Chapter 119: Million Pound Youth Edition

Chapter 119 – Million Pound Youth Edition

Arthur glanced at Elder, then pulled him and Dumas, who was beside him, out of the police station gates and all the way into the café across the street.

As expected, just as he entered the cafe, he found Darwin waiting in the corner seat as well.

Darwin looked to be in the same good mood today, he had changed into a new hat that looked like he knew it was worth a lot of money, and was sitting in his seat fiddling with a brand new set of taxidermy tools.

Arthur pulled Elder and the others into the seat, and just as he sat down, he couldn’t resist pulling out the check in his pocket and scanning it.

The bright, dazzling markings on it instantly dazzled him.

It was a 1,000 pound deposit note from the Bank of England.

Arthur took a deep breath, it was more than he would have earned in ten years as an Inspector of Police at Scotland Yard.

Elder smugly held his pipe and asked, “How’s that? I told you, after this big deal, the pay must not be low, right? Arthur, with this 1,000 pounds, you can also be considered to have made a mark among the young people under 30 in London.”

Arthur glanced at him and reached for a cup of black tea before asking, “How much did that ‘Blackthorn’ ship sell for anyway? That’s a generous offer from Colonel Fitzroy, isn’t it?”

Elder smiled as he twirled the donut on his plate and spoke, “The recent economic recovery has been good, so the Blackthorn sold for a pretty good price, and after deducting the depreciation and maintenance costs, there is still close to 5,000 pounds of surplus.”

Arthur chucked a cube of sugar into his teacup as he stirred it and asked, “But even with a surplus of 5,000 pounds, Colonel Fitzroy is only taking 1,250 pounds, and the rest has to go to the crew. Although I helped him a little in the battle that day, isn’t it a bit too polite for him to shell out so much to me at once?”

He tried to hand the check back, but Elder pressed his hand back, “Arthur, just take it. Colonel Fitzroy won’t feel comfortable if you don’t take it.”

Hearing this, Darwin also couldn’t help but open his mouth and giggle, “That’s right, Arthur. You probably don’t know that in addition to indentured slaves, that ‘Blackthorn’ ship is also loaded with a lot of gold coins and smuggled goods.”

“Smuggled goods? What smuggled goods?” As if Elder had lost his memory, he blushed and rushed at Darwin to reprimand, “Charles, I’m warning you! Can’t bundles of banknotes stop your mouth?”

When Arthur heard this, he didn’t take it easy with him.

He asked straightaway, “How much did you and Charles take?”

When Elder heard this, he just smiled and stretched out two fingers, “We can’t compare with you, we’re already satisfied with this amount. Thanks to your blessing, Charles and I were both allocated trophy rewards according to officer standards.”

Hearing this, Dumas on the side couldn’t help but be a bit envious as well, “Alas, how come there’s no allocation for me.”

Elder took a look at this fat man and criticized without mercy, “Come on, you’ve picked up a life and you’re still not satisfied? If it had gone according to Fred’s intentions, you would have been categorized as a commodity as well. Sold to Santo Domingo in the West Indies for twenty pounds a pop for cheap labor.”

Arthur had expected Elder’s comment to set Dumas’ temper ablaze, but instead the fat Frenchman sighed in self-deprecation.

“Maybe there’s nothing wrong with a trip to St. Domingo. After all, speaking of which, my ancestors made their fortune there.”

Elder frowned at his words, “Your ancestors were slave estate owners in West India?”

Dumas poured himself a cup of tea, “No, my ancestors were black slaves who worked on the estate.”

“Negro slaves?!”

Elder nearly dropped his jaw when he heard this.

He looked Dumas up and down and asked strangely, “Dude, you’re kidding me, right? You’re not black either!”

Darwin, on the other hand, had begun to look at Dumas’ physical appearance in deep thought.

As for Arthur, although he was equally surprised, after a few moments, he took a glance at Dumas’ hairstyle as if he had some understanding, “No wonder you have curly pompadour. I told you that the French, even if they were no longer fashion-conscious, couldn’t go to such great lengths to get such a troublesome haircut.”

Dumas took a sip of tea and spoke, “I thought you guys already knew where I came from. After all, my last name is right here, Dumas, which is not a normal French last name.”

Elder waved his hand and laughed, “What’s so strange about that? Last time I met a Frenchman, he even said his last name was God!”

Dumas glared at Elder at that and clapped his hands together, “Sir, I’m talking to you seriously!”

Elder shot a glance at Dumas’ burly physique, smashed his mouth twice, and then obediently held up his teacup, “You continue.”

Only then did Dumas lose his temper, he sat back in his chair and opened his mouth, “My grandmother was a black slave who was trafficked to the West India Plantation, her name was Mary Sessette Dumas, and she was raped by my grandfather, that is, the manor owner, and then gave birth to my father. Speaking of which, my asshole grandfather had a bit of a reputation; do you know the Payatri family in France?” Arthur thought carefully and nodded, “Kind of rings a bell, I seem to have seen the family name somewhere, it seems to be from Normandy.”

Dumas nodded in amazement, “I really underestimated you before. That’s right, my grandfather was from Normandy, the Marquis de Payetri of Normandy. He used to be a French artillery colonel and chief quartermaster. Only later, due to his profligate spending, he broke the bank in France, so he could only go to St. Domingo to run a plantation.

