“I am not so sure the price will come down,” remarked the Deputy Führer. “There are a great many Germans who have the same idea as you, and are planning to move into both the Corridor and the Danzig district the moment it becomes a part of the Reich.”
“Maybe so,” laughed Lanny, “but this Polish landowner hasn’t met any of them. He behaved like the Jew proprietor of a second-hand clothing store, trying to pull a customer in.”
“Somebody ought to explain to those people that they can’t behave the way the Czechs did a few months ago, and have been doing ever since. The Führer is in no mood to be bluffed a second time, and I doubt if anybody can restrain him much longer. I know for one that I’m not going to try.”
“Nor is Hermann?” inquired Lanny, with a grin.
VIII
More than anything else the Führer’s closest friend wanted to know about the French attitude to their alliance with the Bolsheviks. Was there any chance of its being implemented by military preparations? Was there any possibility that secret exchanges of plans and information were now going on? Lanny told about the visit of Denis de Bruyne to General Gamelin, embellishing it somewhat. The high-up French officers were old and tired; the World War had been too much for them, and they hadn’t learned anything in twenty years. They looked upon Russia with the same abhorrence that Hess did, and their ideas of law and order differed very little from those of the Nazis. Day by day they were coming to realize more clearly that the Russian deal had put them in the wrong camp.
“For God’s sake try to wake them up!” exclaimed Hess. “That situation is a perpetual provocation to us, a red rag waved in the Führer’s face. Why cannot the French leaders make up their minds, and be either our friends or our enemies?”
“It takes time to overcome an hereditary antagonism like that between the two countries. The Führer must have patience.”
“Patience is not the most conspicuous of his qualities, Herr Budd. We see our country surrounded by intrigues and treacheries; and we are people who know our own minds, and say frankly what we mean.”
“I know; that is why I am here, as your friend and the Führer’s. Tell me this: can there be any truth in the rumors as to a possibility of your making some sort of counter-deal with the Russians?”
“No man that lives can say what might or might not come out of this situation. I can only tell you my own attitude—I would regard it as the greatest calamity in history. All my hopes are staked upon friendship between Germany and the Anglo-Saxon peoples, including your own. It is almost as if I were part English, having been brought up in an English community, and knowing them so well. During the twenty years that I have been the Führer’s secretary and closest associate, I have tried to persuade him to that point of view, and I know that I’ve had some influence—you will see many traces of it in Mein Kampf. But I am not all-powerful, and cannot work miracles. We offer friendship and make one concession after another; but the British ruling classes seem hopelessly tied to their balance-of-power tradition. How can we persuade them to trust us?”
“I see many signs that you are making headway, Herr Hess.”
“They are our friends so long as they see France rich and strong. The moment France shows signs of weakness, they become our enemies again. They play dirty politics with the Bolshevik bandits—just enough to keep us worried, and to compel us to spend more money on armaments. When the Führer presents me with fresh evidences of this treacherous policy, what can I say? When he quotes to me the ancient phrase, perfide Albion, what can I appear to him but a dreamer and dupe?”
“I hope you will not give way, my friend. I know some of Ribbentrop’s crowd, and have heard the arguments he presents to the Führer.”
“Not a day passes that I do not hear them, Herr Budd. Germany and Russia are natural allies, because we are an industrial country and they are agricultural. They can supply us with unlimited quantities of raw materials, taking our machine products in return. Our enemies in the last war set up barriers to keep us apart, and nothing in the world would cause those enemies so much pain as to see us tear down those barriers, and divide the land between us. Nothing stands in the way but ideological differences; and men who are cynical and have no real beliefs find it easy to contemplate taking off one coat and putting on another.”
“It is indeed a painful thing to contemplate, Herr Hess. Some who claim to know tell me that there is a strong pro-German party in Moscow at the present time.”
“I don’t suppose Stalin has shot them all—and possibly he wishes that he hadn’t shot so many.”
