“This occurs to me: have you offered to split the difference with him? Let him make you a present of the bases he considers most important, say those in the north and Bermuda; and make your horse trade for those in the Caribbean, which he knows have less value as land, or for tourists, or whatever.”
The President sat lost in thought. “By golly, that might do the trick! At any rate, it can’t do any harm to try.” He pressed a button, and spoke into a transmitter by his bed. “Get me Secretary Hull.” And then to Lanny: “Hull and Lothian have been arguing about this till they’re both ready to drop dead.”
A buzzer sounded and he took the telephone. “Hello, Cordell? I have an idea about the four-stackers.” Lanny was amused to note that he didn’t say: “Somebody has suggested an idea.” Nor did he say: “I have thought of an idea,” for that wouldn’t have been quite true. He outlined the plan, and apparently the elderly secretary was pleased by it, for his Chief beamed and said: “O.K.—go after him right away. If they won’t take that there’s something really wrong.” Then to his visitor: “If the deal goes through, the elephants are your commission!”
V
Lanny always made it a point to offer to leave. The stack of papers over which the great man worked in bed always seemed like a hint, and never once had it been necessary for him to terminate an interview with this agent. But now he wanted to talk. “I don’t see you very often,” he said. “Are you finding it difficult to get about in wartime?”
“My father’s business is a sufficient pretext so far as Britain is concerned; and as for Vichy, I rather think that Wickthorpe will be wanting me to go there, and will find some way to arrange it.”
“Are you planning to visit Germany again?”
“I’m not sure. They know all about my father’s help to Britain, and the destroyer deal will make Americans still less popular. I’ll probably go into Switzerland and get word to Hess; he might come to see me there, or invite me into Germany to see the Führer. I have a strong tie with Rudi, because of our interest in psychic matters.”
“You really take those things seriously?”
“I take them very seriously, though I don’t claim to know what they mean. I can only say that I have had experiences which nobody can explain. I won’t start telling you about them, because we might talk all night, and your tomorrow’s schedule would be knocked out.”
“That would be nothing new to my secretaries,” remarked F.D. with one of his grins. He took a sort of impish pleasure in breaking out of harness. But not so often in these tragic days. Lanny thought: Poor soul! and would have liked to stay and try to help; but he knew what the President’s answer would be: “Nobody else can do what you are doing abroad.”
“At this moment,” continued the Chief, “the important question is whether Hitler can get a toehold on the British Isles. Bill Donovan, whose business it is to find out, tells me that the Germans haven’t enough landing craft, and can’t build them in time; the British navy will smash them—unless they can win complete control of the air. We ought to know about that in the next couple of months. How long before you plan to return?”
“I have some picture business to attend to. It will take a couple of weeks, unless you need me sooner.”
“I may have to break away for a bit of rest. My doctor is making a fuss because I am run down, and when that happens I get a cold, even in midsummer.”
“I agree with your doctor,” Lanny said, smiling in turn. “I’ll wait until you come back, and then call for instructions.”
“Do, please,” was the reply. “I always think of things that you might do for me.”
He held out a cordial hand, and Lanny wrung it. “Take care of yourself, Governor. The whole world needs you.”
“The same to you,” was the reply. “I won’t say the whole world, but I need you, and that’s no applesauce.”
VI
The great port and manufacturing center of Baltimore, which calls itself the Monumental City, and is known to the world as the city of the orioles, both the birds and the baseball team, lies a half hundred miles north of Washington. It was the home of Lanny’s friends, the Holdenhursts, and he had a standing invitation to visit them when passing. It was somewhat embarrassing, because Lizbeth, the family darling, still had the notion to marry him, and Lanny had had to explain frankly to the father that he wasn’t a marrying man. If he had consulted his own preferences, he would have stayed away from tempting and being tempted; but the situation was complicated by the fact that Reverdy Johnson Holdenhurst was one of the heaviest Budd-Erling stockholders, and a source of new capital, much needed in this crisis when the airplane industry was expanding at a rate never equaled.
The President had publicly called for fifty thousand planes. It sounded like a joke, or a bit of braggadocio, to most of the world; but the insiders discovered that it was seriously meant, and if they didn’t get busy on an adequate scale, the Army and Navy and a lot of officials kept calling up and raising cain. If for any reason you weren’t moving fast enough they would start buying your best men away from you—for the “know-how” was the all-important thing, which neither you nor they could get along without. They literally tried to force money upon you—millions, tens of millions. But Robbie was afraid of public money, and of the bureaucrats who handled it; they always tied strings to it, and every day they would have a tighter hold on the business, telling him what he could do and what not. He preferred private money, because he believed in private business and the sort of people who were satisfied with dividends and had no interest in control.
Robbie had said over the phone: “Reverdy has asked for another block of stock. Do stop by and say hello to him.” When Lanny showed up, his father would ask: “Did you see the Holdenhursts, and how are they?” There was subtle scheming behind this, for both Robbie and his wife were convinced that Lizbeth would make the right sort of wife for Lanny, and they hadn’t given up the hope that he would change his mind.
