Lanny entered the Ministerium with anxiety. It was not merely that he was the bearer of bad tidings; it was that he might have to hear worse tidings—that in the process of streamlining the Luftwaffe and getting it ready for defense against Poland, the Air Marshal had been counting his single-gear superchargers and had found one missing! Or perhaps his efficient intelligence service had sent him word about a suspicious activity going on in a factory in Ohio which called itself “Ascott”! But no, there was no sign of a frown; there was the usual rolypoly, his lower half encased in white flannel trousers with a broad blue stripe, his upper half in a white silk shirt—his coat with all its decorations hanging over a chair. He gave a cheerful roar, and a paralyzing clasp by a hand with thick spatulate fingers and no less than four rings on them—one, the biggest emerald that Lanny had ever seen, so big that he wondered if it had been extracted from the crown of King Wenceslaus of Bohemia.
Hermann der Dicke was his old self again. He had made up his mind that nature intended him to be fat, and the German people liked him that way. Lanny had written him about the price he had got for the Canaletto: eighteen thousand dollars to the Marshal’s bank account in New York, and every little helped. He rubbed his hands together in a way that did not conceal the jewels. “Everything jake!” he exclaimed. “Everything Jim Bandy!” He had picked up Robbie’s slang, and thought it would make Lanny feel at home to hear it; he didn’t get it quite right, but Lanny didn’t correct him.
Instead he listened while the great man told about some new art treasures that had come into his possession—those jüdische Hunde had good taste, sometimes! Göring was making addition to Karinhall—so many people wanted to come and see him! He had selected the treasures he wanted for the new rooms—no expert needed for that. As for the rest, Lanny could take them to America and sell them in his careful conscientious way. “When I meet a man I can trust, I trust him,” declared Nazi Nummer Zwei.
XI
The painful revelation couldn’t be put off too long. Lanny said: “Hermann, I have some bad news. I hate like the devil to be the one to bring it.”
“Was zum Teufel?” demanded Der Dicke—he didn’t like bad news.
“The government has come down on my father like a ton of bricks. They won’t let him continue his arrangement with you.”
“Ach, so that’s it! Your Roosevelt!”
“That’s it, Hermann; and my father is entirely helpless. They threaten to cut off his orders from the Army, to boycott him completely. There is no doubt they have the power to ruin him.”
“Sauerei! What does he mean to do?”
“They compel him to send back your representatives—at least, to exclude them from the plant. They say your men have been engaging in propaganda.”
“Aber—das ist eine Lüge! At least, if they did anything of the sort, it was against my strict orders, and I’ll jail them for it.”
“The government people don’t offer evidence—they just say it is so, and that settles it. You know how it is with governments.”
Yes, Der Dicke knew, but he wasn’t going to admit it right now. “Dieser elende Roosevelt!—he is determined to have trouble with us! Was ist los mit ihm?”
“God knows,” replied Lanny. “It is a painful thing for us.”
He listened patiently while the German Air Force Commander exploded into a tirade against the President of the United States. He talked for five minutes about that “imbecile telegram” which had been addressed to the Führer. It was hard for anybody in Germany to realize that the affairs of the richest nation in the world could be in the hands of a person so crude, so utterly without understanding of the realities of European politics and the ordinary courtesies among statesmen. “What is it you say—a ‘stump speech’?”
“If it’s in the country,” replied Lanny; “if it’s in town, it’s a soapbox tirade.”
Göring wanted some explanation that would make Roosevelt comprehensible, but Lanny had none; that and the Einstein theory, he said, were problems beyond his powers. His family had never had anything to do with this black sheep of the Roosevelt clan; Robbie had spent a fortune trying to defeat him three years ago; this time he wouldn’t be able to do so much, because of the income taxes, which were sheer robbery. Roosevelt had built up an enormous political machine, and all the office-holders and the relief clients voted for him; and so on—all the data which Lanny had collected in the locker rooms of the country club. It helped Hermann greatly, and it didn’t hurt F.D.R.
XII
As soon as possible Lanny diverted the conversation to what good news he had collected: the rapid spreading of revolt against Roosevelt’s policies at home and abroad; the interviews Lanny had had in Detroit, the mass meetings he had attended—he didn’t mind exaggerating their number and size, for he could be sure that Göring’s agents were doing the same. And then, the return to appeasement of the Chamberlain government, and what Wickthorpe and his friends had said; the confusion in Paris—Lanny named Kurt, whom he believed to be Göring’s man, and praised the work he was doing. It did no harm to mention Abetz and Herzenberg, too—just to show how Lanny was circulating, and that he was too important a man to quarrel with over the question of a few airplanes.
Presently the visitor remarked: “All your people I have talked with, both in Paris and New York, are worried about the rumors of negotiations over some sort of deal between you and the Russians.”
“That is a complicated question,” replied Göring, “and those abroad are hardly in position to see it as clearly as we do.”
“That goes without saying; but those in Paris know the situation as regards France, and they tell me with great emphasis that things are coming their way, and there is no need of anything so drastic as a deal with the Reds.”