“I am expecting to leave for London before long, and one of the first questions Lord Wickthorpe is going to ask me is about this possibility of appeasement moves between you and the Soviets. There is nothing that worries the British quite so much.”
“That is the most dangerous element in this situation. We use these threats to worry each other, and presently we work ourselves into a situation where we are tempted to make the threats good. So far as I am concerned, I would rather you told the truth, that I contemplate the idea with abhorrence, and am striving with all my heart for a settlement of all the problems outstanding between us and both Britain and France.”
“And what shall I say about the Führer’s attitude?”
“I think he would prefer to tell you that himself.”
“He will have time to see me?”
“I am sure he will take time.”
“And not be too cross with me for having helped persuade him into the Munich settlement?”
“He gets cross with me because I am a German, and he thinks I should not let myself be taken into camp by Germany’s enemies. But it will seem perfectly natural to him that an American should be pleading for patience and understanding. He saw last time how the British succeeded in dragging America into the quarrel, and he surely doesn’t want that to happen again.”
“Indeed not, Herr Hess. My father and I find that as painful to contemplate as you find co-operating with the Bolsheviks.”
“Tell that to the Führer, and try to persuade him not to take the Jewish-owned press of London too seriously. I am going to see him tomorrow and will try to make an appointment for you. I’ll put him in as amiable a mood as possible, though I cannot promise, for just now the miserable Czechs are behaving like a gang of rowdy boys on our back doorstep.”
IX
In spite of all resolutions and all preoccupations, Lanny found himself thinking about Laurel Creston. Was she still at the Pension Baumgartner, and if so, what was she doing, and especially, what was she thinking about him? It was extremely rude of him to break off the acquaintance without a single word; but what word could he say? After all, was there any reason, because he had taken a lady to a concert and two art museums, that he should be considered under obligation to take her somewhere else, or to explain why he didn’t? She knew that he was here on business, and mightn’t she assume that he had become suddenly busy, and just didn’t have time to spend on sightseeing?
But Lanny knew that she wouldn’t assume that. She would assume that he was tired of her, and had decided that she didn’t come up to his expectations, whatever they were. Well, that was his privilege, surely, and no moral wrong. She had taken the right to tell him what she thought of him, and surely he had the right not to hear any more of it if he didn’t wish to! He had satisfied his curiosity, and now had taken the privilege of going elsewhere and meeting persons who would say pleasant things to him—or at least wouldn’t call him long names of Greek origin: trogley, a cave, and duein, to enter.
Her feelings would be hurt; and Lanny was a softhearted fellow who didn’t like to hurt anybody’s feelings, especially not somebody whom he admired and would have been glad to have for a friend. It was out of the question, of course; he had figured over it from every point of view, and given it up as hopeless. He couldn’t write her a polite note and give some excuse—because there just wasn’t any excuse. To say that he was too busy would be worse th
an nothing, because his work obviously wasn’t of that sort. He could surely have found a couple of minutes to telephone and say that he had been called out of town. Now he was back in town; and if she saw him, or read about him in the paper, or was told about him by somebody in the pension, matters would be no better.
He just had to drop her. He couldn’t have any woman friend, except those he had already—most of them old enough to be his mother. His duty required that; but then, Mother Nature has made man so that he often comes into conflict with his duty, a man-made thing the greater part of the time. Neither Nature nor God had made presidential agents, and laid upon them the injunction to pretend to love the things they hated and to hate the things they loved. Now Mother Nature kept bringing Laurel Creston to Lanny Budd’s mind, and causing him to worry because he was treating her with heartless discourtesy.
It couldn’t do any harm to think about her—so he told himself. What sort of person was she really, and how had she come by ideas so different from those of “good society” in the conservative old city of Baltimore? He might run into her again some day, either through the Holdenhursts or through her friends on the Riviera, and he was impelled to imagine how he would greet her, and what they would talk about. He mustn’t be too cordial; no, rather cold, dignified—as much as to say: “Yes, of course I am a what-you-may-call-it, and it doesn’t worry me in the least.” Lanny, in his double role, had to learn to feel the emotions he expressed, and when he made these speeches he was quietly contemptuous of the impertinent Miss Creston.
