“I haven’t got a French account, young man. Haven’t you heard of currency regulations?”
“They don’t seem to be troubling either of us much,” I said.
“You’d better come and have a cup of coffee and discuss the matter.”
“I’m busy just now.”
“Young man,” the Other said, “I’m your employer.”
“I don’t recognize anybody but the Gom.”
“Who on earth is the Gom?”
“Mr Dreuther.”
“The Gom. A.N. Other. There seems to be a curious lack of respect for the heads of your firm. Sir Walter Blixon—has he a name?”
“I believe the junior staff know him as the Blister.”
A thin smile momentarily touched the grey powdery features. “At least that name is expressive,” A.N. Other remarked. “Nurse, you can take a walk for half an hour. You can go as far as the harbour and back. You’ve always told me you like boats.”
When I turned the chair and began to push Bowles into the bar, a slight sweat had formed on my forehead and hands. An idea had come to me so fantastic that it drove away the thought of Cary and her hungry squire. I couldn’t even wait till I got to the bar. I said, “I’ve got fifteen million francs in my safe deposit box at the hotel. You can have them tonight in return for your shares.”
“Don’t be a fool. They are worth twenty million at par, and Dreuther or Blixon would give me fifty million for them. A glass of Perrier water, please.”
I got him his water. He said, “Now fetch me that five million.”
“No.”
“Young man,” he said, “I have an infallible system. I have promised myself for twenty years to break the bank. I will not be foiled by a mere five million. Go and fetch them. Unless you do I shall order your dismissal.”
“Do you think that threat means anything to a man with fifteen million in the safe? And tomorrow I shall have twenty million.”
“You’ve been losing all tonight. I’ve watched you.”
“I had expected to lose. It proves my system’s right.”
“There can’t be two fallible systems.”
“Yours, I’m afraid, will prove only too fallible.”
“Tell me how yours works.”
“No. But I’ll advise you on what is wrong with yours.”
“My system is my own.”
“How much have you won by it?”
“I have not yet begun to win. I am only at the first stage. Tonight I begin to win. Damn you, young man, fetch me that five million.”
“My system has won over fifteen million.”
I had got a false impression that the Other was a calm man. It is easy to appear calm when your movements are so confined. But when his fingers moved an inch on his knee he was exhibiting an uncontrollable emotion: his head swayed a minute degree and set the cord of his ear-appliance napping. It was like the tiny stir of air clinking a shutter that is yet the sign of a tornado’s approach.
He said, “Suppose we have hit on the same system.”
“We haven’t. I’ve been watching yours. I know it well. You can buy it in a paper packet at the stationer’s for a thousand francs.”
“That’s false. I thought it out myself, over the years, young man, in this chair. Twenty years of years.”
“It’s not only great minds that think alike. But the bank will never be broken by a thousand-franc system marked on the envelope Infallible.”
“I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll make you eat that packet. Fetch me the five million.”
“I’ve told you my terms.”
Backward and forward and sideways moved the hands in that space to which illness confined him. They ran like mice in a cage—I could imagine them nibbling at the intolerable bars. “You don’t know what you are asking. Don’t you realize you’d control the company if you chose to side with Blixon?”
“At least I would know something about the company controlled.”
“Listen. If you let me have the five million tonight, I will repay it in the morning and give you half my winnings.”
“There won’t be any winnings with your system.”
“You seem very sure of yours.”
“Yes.”
“I might consider selling the shares for twenty million plus your system.”
“I haven’t got twenty million.”
“Listen, if you are so sure of yourself you can take an option on the shares for fifteen million now. You pay the balance in twenty-four hours—9 a.m. tomorrow—or you forfeit your fifteen million. In addition you give me your system.”
“It’s a crazy proposal.”
“This is a crazy place.”
“If I don’t win five million tomorrow, I don’t have a single share?”
“Not a single share.” The fingers had stopped moving.
I laughed. “Doesn’t it occur to you that I’ve only got to phone the office tomorrow, and Blixon would advance me the money on the option? He wants the shares.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday and the agreement is for cash.”
“I don’t give you my system till the final payment,” I said.
“I shan’t want it if you’ve lost.”
“But I need money to play with.”
He took that carefully in. I said, “You can’t run a system on a few thousand francs.”
“You can pay ten million now,” he said, “on account of fifteen. If you lose, you’ll owe me five million.”
“How would you get it?”
He gave me a malign grin. “I’ll have your wages docked five hundred a year for ten years.”
I believe he meant it. In the world of Dreuther and Blixon he and his small packet of shares had survived only by the hardness, the meanness and the implacability of his character.
“I shall have to win ten million with five million.”
“You said you had the perfect system.”
“I thought I had.”
The old man was bitten by his own gamble: he jeered at me. “Better just lend me the five million and forget the option.”
I thought of the Gom at sea in his yacht with his headline guests and the two of us forgotten—what did he care about his assistant accountant? I remembered the way he had turned to Miss Bullen and said, “Arrange for Mr Bertrand (he couldn’t bother to get my name right) to be married.” Would he arrange through Miss Bullen for our children to be born and our parents to be buried? I thought, with these shares at Blixon’s call I shall have him fixed—he’ll be powerless, I’ll be employing him for just as long as I want him to feel the sting: then no more room on the eighth floor, no more yacht, no more of his ‘luxe, calme et volupte’. He had taken me in with his culture and his courtesy and his phoney kindness until I had nearly accepted him for the great man he believed himself to be. Now, I thought with a sadness for which I couldn’t account, he will be small enough to be in my hands, and I looked at my ink-stained fingers with disrelish.
“You see,” the Other said, “you don’t believe any longer.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” I said, “I’ll take your bet. I was just thinking of something else—that’s all.”
3