Then, too, Reverdy had developed a sudden interest in old masters. He hadn’t had it when he and his daughter had first arrived at Cannes less than two years ago; and it was hard to believe that a man would take to spending money in large quantities just in the hope of getting a not-too-eligible art expert for a son-in-law. Lanny thought this might be the first time in the life of the sweet and gentle Lizbeth that she had wanted something very much and had not been able to get it. Lanny had lived his life among the children of privilege, and was familiar with the demands they made—and the fuss when their desires were thwarted. Compared with some of the affairs he had seen and heard of on the Riviera, this Holdenhurst intrigue was naïve and touching, something out of an Elsie Dinsmore story.
Reverdy had told Lanny the sort of paintings he wanted, and Lanny had been on the lookout for them, and had accumulated a list of half a dozen. It wasn’t the sort of thing that could be attended to by mail; you had to answer questions. So next morning, after telephoning and ascertaining that a visit would be agreeable, he took the first train to Baltimore, and the Holdenhurst chauffeur met him at the station. This being a democratic land, the chauffeur told him the latest news about the city, and asked the latest about the old Continent, the source of all troubles. Lanny was democratic, too, but couldn’t show it; when he met strangers he was always the lover of the arts, au-dessus de la mêlée. But he was free to tell how it felt to be bombed and how the London people were taking it. Everywhere in America he could be sure of an absorbed audience for conversation on that subject.
VII
Here was Greenbriar, this elegant country estate, with gracious and cultivated people ready to welcome him. Here was every form of recreation at his disposal; he could play tennis or the piano, or he could sit by the best of radio sets and listen to voices from this or other lands. The weather was hot, but there were shaded porches and electric fans, and there would be mint juleps with cracked ice, or lemon squashes, with or without a “stick” in them. Soft-shell crabs were in season, and bluefish
; if you didn’t mind the sunburn you could take a trip to the bay and catch fish of varied hues. You could motor on fine roads, still called “turnpikes.” In the evening there were dances at the Country Club—in short, there was everything you could think of for comfort and pleasure, and if some of the women were drinking too much, and the girls running about without chaperons, you could say that it was the disturbed state of the world, the New Deal, the war, the general license. You could go on in the comfortable certainty that “Bawlamaw” was the finest city in the world, “Bawlamaw” women the most beautiful, and “Bawlamaw” food and cookery the envy of all mankind.
Lanny told his friend about the paintings he had come upon, and delivered one of his learned discourses about them. Reverdy didn’t really know much about art; the examples he possessed, except for the Detazes, were commonplace; but he was graciously willing to learn, and it wouldn’t be long before he would be passing these opinions on to others—including Lanny. Such an experience every art expert has now and then with his clients, and it is his part to listen gravely and to agree heartily.
And then Lizbeth. She was lovelier every time he saw her, the visitor thought. She was twenty now, and no longer a child; she appeared more thoughtful, and Lanny had the idea that perhaps not having her own way had been good for her. She had spent a winter at home with her mother, not taking the customary yachting cruise with her father. Doubtless it had been the mother’s idea to give the eligible men of the Monumental City an opportunity to lay their gifts at her feet. Had any one of them succeeded in impressing her? Lanny asked no questions; his manner was that of a kindly uncle, which he was old enough to be.
He told her about Bienvenu and the people there—but of course not saying anything about Beauty’s bad dreams. He told about Mrs. Chattersworth, and the guests who came there, and about life on the Riviera under war conditions, with everything growing scarcer day by day. He told about London under the bombs. He tried to have others present while he talked, but the others had a way of excusing themselves, which was rather pointed, and at least made it plain that Lizbeth hadn’t yet centered her thoughts upon any other man. She drove him to the Country Club, and they played tennis and then swam; the bathing suits had been contrived so that a man who was contemplating matrimony wouldn’t be left in any doubt as to what he was getting. But Lanny wasn’t contemplating anything except to guard his grim wartime secret, and he did not feast his eyes upon this graceful well-rounded figure, but manifested impartial interest in all the youths and maidens of Green Spring Valley’s fashionable set.
Lizbeth’s father ordered paintings which would pay the visitor several thousand dollars in commissions and cover all the costs of his next tour. It didn’t seem decent to bolt off with no more than a handshake after that. But Lanny had taken the precaution to say over the telephone that Robbie was waiting for the latest report on the Budd-Erlings—and that was important to Reverdy as well. Lanny made no attempt to gloss over the bad situation; he said that the British found all the American planes inferior to their own, and were holding the former as reserves, to be used only in the last extremity. Budd-Erling wouldn’t stay behind very long, Reverdy might be sure; and Reverdy said that he was sure, having had from Robbie secrets which couldn’t be entrusted to mail across enemy-infested seas.
VIII
Nothing would have been easier for Lanny than to become fond of Lizbeth Holdenhurst; indeed, nothing seemed more unkind and irrational than not to do so. She was his for the asking, and she would have made him a devoted wife; not brilliant, not intellectual, but then, you can’t have everything. Lanny had ideas enough for two, liked to expound them, and needed someone who liked to listen. There could be no doubt that Lizbeth had money for two, or, for that matter, a dozen. She had a sweet expression, lovely large brown eyes, soft brown hair; she knew how to take care of these gifts, and would meet his esthetic requirements, morning, noon, and night.