But then, another mood, he was curious about her as a writer: a woman of talent, who really ought to be encouraged. In the great Prussian State Library, which was on Unter den Linden close to Lanny’s hotel, were the many large volumes of the Reader’s Guide indexes, in which are listed all the articles which have been published in American magazines of any importance. These volumes go back to the beginning of the century—which was considerably farther than Laurel Creston went. Lanny was tempted to stop in and look up her name, and he found half a dozen short stories listed. Three were in bound volumes in the Bibliothek, so Lanny spent part of an afternoon in the company of the lady whom he had just permanently renounced.
He found these stories like the one he had read previously: full of sharp, not to say acid humor. They all dealt with Americans of the leisure classes, with whom the author had been brought up. The locale didn’t matter, for such Americans were always the same, well meaning but futile, and a target for satire in their efforts at self-importance. They all wanted to be “somebody”; they were bored at home, but took home with them wherever they went, and brought back only a few labels on their suitcases and a few tags of foreign words. “Coelum Non Animum” was the title of one of the stories, in a highbrow magazine; the title was taken from a line of Horace: “They change their sky but not their mind who travel overseas.” All three of the stories had what Lanny was pleased to call a “social”. point of view, and when he went out from the library he was enjoying the privilege of telling the author his true opinion.
Then he said: “Oh, hell!” and went back to the Adlon to see if there was any message from Monck or Hess.
X
Lanny watched the co-ordinated press of Berlin. Morning, afternoon, evening, it was always the same, and its circulation kept falling because the Germans thought, what was the use of paying money when you knew in advance what you were going to find? In these early days of March it was Prague which held the front page, for Prague was insulting the government of Father Tiso which the Nazis had set up in Slovakia, and Berlin was raving at Prague, and it was obvious that something was being prepared, and was not far off. In his speech just prior to the Munich settlement Hitler had denied that there was any such country as Czechoslovakia, and now he was proving it by splitting the Slovaks off from the Czechs, to make a separate meal of each.
In the middle of this, London broke into the headlines; one of its hateful “democratic” newspapers published what it alleged to be the terms which Hitler had served upon Prague. The co-ordinated press of Berlin didn’t say what the alleged terms were, but denounced them as fantastic, wholly without any basis in reality, and then went on to explain the impossibility of doing business with a people whose press was uncontrolled and irresponsible, Jewish-owned and Bolshevik or banker-subsidized. So Lanny knew that his airmail letter had reached Rick, and that Rick had known what to do with it. He knew also that the head Nazis would know there was a highly placed spy among them, and a serious leak in their carefully constructed diplomatic machine.
Lanny had been planning to attend an Empfang at the town house of his old friend Graf Stubendorf that evening. The top Nazis would be there, and Lanny knew that whatever they talked about, the first thing in their thoughts would be this mystery; they would be eyeing one another and asking, inwardly, who was the traitor that had sold out or the fool that had blabbed? Lanny saw them in his mind’s eye, for he had been several times to that palace of gray Swedish granite on the Königin Augustastrasse, and met the elegant company in the paneled drawing-rooms. He saw the poisonous little doctor, limping here and there on his clubfoot—he would not be fooled by his own propaganda, but would know that somebody had betrayed the Führer, and he would be turning his keen dark eyes from one face to the next, trying to pierce to the secret thoughts behind them. Very dangerous to be near “Juppchen” Goebbels that evening!
