Lanny had no clients here. He drove around for a look, spent the night, and in the morning drove on. His road turned into southern Utah, a mass of tumbled mountains, containing some of the finest scenery in the world. It is wild country, much of it inaccessible; canyons, precipices, and boulder-strewn wildernesses, with old prospectors wandering among them, leading patient burros with packloads. But you didn’t see them from the road! You saw vast spaces, a land without limits, the road winding through it in broad curves, a serpent without head or tail. The rocks were of every color, black, white, or gray, red, green, yellow, or mottled with all colors; they were of every shape, tall pinnacles, monuments, sculptured figures, huge masses that looked like fortresses or rows of office buildings in a city. No two views were the same, and the driver’s eyes moved incessantly from the road to some freak of nature and then back to the road again.
Presently it was Nevada, according to a signpost, but there was little difference the motorist could observe; barren lands, red hills, with gray mountains in the dim distance, and the road winding where it could. Now and then you would see a long-legged chaparral cock, called a road runner because of its habit of trying to keep ahead of vehicles; but this didn’t work with automobiles. Now and then you would see a buzzard or eagle wheeling in the sky; if you cared to stop you could make the acquaintance of lizards and rattlesnakes. It was Mary Austin’s “land of little rain.” Filling stations might be as much as twenty miles apart, and you were advised to be sure that your radiator was full, since all water had to be hauled in, and its price was high. Car trouble was serious, for many wanderers had perished here in the days of covered wagons, and one ribbon of gray concrete was the only mark of civilization.
IV
Lanny crossed the Colorado River by a long bridge, and was in the California desert, near the Death Valley region. It was having a hot spell now, and he had been advised to pass through at night. He couldn’t see the landscape, but judged that it must be flat and level, for the road went straight, like a great steel tape stretched taut. The car lights shone on it, far ahead, and exercised a hypnotic effect—but it was better not to nod, bowling along at a mile a minute. A hot, almost suffocating wind blew upon him and seemed to be drying the blood in his veins; doubtless he was perspiring, but there was no trace upon him. A strange thing to drive into the little town of Baker, and discover broad paved streets, and filling stations and other places ablaze with light, and realize that human beings lived in this heat, not merely by night but by day! Lanny, a considerate person, didn’t want to discourage them, and forbore to ask how they stood it.
He drove until he was in the orange country. He stopped at a town called Riverside—but its river was dry; he put up at a hotel called the Mission Inn—but there was no mission, only a museum full of California curiosities. He had a good sleep, and then drove through miles and miles of orange and lemon groves, laden with golden and yellow fruit. The towns had picturesque names: Pomona, which was Greek, Azusa, which was Indian, Monrovia and Pasadena which had come out of some realtor’s dream.
So he came to Hollywood, his goal for the moment, and the dream of all movie fans from China to Peru. The town had been taken into the sprawling city of Los Angeles, most of the studios had moved into the near-by valleys, and the actors had their homes everywhere but in Hollywood; so it was no longer a geographical location but merely a trademark. The landscape and climate reminded Lanny of the Côte d’Azur; but there he had never seen “supermarkets” with all the fruits and vegetables of the world spread out, nor “drive-in eateries” nor “hotdog stands” and “orange juiceries” built in the shape of Indian tepees or Eskimo igloos or sitting white cats or other Mother Goose or Walt Disney creations. It was, he discovered, like all California towns, built haphazard, a jumble of anybody’s whims, with half its spaces empty because people were holding them, waiting for values to rise.
V
While driving, Lanny had been thinking of who in this region might serve his underground purpose. Sooner or later “everybody” came here, and many of them stayed. In the course of his life he had met journalists, writers, musicians, actors—hundreds of them in his mother’s home, other hundreds while he and Irma had been playing about in café society in New York, and yet others while Irma had been playing the salounière in Paris. Many he had forgotten, and many, no doubt, had forgotten him; but his memory lighted upon a couple, the De Lyle Armbrusters, who had “scads” of money and had amused themselves all over the world; he had run into them at the Savoy in London, and again at the Adlon in Berlin, and in Algiers when they had been on a yachting trip. Irma had mentioned that they had settled in Beverly Hills, and Lanny guessed that wherever they were they would know the celebrities.
He looked them up in the fat Los Angeles telephone book and there they were. He called the number, and a grave English voice answered. In smart society the only grave voice is that of the butler, so Lanny said: “Is either Mr. or Mrs. Armbruster at home?” The reply was: “Whom shall I say, sir?”—in smart society the only persons who bother with grammar are the butler and the social secretary. Lanny answered: “Tell them, please, that Mr. Lanny Budd is calling.”
In half a moment more there was Genie, short for Eugenia, bubbling over with welcome. “Lanny, how perfectly ducky! Where are you?”
“I’m at the Beverly-Wilshire.”
“Oh, you darling, how nice! We’ll be having cocktails—won’t you run over? Any time from five to seven—and stay for dinner and we’ll chew the rag.”
