“Funt is very excited, he’s beside himself.”
How could Funt not know the Hercules?
His last four prison stints were directly linked to that organization!
Several private partnerships fed off the Hercules.
The firm named Intensivnik, for example.
Funt was offered the chairman’s post.
The Intensivnik received a large advance from the Hercules to supply something related to timber—a dummy chairman doesn’t have to know exactly what.
The firm promptly went under.
Somebody bagged the money, while Funt got six months in jail.
After the Intensivnik, the Toiling Cedar Trust Partnership came about—with the respectable-looking Funt as chairman, naturally.
Then, naturally, came an advance from the Hercules to supply seasoned cedar, followed by sudden bankruptcy, naturally. Somebody got rich, while Funt had to earn his chairman’s keep in jail.
Then the Sawing Aid—the Hercules—advance—bankruptcy—someone scored—jail.
And again: advance—the Hercules—the Southern Lumberjack—Funt goes to jail—somebody gets a bundle.
“But who?” probed Ostap, pacing around the old man. “Who was behind all this?”
The old man silently sucked the tea from his cup, barely raising his heavy eyelids.
“Who knows?” he said forlornly. “Nobody told Funt anything.
All I have to do is time, that’s my job.
I did time under Alexander II, and Alexander III, and Nicholas Romanov, and Alexander Kerensky.
And during the NEP: before the frenzy, during the frenzy, and after the frenzy.
And now I’m out of work, and I have to wear my Easter pants every day.”
Ostap dragged the words out of the old man one by one.
He was like a gold prospector, tirelessly washing through tons and tons of mud and sand in order to find a few specks of gold on the bottom.
He nudged Funt with his shoulder, woke him up, and even tickled him under his arms.
After all this effort, he finally learned that in Funt’s opinion, the same person was definitely behind all those failed companies and partnerships.
As for the Hercules, it had been milked to the tune of hundreds of thousands.
“In any case,” added the frail dummy chairman, “this mystery man is a real brain.
Do you know Valiadis?
Valiadis wouldn’t try to pull the wool over this man’s eyes.”
“How about Briand?” asked Ostap with a smile, remembering the crowd of Pique Vests near the old Florida Cafe. “Would Valiadis try to pull the wool over Briand’s eyes?
What do you think?”
“Never!” answered Funt. “Briand is a real brain.”
He flapped his lips in silence for three minutes and then added:
“Hoover is a brain.
Hindenburg is also a brain.
Hoover and Hindenburg, that’s two brains.”
Ostap grew very concerned.
The oldest of the Pique Vests was preparing to plumb the depths of world politics.
At any moment, he might have launched into a discussion of the Kellogg-Briand Pact or the Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera, and then nothing, absolutely nothing would stop him from this commendable pursuit.
A gleam of madness appeared in his eyes, his Adam’s apple began trembling above the yellowed starched collar, heralding the advent of a new sentence—when Bender unscrewed a light bulb and threw it on the floor.
The bulb broke with the cold cracking noise of a rifle shot.
It distracted the dummy chairman from international affairs.
Ostap quickly took advantage of the opportunity.
“But have you met anybody from the Hercules, ever?” he asked. “To discuss the advances?”
“I only dealt with Berlaga, an accountant from the Hercules.
He was on their staff.
But me, I knew nothing.
They never told me anything.
People only need me to do time.
I did time under the tsars, under Socialism, under the Ukrainian Hetman, and under the French occupation.
Briand is a brain.”