And the champagne salesman, handsome, urbane, looking like a diplomat in the movies; cynical, unscrupulous, and with a fire of hatred burning in his heart against England and Englishmen, who had judged him a clown and by no means the gentleman he aspired to be. He would hate Americans because they spoke English and looked English and were generally on the English side when it came to a showdown. He would look about the room and espy an American; the only one, in all probability—for Stubendorf was a Junker from the Junkertum, and only tolerated the grandson of Budd Gunmakers because he had been a visitor to Stubendorf since boyhood and had known the old Graf, and, moreover, had been married to one of the richest women in the world.
Ribbentrop wouldn’t know all that. His eyes would light on Lanny, and his thoughts would be: “What, exactly, is this Ausländer doing among us, and could it be that he is the source of this dangerous leak?” Others might have the same thought, and any one of them might be moved to pick up the telephone and call Gestapo headquarters and speak to the ex-schoolteacher with the blank face and the demon’s soul, whispering: “Has it ever occurred to you to watch that fellow Lanny Budd, who boasts of being the Führer’s friend?” Heinrich Himmler never went to receptions—he had no time for such nonsense; he would be in his office, day and night, giving hell to his subordinates because they hadn’t plugged that leak. He would be ransacking his files and his memory, trying to get some hint as to the identity of the traitor or fool; and if ever his attention were called to Lanny Budd, the career of a P.A. would be just about finished; even if they didn’t get anything definite, they would follow him everywhere he went, open all his mail, cross-question and alarm his friends and in general make it impossible for him to enjoy life in Naziland.
XI
Lanny decided to lead a strictly inconspicuous life for the next few days. He bethought himself of Emil Meissner, Kurt’s brother, whom he had promised to look up. The sound of Lanny’s voice over the telephone touched one of the deepest heartstrings of a Prussian general; he heard, not a middle-aged art expert, but a little American boy who had come as a guest to his father’s home at Christmas time, gazing with open-eyed wonder at a great Schloss with snow on its towers, and loving everybody and everything German. Lanny Budd had won the heart of Emil’s mother and father, both now dead; he had been Kurt’s loyal admirer and patron over a long period of years; and these things made him a member of the Meissner family so long as he chose to have it so. “Come to dinner, en famille,” said Emil, and Lanny replied: “Fine!”
The Meissners had never been rich people; the father had had a modest salary
as manager of the great Stubendorf estate. But Emil had a fine home and lived in style, far beyond what his pay as a general of the Reichswehr could cover. He had followed the practice of the Prussian officer caste, not to marry until he could find the daughter of a wealthy bourgeois family and induce the bride’s parents to settle a handsome dowry upon her. Since you can’t have everything, Emil’s wife was somewhat lanky and bony; but she had borne him half a dozen children, and the boys were all in military schools, prepared to follow in their father’s footsteps. Frau Meissner, daughter of a leather manufacturer, was keenly aware of her exalted position, dressed with elegance even en famille, sat as straight as a ramrod, watched her servants’ every move, and rarely intruded her opinions upon the conversation.
Lanny could look back upon the time when Leutnant Emil Meissner had been interested to expound the Hegelian philosophy, very abstract and metaphysical, and Fichte’s patriotic elaboration of the same; when he had attended art exhibitions with his youngest brother, and had played the flute in family Weihnachts gatherings. But those days were far in the past, and General Emil Meissner was now a professional man, absorbed in the technical problems of the most rapid and efficient killing of his fellow-men. Strange as it might seem, he was very little interested in those forces which might be leading up to war. “I leave politics to the politicians,” he remarked, implying a dignified and patrician contempt for such activities. An army officer’s job was simpler and more elementary: to be ready to go to war at the moment the order was given, and from that moment on to push forward to victory.
Lanny’s job was to learn something from each and every person he met. So now he became the son of an airplane manufacturer, familiar with the technical terms of that industry both in English and in German. Emil warmed up, for his specialty was the co-ordinating of air activity with that of infantry and artillery; he and his fellow staff-members amused themselves by setting such problems for one another to solve. This tall, long-faced, solemn, and tightly buttoned officer got out charts and diagrams, and behaved like a child with his first set of tin soldiers.