That’s the way it is when you know the “right” people, you just don’t have any troubles at all, unless you drink too many cocktails, or make love to your host’s wife. Lanny had time to bathe and shave, and glance at an afternoon paper to see that London still survived. His clothes, freshly pressed, were brought to his door, and his car, freshly washed and serviced, was brought to the door of the hotel. The porter told him how to get to Benedict Canyon. There he found an Italian Renaissance villa of some twenty rooms, built on the side of a mountain, so that things above and below it had to be terraced and walled to keep them from sliding down. It was just like the heights above Cannes, or the place called Californie above Nice, where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had been staying. There was a tennis court and a swimming pool, and from the loggia you looked over the whole Los Angeles plain, the blue Pacific, and the Channel islands beyond. At night it was a vast plain, a bowl full of lights, an unequaled spectacle.
VI
Everywhere in the modern world are rich people trying to escape boredom, and willing to keep open house for anybody who can produce a novelty. If they are very rich they do it on a grand scale, and the drive in front of their home and the road outside will be lined with a double row of motorcars. Some specialize in “headliners,” and go to any trouble to secure their presence. The “headliners” may be rich, too, but they have to work for their money, whereas the rich rich can make a business of hospitality. As a reward their names are always in the society columns and everybody knows who they are. De Lyle Armbruster was fiftyish and stoutish, as bland and smiling as the head-waiter in the dining-room of a “palace hotel.” His wife, blond and animated, was Lanny’s age, supposedly dangerous for women; she kissed him and called him “old dear,” and was as glad to see him as if he had still been Mister Irma Barnes.
All proper homes now have a private bar gleaming with chromium, or maybe platinum—who can be sure? The room will be done in jazz colors, or paintings in the surrealist style; there may be photographs signed by celebrity friends, or original copies of cartoons from the great centers of politics and culture. The guests stand about, nibble tiny sausages and other delicacies stuck on toothpicks, sip drinks with torpedo and brimstone names, and chat about the price which not more than an hour ago was paid for the picture rights of the newest best-seller, scheduled for publication next week. Or perhaps it will be the seven-year contract which the speaker has just been offered but hasn’t yet decided about; or the star who ha
s been chosen to play the role of Joan of Arc or President Wilson. So you will know that you are in Hollywood.
The first person to whom Lanny Budd was introduced was Charles Laughton, whom he had previously known as King Henry the Eighth; the second was another round-faced and beaming gentleman, Charles Coburn, whom he had seen in comedies, always as a millionaire father perplexed by the insane behavior of his children. On the screen these personages were enlarged to godlike proportions and their voices filled a great theater. To meet them now, reduced to ordinary size, to shake hands with them and discover that they were made of flesh and blood, was an experience like walking into the Mermaid Tavern and being presented to Will Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. How does one address such supernal beings? What can one say, of admiration and awe, which they have not heard from a thousand autograph-hungry fans?
Lanny could say: “I saw you in Athens, and again in the town of Stubendorf, in Upper Silesia.” That was slightly better. He could say to Bette Davis: “It might interest you to know that Hitler showed me Dark Victory in his home at Berchtesgaden.” It did interest her, and she asked what the Führer had said. That was what Lanny wanted; for almost at once he became the center of a group, plying him with questions. People in Hollywood found it as extraordinary to meet someone who had been in the same room with Hitler as Lanny found it to be in the same room with Charles Laughton and Bette Davis. How did Hitler talk, and what did he eat, and what sort of table manners did he have? Was he really quite sane? And what about his love life? Above all, was he going to be able to knock out London?
VII
At one side of the ample drawing-room was a large overstuffed chair which bore a certain resemblance to a throne, and on it sat a round-faced ample lady who bore a certain resemblance to a queen in the movies. She rarely moved, but people came to her and made obeisance and paid tribute in the form of news: what they had done that day and what they were planning to do, what their friends had done—in short all the gossip of the studios they had chanced to pick up: who was now keeping company with whom, who was expecting a baby, or a divorce, or an elopement. They were all her friends, and they all called her Louella, and all she exacted in return was that they would give her an “exclusive.” Woe betide them if they ever broke faith with her on this all-important point!
It was rare indeed that anybody ever “stole the show” from this queen of publicity, and she frowned as she observed the phenomenon. To the hostess she addressed the question: “Who is that fellow that is talking so much?”
The hostess was glad to explain, for it might be worth a paragraph, and the De Lyle Armbrusters might be mentioned in it. “His name is Lanny Budd. He used to be the husband of Irma Barnes, the heiress who was the glamour girl of Broadway some ten or twelve years ago.”
“I read the newspapers,” replied Louella coldly.
“His father is Budd-Erling Aircraft,” added the other, putting first things first. “The son is a very distinguished art expert.”
“Why does everybody want to hear about art all of a sudden?”
“It isn’t that, Louella. It so happens he is a personal friend of Hitler, and has recently been visiting him.”
“Can that really be true?”
“He knows Göring, and Hess, and all the leading Nazis. He has been Göring’s art adviser for many years. He was with them in Paris when the armistice was signed.”
“Well, Genie, what is the matter with you? Why haven’t you introduced him to me?”
“I didn’t know whether you’d be interested, Louella. His pictures aren’t the kind that move.’
