Said the man: “When I read ‘The Troglodyte’ am I going to find out how I fool myself?”
Said the woman: “If you’re really fooling yourself, you won’t recognize it.”
He laughed. “I have a friend who is a playwright, and has put me into a play several times, so he tells me; but I don’t think I should have recognized myself if I hadn’t been told in advance.”
“Well, you know what Robert Burns says on the subject. I won’t bore you by quoting it.”
“Perhaps you are the power that will gie me the giftie; and if so, I’ll promise to reward you liberally.”
“In what coin, Mr. Budd?”
“I’ve been trying to think what might be acceptable. The most valuable coin I possess is what I know about art. My mother was a painters’ model, and I knew painters and their work from as far back as I can remember. Then Marcel Detaze became my stepfather, and I watched him work and listened to his instructions during his greatest period. Now I earn my living as a student of paintings, whose judgment some of our collectors are willing to take. Does any of that interest you?”
“Very much, Mr. Budd.”
“Well, it occurs to me that you might be interested to travel through one or two of the great museums here in Berlin, and listen to some of those discourses by which I am accustomed to bewilder and charm our American Maecenases and Lorenzos, and cause them to part with their wealth. On one occasion I persuaded a Long Island heiress to exchange four hundred and eighty thousand cans of spaghetti with tomato sauce for a piece of canvas not much more than a foot square. It so happened that that surface had been painted by Jan van Eyck with a representation of the Queen of Heaven in her golden robes.”
“You wish to heap coals of fire upon my head, Mr. Budd?”
“No, I am offering to pour them into your ears. Would you consider an hour or two of my discourse as adequate compensation for that giftie of seeing myself as you see me?”
They made a date for the following afternoon.
VII
At his father’s request, Lanny called up the Reichsmarschall’s official residence, which was just around a couple of corners from the hotel. There was the voice of Oberst Furtwaengler, greeting him with his usual cordiality—but of course you never could tell what any Nazi was really thinking. They were invited to call at the Residenz at eleven o’clock the following morning; they were not being asked to lunch, the staff officer explained, because Seine Exzellenz was being carefully dieted, living on milk and mush and other baby foods, so that it was really distressing to be with him at mealtimes. Lanny took this gravely, as it was meant to be taken—for Prussian staff officers do not make jokes about their exalted superiors.
Robbie wanted to make the best use of his limited time, and bethought himself of persons he might meet in the interim. Dr. Schacht enjoyed the company of Americans, having lived in the United States; he knew everything that was going on in Hitlerland, and was a free and easy talker. The table in the dining room might be wired, but that would be the doctor’s lookout, not Robbie’s. Lanny phoned, and the great man said he was free for dinner and would come with pleasure.
When last the two Americans had a chat with Dr. Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht, he had been the Nazi Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank. He had been extraordinarily pessimistic in his conversation, but Lanny had guessed that it was all a sham; the Nazis wanted the rest of the world to think they were going bankrupt, so that the rest of the world wouldn’t arm. But now more than a year had passed, and calamities had fallen upon the square Prussian head of the world’s most feared financial wizard; first he had lost his job in the Cabinet, and a few days ago he had been ousted as head of the Reichsbank—so this time there could be no doubt as to the genuineness of his distress. Apparently he had come here for the pleasure of pouring out his tale of woe upon two visitors from overseas.
A curious-looking Prussian, like a cartoon by someone who did not like the breed. He was tall and big, his head square and knobby, his face bulbous and red; he had watery blue eyes behind large spectacles, and a prominent Adam’s apple inside an abnormally tall stiff collar. He was a heavy eater and voluble talker, and these two activities had a tendency to conflict; he would pour out rapid sentences in English, and then suddenly he would remember his oysters in their half-shells; he would make a stab at one, gulp it down, make a stab at another, gulp it down, and so on. Each time, the Adam’s apple would rise up, and then sink into the collar again; apparently the financial wizard would have the idea that he had got something out of place, for he would adjust the collar nervously, and then resume the pouring out of lamentations.