It was a problem he argued out with himself each time he came here. His duties were “top secret,” and he couldn’t share them; his journeys were the same, and what would she make of being left alone three-quarters of the time, and for no imaginable reason? How long would it be before her smart friends began to whisper into her ears their suspicions of his habits? “The other woman is always just around the corner”—such was their idea of marital affairs. “There are no saints nowadays, at least not on the French Riviera, and not among the British aristocracy.” So they would jeer. And what would Lizbeth make of his visits to the Countess of Sandhaven, his former flame? What would she think about his visits to Wickthorpe, whose countess might or might not have a moral sense?
Should he trust her with his secret? Did he have a right to? Surely not unless he married her; and what a trick to play upon a girl, to let her think that she was marrying an ivory-tower esthete, a modern Marius the Epicurean, and then reveal himself as a political conspirator who was liable to be shot at sunrise on any part of the Continent of Europe where his activities were detected! Lizbeth wouldn’t have the faintest understanding of his motivations; her father was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, a man who was cheating the income tax as a matter of principle, holding it to be a form of robbery. If Reverdy Johnson Holdenhurst had known the real contents of Lanny Budd’s mind, he would as soon have married his daughter to Mephistopheles.
So it was a kindness to say: “Robbie is waiting to hear all the things I have been telling you. I’ll be coming this way again before long, and I’ll drop by if I may.” He bade farewell to this lotus land, and the sociable chauffeur drove him to the station, which to Baltimoreans is the “dee-po.”
IX
The wonderful tube took the traveler underneath the Hudson River and delivered him at Pennsylvania Station; from there a taxi conveyed him in a few minutes to Grand Central Station, and something over an hour later he was in Newcastle, Connecticut. Here was another fine home, not so elaborate as Greenbriar, but much the same in the manners, costumes, and ideas of its occupants. It resembled Bienvenu and Sept Chênes in that there was an elderly lady who couldn’t rest content until she had found a proper wife for the son of Budd-Erling—or the eldest of three sons of Budd-Erling, as Esther Remsen Budd would naturally see him. She was the great lady of her town and managed many things, and it was really hard on her not to be able to do something for this stepson.
Robbie Budd was like the man in the Arabian Nights who pulled the cork from the bottle and let the genie out; the most unimaginable monstrous genie, that spread out over the Connecticut countryside, on the river which flowed through it, and in the skies above it. Robbie had thought that he had vision, and he had foreseen a big business, but it had been a nice little big business, so to speak, never the big big business which was now turning him and his community upside down. Concrete floors were laid down by the acre, and ships and trains and barges came loaded with structural steel, and buildings arose with the speed of Jack’s beanstalk. And the same thing was going on with the still more immense property of Budd Gunmakers, turning out machine guns, carbines, and automatic pistols. An agency took the job of inserting advertisements all over the country, and workingmen came from places you had never heard of: farm boys from Newfoundland, habitants from the Quebec wilderness, Negroes from places between Harlem and Texas: every sort of man who could be taught to weld, to rivet, or even to put in screws.
And the women, the girls! To Esther, daughter of the Puritans, it was most distressing, for she was sure they had no morals, and there was nobody to care about it. Where were they to sleep and what were they to eat? They worked in three shifts, and there were long queues of people waiting to get into Newcastle’s small restaurants and inadequate grocery stores. The families came in trailers and lived in them, they put up tents, they even bought chicken coops and made them into sleeping places. The town had prayed for prosperity, but this was too much, and the Chamber of Commerce wanted to say: “Lord, can’t you take a joke?”
X
Esther’s two sons, n
ow in their early thirties, were conscientious and well-trained executives, and it had been her hope that the business would settle down to a routine basis, so that Robbie could enjoy a hard-earned rest. But no; Budd-Erling was like one of its own planes caught in a hurricane, and Robbie was the pilot; he wasn’t surrendering the controls. The hurricane was blowing the way he desired to travel, and he rode it with a sense of glory. He was a hearty, stoutish man, who took everything in his stride, and except for his gray hair bore few signs of his age. Budd-Erling was his life; he had planned it and now he talked it and worked at it, day and night, in the office and at home; he was no longer interested in anything else, and when he thought about politics and world affairs, it was always from the point of view: Will this increase or reduce the demand for fighter planes?
Robbie called himself, defiantly, a “merchant of death,” meaning it as a jeer at persons who had been haunting his thoughts and goading him from his earliest years as salesman for Budd Gunmakers. Once he had confronted some of these people, at a congressional investigation in Washington, and he had never forgotten their severe, fanatical faces and their bitter words. They had accused him of desiring war in order that he might sell his deadly goods, or deadly evils, if you preferred. Robbie knew that that wasn’t true; he knew that Europe was determined to have wars, and wherever in the business world there is a demand, there will soon be a supply. “Nobody has to buy my products,” Robbie would say; “nobody has to use them. I put them in the shopwindow, and it’s up to the customer.” He would add: “Incidentally, my own country gets a defense factory, and some day it may happen that they’ll find it useful.”