“Good God, am I never to talk anything but shop? And besides, the man looks like a movie actor. He’d make another Ronald Colman. Somebody ought to give him a screen test!”
The hostess needed to hear no more. She went over and broke into the circle, interrupting a description of the Berghof. “I want to introduce you to somebody,” she said, and of course that was a command. Lanny followed her, and the others came along; they must have been troubled by the discourtesy they were showing to their publicity queen. “Louella Parsons,” said Genie, “this is Lanny Budd.”
There was one chair, placed so that one person could be seated in front of the throne. Lanny was ordered to take it, and the others ranged themselves in a circle to hear what was going to be said. Even the bar was forgotten for a time.
“They tell me you are a friend of Hitler’s, Mr. Budd.” The voice was surprising, that of a child—a sweet little child of ten.
“Yes,” replied Lanny meekly. “I have that honor.”
“Tell me, does he make a practice of having American friends?”
“I think not, Miss Parsons. So far as I know I am his only American friend.”
“And how did that come about?” She didn’t add “my little man,” but it was exactly so that Lanny had been questioned by duchesses and ambassadors’ wives when he was a lad of eight or ten.
The visitor explained, respectfully: “It happened that when I was young, one of my playmates was Kurt Meissner, who grew up to become Germany’s most honored Komponist! Another boy at Schloss Stubendorf became one of the Führer’s earliest converts and visited him when he was in prison. The Führer never forgets any of those old-timers, and so it came about that I was brought into his circle.”
“And tell me, what sort of man is he, really?”
So Lanny was launched upon one of his suave discourses. He put everything he had into it, for he knew that at this moment he was right where he wanted to be. It was for the Hearst newspapers that Louella Parsons wrote her famous column of movie gossip, and she was one of the publisher’s intimates and a frequent guest at San Simeon. It wasn’t that fate had been so especially kind to Lanny, but that he had been especially careful in figuring where and how to make his Hollywood debut.
VIII
He didn’t tell about his joining the German Army in Dunkirk and being taken back to the Führer’s headquarters. He knew that was too much like a Hollywood story, and would discredit the rest of his statements. What he told were the little commonplace things: the Führer’s vegetable plate with a poached egg on top, his law against smoking in his home, the fact that you had to appear within two minutes of the sounding of the gong for meals; his fondness for Wagner’s music, his insistence that all the women servants and secretaries had to be young Aryan blondes, so different from himself; his fondness for his old Munich companions, such as Herr Kannenberg, the fat little man who had been a Kellner and was now Adi’s steward, and played the accordion for him in the evening, and sang “Ach, du lieber Augustin” and dialect songs from the Inn valley where the son of Alois Schicklgruber had been born. He explained Adi’s propaganda technique of choosing a big lie and repeating it incessantly until everybody believed it; he told the story of the Stierwäscher of the Innthal—the peasants who had wanted to enter a white bull in a prize competition, but they had no white bull, so they took a black one and washed it every day for a month and then insisted that it was white, and so they won the prize.
And so on and on, far beyond the limits of confinement to one subject that a cocktail party ordinarily sticks to. There were two men who were on the front page almost every day, and who were very exclusive—Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. There were few in Hollywood who could say they had met either, and probably not one who could say that he had met Hitler within the past half year. Lanny could say it, and prove it by going into details about the scene in the Hotel Crillon, where Hitler had made his headquarters, and the railroad car in the Compiègne forest where the armistice had been signed and Adi had done his little jig dance of triumph. To listen to all this was not merely idle curiosity on the part of Genie’s guests, for one of the stock products of Hollywood had become anti-Nazi pictures, and Lanny’s intimate stories would be useful to writers, producers, directors, costumers, property men, and on down the line.
IX
Presently he was telling about Karinhall, which was named after Göring’s f
irst wife and was the home of his second. Emmy Sonnemann, having been one of Germany’s stage queens, was somebody this audience could understand. Now she had a baby—and that too was becoming a Hollywood custom and a matter of public excitement. Lanny told what happened when you went on a shooting trip with this old-style Teutonic robber baron at his lodge in the Silesian forest called Rominten: how you stood on a high stand while the stags were driven out in front of you, and you picked the one with the best horns and shot him, and then after eating an enormous supper of all kinds of game you put on your overcoat and went out into the moonlit forest where the stags had been laid in the snow, and listened while the trumpeters blew a sort of requiem for the stags, called a Hallali. Surely Hollywood ought to use that some day! And also the pig-sticking in the forests of the Obersalzberg—but those shots might be a bit difficult to get.
Lanny came to the subject of the Reichsmarschall’s taste in art, which ran to gentlemen in magnificent costumes and ladies in no costumes at all. For years Lanny had helped him to get rid of paintings he didn’t want and to acquire others more to his taste; in passing, the expert remarked: “Just before the war came, Hermann was arranging to purchase a set of sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries from Mr. Hearst’s agents in London. He showed me the sketches of them, and told me a story about Sir Nevile Henderson, who had inspected the drawings. They were all of nude ladies representing various virtues, and the British Ambassador commented that he didn’t see any representing Patience. Göring has a keen sense of humor, and when you hit it he throws his head back and bellows.”