It was there that he bought my grandmother and raped her to give birth to my father, Thomas Alexandre de la Payetree.

Later, when one of my grandfather’s relatives in France died, he sold my grandmother and father again in order to raise the money for the journey back home. But fortunately he had some conscience, or perhaps it was because he was too old to have children, so after inheriting his relative’s property, he went back to redeem my father not two years later.

Since then, he has nurtured my father as an heir, but you understand, after suffering such a great injury in his childhood, it is impossible for my father to forgive that old bastard in his heart. So, after my father became an adult, the conflict between him and his grandfather also intensified because of his newly married stepmother.

Determined and ready to enlist in the army, my father changed his surname from Payatri to his grandmother’s Dumas and subsequently joined Napoleon’s army.

With his prima donna spirit and indomitable courage, he rose all the way to the position of commander of the French Alpine Corps. He beat the Austrians so much that they called him ‘The Black Devil’, and my father also followed Napoleon in his conquest of Cairo, where he made many feats and honors. Only later well ……”

Said here, Alexandre Dumas seems to be a little angry: “I still do not understand why Napoleon to alienate my father, perhaps because he and Napoleon have different opinions, or because my father’s unique family name?

I can’t figure it out, but I think, with my father’s prima donna, he shouldn’t have been put in prison, and I don’t understand why Napoleon refused to pay my father’s discharge, or even to see him.

With my father’s service to France, he would have deserved a decent life, or at least a decent funeral.

Instead, he died in poverty on a cot in his home, and was buried with nothing more than a cane that he used so often, and even the gold handle of the cane was asked to be removed and left to the family because he felt that he had left his family so little.”

When Elder heard this, he couldn’t help but open his mouth and curse, “Napoleon really wasn’t a thing! I knew it, what good could a French dwarf do?”

Dumas waved his hand when he heard this, “Napoleon is Napoleon, and France is France. He’s a nice guy, but not worthy of being the Emperor of France. No one deserves to be the Emperor of France. It was from Napoleon that I realized that no matter how good a man is, as long as he is put in that position, he will always become tyrannical and ruthless, and because of that, I am a staunch republican.

A man like Napoleon became dictatorial when he became emperor, and what was Louis-Philippe, who deserved to sit on the throne of France? That’s what I don’t like to see, and that’s why I was persecuted by him and had to flee France.”

Hearing this, Darwin pondered and asked, “In that case, you dodged the bullet, but I’m afraid you can’t rest easy for a while. From your description, the French government may not necessarily not plot against you again.”

“Murder?” Elder’s eyes lit up when he heard this, “Does that mean there is a possibility that you can do it again? Then I’ll have to rush Colonel Fitzroy and tell him to get someone to fix the Beagle.”

Arthur glanced at Elder as he took a sip of his tea, “The French, even if they are stupid, are not likely to repeat their tricks. If Louis-Philippe really has that much hatred for Mr. Chungma, I guess he’ll just send an assassin to do away with him next time.

This time, since he wanted to take Mr. Zhongma back alive, it was only because he intended to use him to make a statement to the extreme republicans in the country. It didn’t work the first time, and if he had to insist on coming back a second time, this was no longer an ordinary diplomatic provocation.

And Sir Peel’s side informs me that the Foreign Office has ordered the ambassador in France to make serious representations and protests to the French government, and as to how the new government in France will react, that is not for us to consider.”

Elder couldn’t help but feel a bit deflated when he heard this, and with a shake of his hand, he said, “It’s all fucking General Codrington’s fault! It’s fine to have a problem with the Ottomans, why did he have to have a problem with money? If we had left that pirate ship to us, I guess we could have gotten another seventy or eighty pounds more in booty rewards.”

Elder said here and suddenly changed his words, “Right! Arthur, now that you are carrying so much money, have you considered doing some investment business?”

Arthur was holding his teacup, he saw Elder’s smiling face and subconsciously covered his pocket with his other hand, “What? You want to take me to get rich?”

Elder grinned widely, “Where would I get that? I mean, why don’t you think about buying a house? It could be in London, or it could be in Yorkshire, where you’re from.

The good thing about buying a house in London is that you can easily rent out the empty rooms in addition to owning them.

If you buy in your home town, you’ll have to buy a bigger one, or you can just buy some land. That way when it’s election time, you’ll have people coming to your door begging you to sell your handful of votes, and that’s a lot of money.”

Hearing this, Arthur pondered for a moment and thought that what Elder said seemed to make some sense.

Not to mention buying a house to rent or not, the Ministry of the Interior now gave him the task of 24-hour surveillance to protect Dumas, but how easy it is to do this?
During the day he could get some officers to accompany Dumas around, but at night when he went to bed, he couldn’t send a few more people to guard Dumas’ room, could he?

Even if Dumas agreed, the landlord and the rest of the tenants might not agree.

He drew out the check for one thousand pounds from the Bank of England and looked at it, and then turned over the Rothschild’s Bank draft for five hundred pounds, which he had warmed up in his bosom for several days.

He looked up at Elder and asked, “What kind of house do you think you can buy for fifteen hundred pounds?”

(End of chapter)