“Tell me what you have heard on that subject, Lanny.”
The agent talked for a while about Schneider and the de Bruynes, about Kurt and Abetz, and about an official high in the Embassy staff who didn’t care to have his name used. Friendship between France and Germany could be made, and was being made rapidly; nobody wanted to die for Danzig, and very few responsible Frenchmen were any longer concerned to keep Germany from getting back what she had lost at Versailles.
Der Dicke said: “May I talk to you confidentially, Lanny?”
“Indeed you may,” replied the other. “My father taught me in boyhood how to keep information to myself.”
“I am one of those who are worried about what is going on. We are western men, and we ought to stand together against the hordes from Asia.”
“I have understood for a long time that that was your attitude, Hermann. The question is, what can we do?”
“I wish that you, if you have a talk with the Führer, would tell him everything you have just told me. I have said all that I can say; you know how it is, if you seem to nag, you lose influence. There are powerful forces working against us—doubtless you know what they are.”
“I have a pretty good idea; and you know that I have never asked for information that you did not offer me.”
“There are some close to the Führer who think that we can win quickly in the west, and have strength enough left to turn to the east. That I do not believe, and the wise men of our Generalstab, men who have devoted their lives to the study of such questions, support me emphatically. The decision has to be made this summer—it may be made this afternoon while we are talking, and it will decide the fate of the world for our time.”
“God knows, I would like to do something; but consider my position—an American, and right after Roosevelt has pulled that ‘boner,’ as we call it—diese Dummheit!”
“You have more influence than you realize, Lanny. The Führer is a shrewd man, and he realizes that his greatest weakness is his lack of acquaintance with forces and personalities outside of Germany. You represent such a contact, and he knows that you are disinterested.”
“Of course I want to see him, and if I do, I’ll tell him what I think. I have a
lways done that; I should be of no use to him otherwise.”
“Let me tell you that Hess has a great deal of influence with him, and sees the matter as we do. It might be a good idea to approach him through Hess.”
That was a tip, of course, and Lanny said: “Danke schön.” At the same time he smiled inwardly, observing processes of intrigue in die hohe Welt. Hermann didn’t want to use up his credit, so let Rudi use up some of his! Hermann was afraid of “nagging,” so let Rudi try it for a while!
Hermann’s last words were: “Freundschaft mit Frankreich!” And Lanny knew that was the slogan he was to take to Berchtesgaden. Friendship with France—and, of course, its corollary: War against the Reds!
XIII
Lanny strolled back to the Adlon and sent a cablegram: “Robert Budd Newcastle Connecticut everything jake everything jimbandy Lanny.” He didn’t know whether it would reach his father in that form, but if it did Robbie would assume that there was a typographical error. Lanny would follow up with a letter explaining matters, and Robbie would have a chuckle.
Then he strolled over to the newsstand and bought an evening paper. Spread across half the front page was a headline: “Abetz aus Paris Ausgewiesen!” Rooted to the spot, Lanny read the text of a Paris despatch, telling in the Nazi style that the Jewish-plutocratic politicians who now had the upper hand in the French government had accused the well-known German lecturer and man of letters, Otto Abetz, of activities inimical to France, whose ardent friend he was. The police had given him three days in which to pack up his effects and return to Germany. It was not yet known whether the police intended to interfere with Herr Abetz’s papers, but the German Embassy had taken steps to make certain that no such crime was committed. The despatch went on to quote the Embassy as expressing deep regrets at this cruel and unwarranted accusation, coming at a time when Herr Abetz’s efforts on behalf of Franco-German friendship were beginning to be so keenly appreciated by intellectual and responsible elements in the country.
Lanny took a walk to meditate over that report. He had got into a position where he sometimes had trouble sorting out his real self from his role. This event would make it harder for him to meet the Führer and to gain his confidence; but, after all, what Lanny found out and how he found it out was of no importance compared to actual events in this diplomatic struggle. The expulsion of Abetz was a solar-plexus blow for the appeasers, and a sign that France was at last waking up to her peril. So, while Lanny’s pretended self was embarrassed, Lanny’s real self danced with joy down the triumphal way known as Unter den Linden.
“And besides,” whispered the P.A., “I’ll see Abetz here, and he’ll be more than ever in a mood for talking!”
15
Fools Rush In
I
Lanny called the office of Rudolf Hess and learned that the Deputy Führer was in Prague, expected back in a couple of days. That left Lanny with some idle time on his hands, and it is an established principle of theology, or perhaps of demonology, that Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do. The mischief found for Lanny had to do with Miss Laurel Creston, resident of a pension not far away. Lanny recalled a childhood jingle about a boardinghouse where they had ham and eggs three times a day; but of course that wouldn’t apply to an institution in Germany, where the marriage between Schinken und Eier has never been solemnized.