Presently Lanny observed that the two procedures were synchronized with the movements of the waiter in this decorous hotel dining room. When the waiter was present, the guest was swallowing something, if only a chunk of bread. When the waiter departed, the conversation started again. Once, when the man lingered too long, the old turkey-cock turned upon him. “What are you standing there for? Go on about your business!” The waiter fled, and the guest remarked: “This hotel is full of spies. All Germany is full of spies. But I don’t care. I have told them what I think. I have told the Number One himself; if he trusts the finances of a great nation to a vulgar clown who is drunk half the time—what can anybody hope for?”
What the Herr Doktor desired more than anything else, it appeared, was to express his opinion of another Herr Doktor, whose name was Walther Funk and who had taken both his jobs by vile and filthy intrigue. He was a lazy fat fellow who called himself a “thwarted artist”—he had wanted to be an actor and considered himself a musician. “Imagine, if you can,” exclaimed Schacht, “a man who cannot make up his mind whether he wishes to play the piano or to run a Reichsbank!”
“In our family we have divided the roles,” replied Robbie, with a chuckle. “My son is the piano player and I am the financier.”
“Exactly! Aber—when Funk gives an Abend and plays the piano for his guests, they all agree that he is a great financier; when he makes a speech to the Party chiefs, telling them how he is going to abolish the gold standard all over the world and compel all nations which wish to trade with Europe to use Reichsmarks instead of Sterling—then everybody declares that he is one of Germany’s admirable musicians.”
VIII
The two visitors got a fairly complete biography of this new finance administrator before the meal was all consumed. Dr. Walther Funk had risen in the world by the same method as Ribbentrop, a rich marriage. He was a Rhinelander, and in the early days had seen his chance and been the means of bringing Hitler together with Thyssen and the other steel and coal magnates of the Ruhr. They had undertaken to finance him, and Funk had clung to his coattails. Schacht, well schooled in English, quoted the bitter words of Cardinal Wolsey: “Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.” The large frame of the ex-minister was amply covered by black vicuna cloth, but he felt himself naked politically. Power was the thing he craved, and for which he had changed his political coat many times throughout his career.
He had invented “blocked marks” and other devices whereby the Reich could persuade other nations to part with their goods. Just before his recent dismissal he had been in consultation with Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, working out a plan to help the Jews who wanted to get out of Germany. They were to be allowed to take their money, but it would have to be used to purchase German imports in the country to which they went. The watery blue eyes of the financial wizard seemed to light up as he told about this; he was very proud of a smart device for pushing German credits abroad, and he grinned when Robbie said: “Aren’t you afraid that would rather have a tendency to promote pogroms?”
All such subtleties would now cease, and the Reich was going in for crude inflation, under Dr. Funk’s careless-happy regime. The printing presses were going to work on a thing called Steuergutscheine, or tax certificates
, with which all public obligations were to be paid. “They are simply a means of financing huge loans to the Party, which has grown until it is sucking the lifeblood of the nation. It was my crime that I refused to sanction this any longer.” The worthy doctor lowered his voice and looked about him nervously; it was a practice so common in this Haupstadt that it had a special name—the Berliner Blick, the Berlin glance.
The waiter had gone for another bottle of wine, so the guest added: “These pieces of paper fall due in the course of next year, and it means that the government will have no income then. What are we supposed to do?”
“A great many people fear that you may be forced into war, Dr. Schacht.”
“Nobody fears it more than I, Mr. Budd. The head of our state is taking the worst advice these days.” The speaker took another nervous glance, and then said: “I am a conservative man, I assure you. Many of my measures have been novel, but all have been practical steps designed to restore German economy to full production. That has been done, and now I feel that my usefulness to my native land is ended.”
So it came out why the ex-president of the Reichsbank had come so promptly at the invitation of an American industrialist. Not for a sumptuous luncheon, but to inquire whether this gentleman knew of any group of financiers who might be disposed to make use of his talents for their personal enrichment! Governments were ungrateful, and private industry was free and offered a place of refuge for a man of modest tastes like Dr. Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht.
