks are no longer good for any thing, except to light the fire. That's a mistake. Long after the company has foundered, its shares float, like the shattered debris which the sea casts upon the beach months after the ship has been wrecked.
These shares M. Latterman collects, and carefully stores away; and upon the shelves of his office you may see numberless shares and bonds of those numerous companies which have absorbed, in the past twenty years, according to some statistics, twelve hundred millions, and, according to others, two thousand millions, of the public fortune.
Say but a word, and his clerks will offer you some "Franco-American Company," some "Steam Navigation Company of Marseilles," some "Coal and Metal Company of the Asturias," some " Transcontinental Memphis and El Paso" (of the United States), some "Caumart Slate Works," and hundreds of others, which, for the general public, have no value, save that of old paper, that is from three to five cents a pound. And yet speculators are found who buy and sell these rags.
In an obscure corner of the bourse may be seen a miscellaneous population of old men with pointed beards, and overdressed young men, who deal in every thing salable, and other things besides.
There are found foreign merchants, who will offer you stocks of merchandise, goods from auction, good claims to recover, and who at last will take out of their pockets an opera-glass, a Geneva watch (smuggled in), a revolver, or a bottle of patent hair-restorer.
Such is the market to which drift those shares which were once issued to represent millions, and which now represent nothing but a palpable proof of the audacity of swindlers, and the credulity of their dupes. And there are actually buyers for these shares, and they go up or down, according to the ordinary laws of supply and demand; for there is a demand for them, and here comes in the usefulness of M. Latterman's business.
Does a tradesman, on the eve of declaring himself bankrupt, wish to defraud his creditors of a part of his assets, to conceal excessive expenses, or cover up some embezzlement, at once he goes to the Rue Joquelet, procures a select assortment of " Cantonal Credit," "Rossdorif Mines," or "Maumusson Salt Works," and puts them carefully away in his safe.
And, when the receiver arrives, "There are my assets," he says. "I have there some twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand francs of stocks, the whole of which is not worth five francs to-day; but it isn't my fault. I thought it a good investment; and I didn't sell, because I always thought the price would come up again."
And he gets his discharge, because it would really be too cruel to punish a man because he has made unfortunate investments.