“Then you give me carte blanche?”
Ah, if the brilliant financier had dared! But he felt upon him such threatening eyes, that he dared not even make a gesture of denial.
“Whatever you do will be satisfactory,” he said in the tone of a man who sees himself lost.
And, as he was going out of the door, M. de Tregars stepped into M. Latterman’s private office. He remained only five minutes; and when he joined Maxence, whom he had begged to wait for him,
“I think that we have got them,” he said as they walked off.
Their next visit was to M. Saint Pavin, at the office of “The Financial Pilot.” Every one must have seen at least one copy of that paper with its ingenious vignette, representing a bold mariner steering a boat, filled with timid passengers, towards the harbor of Million, over a stormy sea, bristling with the rocks of failure and the shoals of ruin. The office of “The Pilot” is, in fact, less a newspaper office than a sort of general business agency.
As at M. Latterman’s, there are clerks scribbling behind wire screens, small windows, a cashier, and an immense blackboard, on which the latest quotations of the Rente, and other French and foreign securities, are written in chalk.
As “The Pilot” spends some hundred thousand francs a year in advertising, in order to obtain subscribers; as, on the other hand, it only costs three francs a year,—it is clear that it is not on its subscriptions that it realizes any profits. It has other sources of income: its brokerages first; for it buys, sells, and executes, as the prospectus says, all orders for stocks, bonds, or other securities, for the best interests of the client. And it has plenty of business.
To the opulent brokerages, must be added advertising and puffing, —another mine. Six times out of ten, when a new enterprise is set on foot, the organizers send for Saint Pavin. Honest men, or knaves, they must all pass through his hands. They know it, and are resigned in advance.
“We rely upon you,” they say to him.