Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

It was clear that his speech at the meeting had been the root cause of all this, and yet no one would have believed that Balint had taken up the issue almost by accident and would have had no idea that Boros was in any way implicated if the lawyer himself had not taken up the cudgels and protested his innocence so publicly. Now all those who had suffered from Boros’s dishonest dealings saw in Balint a messiah who had been sent to smite the hitherto mighty and untouchable lawyer.

Among the more serious letters there was one from Tamas Laczok, the renegade younger brother of Count Jeno Laczok of Var-Siklod, who was now working as an engineer in a Szekler-owned railway company. His letter was peppered with phrases in French, for it had been in Paris that he had obtained his professional diploma after many years of thoughtless dissipation and it had been in the French colonies that he had gained his experience.

It started off ‘ Très cher ami …’ and went on to congratulate Balint on taking issue with Boros. After a few light-hearted remarks he turned to facts and figures and his subject was the same forestry matter that had been reported in the newspaper cuttings. It seemed that in the Gyergyo district a pine forest had been bought by the Laczok Timber Company which had been founded by ‘my darling brother Jeno’ and the banker Soma Weissfeld to exploit the Laczok forests. Somehow, they had arranged matters so that Count Jeno and the banker lived like kings on their dividends while the younger brother, who held a one-third share, received almost nothing. The company also bought timber from a communally-owned forest nearby and this was brought to the works by train. One day a spark from the engine set the forest on fire and about three thousand acres were destroyed. The loss amounted to millions of crowns. The community took the company to court, claiming damages and the cost of replanting the trees. Zsigmond Boros was appointed lawyer for the communal owners with power of attorney to settle in their best interests. Boros had used his powers to obtain a settlement out of court, even though it was most disadvantageous to the community who had lost so much of their forest. Despite protests at the community’s next meeting the settlement had been reluctantly accepted, largely owing to the persuasive oratory of the famous lawyer. The letter went on:

J’ai tout de suite flairé une cochonnerie — I smelt a ratat once!Only now, after I read about your interest, did I come to my senses and start to check through the balance sheets of Laczok Timber. And what did I find? Boros got 80,000 crowns from us, discreetly paid through Weissfeld’s bank. I have all the details and will send them to you if you wish.If’squite enough to hangthe man!

After a few French jokes Laczok brought his letter to an end with the words:

Now I am trying to get the community to have their case against our family firm reopened. Of course if they succeed I will be one of the losers but I wouldn’t mind that as long as it brings down my beloved brother. He can drown in it for all I care; and my sister Alice too who has always hated me! I’venever worked so hard at anything inall my life!

Balint threw down the letter with distaste, even though he realized that what it contained was almost certainly true. It fitted in too neatly with Dinora’s idle chatter at Denestornya that summer when she had admitted that Boros was daily expecting some large sum of money. But Tamas Laczok’s hatred of his brother, which oozed out of every word he wrote, shocked and disgusted him. He would never have believed it of the good-humoured, good-tempered fellow he remembered meeting once at the inn at Vasarhely. Physically Tamas was the exact double of his brother Jeno. Short and thickset, they could have been twins, the only obvious difference being that while Jeno sported only a pair of imposing moustaches, Tamas also wore a beard. Perhaps, thought Balint, it’s because they are so alike that they hate each other so much.

Most of these letters Balint just threw into an empty drawer but Tamas’s letter he answered. He wrote that he had only spoken out in the public interest and did not intend to start a manhunt. Then he put the affair out of his mind, thinking that now, as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed.

IT WAS NOT LONG before Boros got wind of what Tamas Laczok was up to and so to prevent the matter coming to court he quickly applied to his own professional body, the Vasarhely Law Society, for an enquiry into his conduct. Of course he was soon cleared of unprofessional dealings, for the settlement out of court had been legally accepted by all parties and, since the Law Society had no power to subpoena documents or witnesses, Tamas could produce no tangible evidence to back up his allegations. Boros took good care to see that the newspapers gave wide coverage to his vindication and even persuaded one of them to print in full the beautiful speech he had made in his defence. Then a banquet was held to celebrate his victory, with many toasts and speeches. Here, too, he made a speech and one sentence — in which he spoke of being ‘stalked stealthily by evil men, the enemies of all independent thought, who sought to fling dirt at any champion of the people’s freedom’ — was loudly cheered, being taken as a reference to Abady. And so he stood there at the head of the table, proud and fearless, holding his head high and with his well-trimmed beard the very picture of virile innocence, to everyone present the personification of noble probity.

At about this time there appeared a short notice in the commercial columns of the Budapest papers. It announced that the State Railways had signed a ten-year contract giving the firm of Eisler a monopoly on supplying railway sleepers. Few people took much notice, for there were many far more important matters to think about.

In the New Year the Prime Minister and Kossuth, as leader of the Radical Party, announced an increase in the defence budget and also in the numbers to be called for compulsory military service.

When this became known some of the more extreme members of the Independence Party ran at once to Gyula Justh demanding an official protest from their party. Unexpectedly they received an uncompromising refusal. Justh, it appeared, had already agreed to the increase in conscription, and had not even tried to extort in exchange any concession to the other long-standing party demands such as the introduction of Hungarian as the army’s official language of command. Everyone was taken by surprise as such a volte-face was the last thing anyone had expected of Justh. They did not then know, of course, that he had already thrown in his lot with the party surrounding the Heir and was secretly, through Kristoffy, conspiring to frustrate the liberalization of the voting franchise.

All this caused great excitement when the House reassembled. Then one of the directors of the National Bank made some indiscreet allusion to banking cartels and at once the followers of Hollo and Barra made such an uproar that no one paid any further attention to such matters as conscription and the army estimates. Never had there been such discord since the Coalition government came to power.

Nevertheless those in the timber business and landowners with forestry holdings were seriously upset by the deal between the State Railways and the firm of Eisler, because it meant inevitably that they would be at the mercy of the Austrian company who could depress the selling prices for sleepers at will since the State Railways company was almost the only buyer for that class of timber. The new arrangement was contrary to all established trading conditions imposed on the administration of public transport. However, as Kossuth had countersigned the monopoly contract, there was not much anyone could say in protest. Some of the timber companies tried to come to terms with the Eisler firm but the forest owners were slower to react. For the moment they said nothing.