Alas, the president of Budd-Erling had to tell him that America was no longer that sweet land of liberty which he had visited years ago. The same evil tendencies were coming to fruitage overseas; a greedy party and a swarm of bureaucrats had shifted the center of power from Wall Street to Washington. Nine years ago Robbie had been bitter against the Wall Street crowd which had taken Budd Gunmakers away from his family; but now, to hear him talk, you would have thought that the big Wall Street banks were run by sound conservatives like Dr. Schacht himself. Robbie didn’t know them very well, but he promised to make inquiries immediately upon his return. He said that American financiers ought to appreciate the abilities of the man who had managed to persuade Germany’s conquerors to lend her the billions of dollars with which to pay them reparations. Robbie said this without a trace of irony, and the Herr Doktor accepted it as an elegant and well-deserved compliment; they parted as two men of large affairs who understood each other perfectly.
IX
From the Adlon to the ministerial residence of Hermann Göring is only a couple of minutes’ walk, and the weather next morning was pleasant; but would Robbie Budd take that walk? He would not! Would he go in a taxi? Again not! He would have a hotel chauffeur in livery bring Lanny’s car and drive them and then wait for them in proper state. Everybody would understand that when you are going to call upon the Nummer Zwei Nazi—Reichsminister, Air Marshal, and Commissioner of the Four-Year Plan, to give only three of a dozen titles—it is a ceremony; the whisper goes all over the place, and even the haughty SS officers in the hotel bar are set to guessing.
Just across the street from the Residenz was the elaborate and highly ornamented Reichstag building, where the fire had been. The Nazis had had six years in which to repair the burned-out dome, but had made no move to do it; they left the wreck as a monument to “Red” malice—for if there were persons in Germany who knew that the Nazis had started that fire, those persons kept it to themselves. Lanny had been told that there was a three-hundred-foot tunnel from Göring’s residence into the Reichstag building, and he always thought of that whenever he walked or drove past. The building was guarded but left unused—as was the Reichstag itself; once a year or so it would be summoned to meet in the Kroll Opera House and listen to Hitler make a speech; then it would vote unanimous approval of everything he had done or promised to do, and at once adjourn sine die.
The SS guards at the door of the Residenz had no doubt been told that the two Americans were coming. Inside, Oberst Furtwaengler met them with every sign of cordiality and escorted them up the wide staircase to the Marshal’s private office. A heavy black table in the center, heavy gold curtains at the windows, a lionskin rug before the fire and a live lion cub lying on it—all these were the appurtenances of power and represented the powerful man’s own taste. Göring himself shocked them by his appearance, for when you have accumulated masses of fat all over your body and then suddenly starve it out, your skin is left full of wrinkles and folds, and there appears to be no way to have it taken up except by a surgical operation. Tailoring, of course, can be done more easily, and the Marshal’s bright blue uniform with wide white lapels and cuffs was new and perfectly fitted; but the great man himself appeared to be a bad job. The corners of his mouth drooped, and he did not rise to meet his guests, but held out a languid hand, saying mournfully: “You must excuse me; I am not myself.”
Lanny’s instant thought was: “You old rascal, you are play-acting!” Göring might have injured his heart, as reports said, but he would remain the old robber baron just the same, and he had every reason to expect a disagreeable interview with the president of Budd-Erling.
The two visitors could safely count upon Göring’s having read a transcript of their conversation in their hotel room, so they would follow along that line. They were glad to see him, they hoped he would soon be all right, and how were the lovely little Edda and the lovely large Emmy? The former had been named in honor of Mussolini’s daughter, the wife of Count Ciano, and in Lanny’s opinion father, mother, and grandfather were three of the most objectionable persons in the world. He suspected that Göring had the same opinion; but politics makes strange bedfellows, and in this case it had given a strange name to a Nordic blonde baby. Lanny sang the little one’s praises, and left it for his father to do the same for the retired stage queen, Der Dicke’s statuesque and showy second wife.