The son of Budd-Erling pictured the Baltimore lady devoting herself to the study of Karl Kautsky, intellectual leader of the German Social Democrats. Lanny had met him years ago at the school which Freddi Robin had helped to support—a shy but dogmatic old gentleman with a little white beard and spectacles. Present also had been his wife and their eldest son, all three of them active party workers, and named by their enemies “die heilige Familie.” The father had escaped the Nazis by the surest method, that of dying; the wife was in Holland, and the son, Lanny had been told, was in a concentration camp. Twenty years had passed since he had read their writings, and now, as he looked back, they seemed to him somewhat dry; but that is the way with works which are absorbed into one’s way of thinking—their contents become obvious and it is hard to bring back the thrills of first discovery.
Miss Creston was reading The Social Revolution and After, which investigated the question of how the organized workers were to take power and what sort of world they would build. The book had been written long before the Soviet Revolution—an unorthodox revolution, according to Kautsky-Marx, for the overturn was supposed to come in the most highly industrialized countries, and in Tsarist Russia not for a long while. Would Miss Creston understand that, or would she need to have someone explain it to her? Monck was competent, but a little hard to get hold of, and Lanny found himself in the midst of imaginary conversations in which he played the role of professor of the social sciences, very kind and fatherly. Of course there could never be any such conversations; he could never admit that he had even heard the name of Kautsky, and if Miss Creston mentioned it he would pretend to take it for a Russian name. Not Kautsky-Marx, but Kautsky-Trotsky!
Lanny had to admit that he had misjudged this pupil’s mind; it was not merely clever and satirical, it was serious and inquiring. He had talked to her on a lower level than she deserved, and he found himself with a desire to correct this error. It was possible to be profound and philosophical in the field of art as well as in that of the social sciences, and Lanny in his mind began framing discourses which would assist a budding woman writer in establishing her Weltanschauung and avoiding the pitfalls of cynicism and dilettantism. Also, Monck had asked him to give her a warning; that was really a duty, and he must figure out a way!
II
Next mornng he telephoned the Pension Baumgartner and inquired whether Miss Creston was still there. When he was asked for his name he replied: “Just tell her an old friend from America.” When she came to the phone he still did not speak his name, but said: “It’s the troglodyte. I have been away for a long time.” He did not say: “I should have let you know I was leaving”—he would just let by-gones be bygones. “I met some of your friends at home,” he remarked, “and thought you might be interested to hear about them.”
He had noticed a little Hungarian restaurant on one of the side streets off the Friedrichstrasse. He had never entered it, but it seemed a place where he was not likely to encounter high-up Nazis. Doubtless it would have been more gracious to have offered to come in a taxi for her—he had never let her know that he possessed a car. But if she was willing to come to a restaurant, he would let it be that way. He could not afford to be too cordial.
She came, looking very pretty in a light silk muslin dress with the big flowered patterns the ladies were wearing, blue flowers on white, and blue flowers in a little soft straw hat. He ordered Fogosh am Rost, Mohnstrudel, and Stierblut—which last, bull’s blood, sounds alarming, but is merely a mild red wine. While consuming it he told her about his visit home, how the Oriole had come to Newcastle, and how later he had stopped by at Green Spring Valley, and had inspected Uncle Reverdy’s paintings and played tennis with Lizbeth at the country club. He mentioned that the uncle had become an investor in Budd-Erling; he was pretty sure the niece knew this, for he had seen her name on the list of those who had to sign checks. But she didn’t mention that circumstance, so he didn’t either.
In the course of the talk he remarked: “I didn’t say anything about having met you.”
“Why not?” she asked, surprised.
“I somehow had the impression that you were not on friendly terms with them. Your point of view is so different from theirs.”
“They think that I am a trifle odd, but we have never had any disagreement. I have learned to keep my thoughts to myself.”
“That is what I guessed,” Lanny said. “I didn’t know whether you had told them about being here, or what you were doing or thinking about affairs here.” He wouldn’t speak the word “Nazi” in this restaurant, but contented himself with saying: “You disapproved so very strenuously of some of my a
cquaintances.”
“I don’t go to the extreme of being embarrassed to know you,” she replied, and he left the matter there. He would have to remain the man of mystery to her.
III
Afterwards they strolled and came into the Tiergarten, the great park of Berlin. They found a shady bench—one that was not painted yellow with a letter “J” on it. They sat for a while, he telling her about the proposed Baltimore showing of Detaze, and then about the other shows they had had, in New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Munich. He told funny stories about people who tried to pretend that they knew about art; one old lady who had thought that Lanny had painted all these pictures himself, and another had thought that Cap Finisterre was the artist’s name, and why did he have that title? There came a lull, and Lanny glanced about to make sure there was no one near; then he began: “Miss Creston, there is something I have had in mind to speak to you about. Are you doing any writing at present?”
“Yes, quite a lot. That is the way I live, you know.”
“It has occurred to me that you may be writing about the things you observe in this country. As it happens, I have known Germany for a quarter of a century, which I suspect is pretty nearly as long as you have been in the world. Consider carefully this word of advice: Don’t write anything about what you have seen here until after you are outside and not intending to return.”
“You mean—I might get into trouble?”
“I mean just that. You understand, I am familiar with your point of view and am speaking on that basis.”