"Sleeping"

While the Paris Stock Exchange was closed in honor of Aristide Briand, while 500,000 Parisians reverently stood in the Champs Elysee intent upon the Peach Man's funeral, a large pistol went off in a luxurious apartment nearby. No one heard it except Ivar Kreuger, the "Swedish Match King," the self-made colossus of Scandinavian finance. Matchman Kreuger was putting a bullet into his heart for business reasons (see p. 45) and for human reasons. His nerves were drawn so taut (he had suffered a nervous breakdown recently in New York) that to release the strain was welcome, sweet. His physician had warned him the day before that his heart would not stand much more. "M. Kreuger is sleeping," said the concierge of the apartment about 1:30 p.m. when Vice President Krister Littorin of Swedish Match, who had expected to lunch with his chief at the Hotel du Rhin. anxiously arrived. As Herr Littorin pushed into the bedroom President Kreuger, dressed in a business suit, seemed peacefully asleep upon his bed. Manhattan's Stock Exchange was still open. The French police were instructed by a Cabinet Minister to keep mum. Even when selling of Kreuger & Toll in Wall Street became so fast & furious that 25.5% of all shares traded were of this issue, no U. S. news agency thought to cable Paris for news of the Match King. His friends announced his death after all world markets closed. Swedish Match once loaned $75,000,000 to the French Government. Matchman Kreuger was a Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor. Swooping from Stockholm to Paris came a whole planeload of Kreuger relations. The Match King, who was only 52, is survived by his father, mother, sisters, brothers. His secretive methods make the estate a question mark. "I don't know how much money I have," this long-nosed Swede often said, "and I don't care! What difference does money make?" Since he was said to control the billion-dollar Kreuger & Toll pyramid with slightly over $250,000 key securities, Titan Kreuger's contempt for personal pelf was natural. His pocketbook was always quite lean, but other men seemed always eager to pay the taxi driver.

In Stockholm the Royal Government did not of course know that Ivar Kreuger was going to commit suicide, but they had taken precautionary steps. If anything should happen (and there were numerous "anythings" in addition to suicide the Royal Government was ready to rush through a bill to stabilize Swedish business by granting a moratorium to Kreuger & Toll. When the news came, the Swedish Parliament put through this bill at a secret session, ordered Swedish stock exchanges to remain closed. For years conservative Swedish financiers have frowned on Ivar Kreuger's operations as "too big for Sweden."

On the morning of his suicide Ivar Kreuger bought the pistol at a small shop near his apartment. "Mon Dieu, how was I to know?" said the shopkeeper. "He seemed perfectly calm, parfaitement!" Only the Kreuger concierge noticed anything unusual, noticed that when the Match King came home with a package in his hand he did not smile or reply as he always had to the doorman's greeting. Going upstairs, Titan Kreuger wrote three letters in longhand to relatives, loosened his clothes, pulled the trigger.

In London the Times made his suicide the text for a broad hint that the U. S. ought to join Europe in canceling War debts and reparations. "Here is new evidence," declared the Times, "of the war which international indecision is waging against the interests of manufacture and commerce. It is another warning to governments that time does not wait."

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