X
In due course they got down to business; and in a very short while every trace of Göring’s depression disappeared, and he became the greedy bargainer that Lanny had met six years ago in this same room, with the same ebony table and the same gold curtains, but a different lion cub from the Berlin Zoo. Then the Nummer Zwei had been making known his intention to rob a Jewish Schieber of every dollar he owned in the world; now he was trying to hold on to what he had got from a Yankee trader, and to get more, if bonhomie and bluff could achieve it.
For Lanny it was like watching two master swordsmen at rapiers’ points. Lanny had to hold aloof and keep strict neutrality; even if he should see any way to help his father, he would not dare to put in a word, for he had to keep friends with Göring even though Robbie might quarrel with him. The business of presidential agent was more important than that of any salesman of anything, and Lanny must remain the debonair man of the world, the combination playboy-art lover who knew all the headliners of two continents and chatted gaily about their characters and purposes. When this business duel was over he must be prepared to tell the reduced fat man that he had a customer for another painting; also about the dinner with the French financiers, and what had been the results of the Ribbentrop visit to Paris and the signing of the friendship pact.
The fight was over the meaning of certain words in a carefully drawn contract. Did “all essential appurtenances” of a fighter plane include, for example, its supercharger? This is a device which compresses air and forces it into the carburetor, thus enabling a plane to fly higher and get above its enemies. Robbie had believed that he had the best in the world; but now it had been reported to him that the Messerschmitt was flying higher than the Budd-Erling, and Robbie was insisting that he wasn’t getting access to the records. Göring insisted that superchargers weren’t included in the bargain, and anyhow its secrets were not his; it was made by a private concern and the government did not own the patents. That, of course, was nonsense, for there were no secrets kept from the government of Nazi Germany. If the gadgets were made in a separate plant, that was because Göring had ordere
d it so, no doubt to protect himself in this particular tight corner.
But Robbie couldn’t afford to say so, unless he wanted to quarrel. He had to say: “All right, Hermann, if that is your interpretation, I’ll be guided by it in future.” That carried a sinister threat; it meant: “All right, Hermann, I’ll have my gadgets made in a separate plant, and your observers in Newcastle will never hear of them.” That is the way business duels are fought, at least by the high-up experts; they don’t cry “Touché!” but just press harder and with more deadly concentration toward the vital spots.
A couple of hours of this was too much for the Reichsmarschall with a possibly weakened heart; he lay back in his chair and breathed hard, and said: “I’m afraid I’m overdoing it.” And so then, of course, Robbie had to quit, and say that he was sorry. The invalid, real or pretended, said that he would be forced to turn these decisions over to his experts; Robbie said, with all consideration, that he would be happy to meet with them. So for a while they talked about cheerful things; Lanny said he had a customer for one of the Canalettos at twenty-two thousand dollars, and Hermann said he was leaving it entirely to Lanny’s judgment. The money was to be deposited to Hermann’s account in a New York bank—something Hermann had arranged quite a while ago, and hadn’t seen fit to explain. Lanny had heard that the Nazi leaders were accumulating funds in Stockholm and Zurich, Buenos Aires and New York; he understood that it was a subject about which they wouldn’t care to talk, and he didn’t invite them to.
Instead he asked the Reichsmarschall about his proposed trip to Italy, and mentioned the possibility that Lanny himself might be coming there on picture business. He told very good news from Paris; the collapse of the Reds in Spain was having a powerful effect, and the advocates of the Russian alliance were about at the end of their rope. Der Dicke had never told Lanny who his own agents in Paris were, but Lanny had met so many Nazis there that he could make a pretty good guess, and he named this one and that and gave good reports—in short, everything that would enable a semi-invalid to retire with his mind at peace. That is the way to make a social success of yourself; and later, if there was some information that a P.A. needed, he could motor through the Brenner Pass and spend several pleasant days in the ancient Mediterranean town of San Remo, where he had attended an international conference in the far-off days before he had ever heard mention of a World War flying ace named Hermann Wilhelm Göring.