“I have faced danger when I thought it worth while; but I cannot contemplate knowing that my life and that of other comrades depends upon the ability of a foreign girl of delicate rearing to face the Gestapo’s technique. I am wondering if it might not be possible for you to give her a warning.”
“How can I, Monck? I cannot reveal that I know you; and what other reason can I have to suspect that she is aiding in underground work?”
“You might guess it from her writings.”
“I have already done that, and have given her all the warnings that would sound plausible. She was not greatly impressed by my anxiety. She considers me a man without social conscience, and I have to let her go on thinking that.”
“All right then,” said Monck. “I suppose it’s up to me to see her again and lay down the law. I’ll tell her that the head of the underground forbids foreigners to take part in our activities. I’ll have to hurt her, and make her understand that she will be on her own from this time forth.”
VII
Next morning Lanny called up Hess’s office and learned that the Deputy was in Berchtesgaden. One wasn’t apt to find any fashionable friends in Berlin during the month of August, so Lanny decided that this was the time for him to settle down to the picture business. He spread out the bundle of photographs on the bed and began making notes of what he should say about this one and that. This Corot surely belonged in the Taft collection; this naïve Italian primitive without a name might appeal to Mr. Winstead; and so on. It was like playing a game with building blocks; you arranged them one way and then shifted them into a new combination.
For a while Lanny was completely absorbed; but presently he came upon a portrait of the French actress Rachel, in a Greek costume with a wreath of some sort of leaves on her head. He could hardly be blamed if that set him to thinking about Laurel Creston and the outcome of her singlehanded war on the Gestapo. Lanny himself had been carrying on such a war for a matter of six years, and why should he have been so disturbed by the idea of somebody else doing it? Was it because the warrior was a woman, and one whose appearance pleased him especially? Or because he couldn’t trust to her good luck as he trusted to his own?
Something like a little spark flashed in his mind. “By heck!” he exclaimed—and got up and began to pace the room. He knew what to do about her! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He would satisfy his own curiosity, and at the same time convey to her a warning, not from him, but from her grandmother, Marjorie Kennan—if that happened to be her grandmother’s name! Anyhow, a warning from the spirit world!
Just once more, he told himself, and positively for the last time. The sooner the better, for who could guess what quantities of stationery she might be buying—enough for several volumes of her memoirs! He went to the telephone and called the Pension Baumgartner. When Die Miss came, he invited her to lunch in the same Hungarian restaurant. She said, quietly: “I’ll be pleased to come,” and nothing more. She had learned that he didn’t care for chatting over the telephone in Hitler’s realm.
He arrived ahead of her and sat reading a newspaper, full of denunciations of the Poles, who had arrested some Nazi customs officials trying to function in Danzig. It was the thesis of the Nazis that they had taken charge of Danzig, and ran its customs office; it was the thesis of the Poles that the League of Nations had put them in charge of Danzig and that the Nazis had nothing to do with disputes between Danzigers and Poles. Just as you could “candle” a hen’s egg and see a tiny red spot and say: “This is the beginning of a hen or a rooster, and some day it will be clucking or crowing in the barnyard,” so you could read the news from the customs house of Danzig and say: “This is the beginning of the Second World War, and some day thirty or forty or fifty million men will be engaged in trying to murder one another.” It had a tendency to diminish your interest in a Hungarian luncheon menu.
The writing lady put in her appearance, wearing the same dress with the blue flowers. Lanny arose and greeted her, and she smiled in return, saying: “How nice to see you!” She took her seat, and Lanny looked about to see if anyone was watching. They were not an especially conspicuous couple; good-looking and prosperous in appearance, but no more so than the average run of tourists. Such were here by the thousands, inspecting the wonders of Hitlerland, where not merely the trains but everything else ran on schedule, where every doorstep was washed clean and every railing dusted every day, where every barnyard was swept and no weed was to be seen in any field—to say nothing of the unemployment problem having been solved, and every boy and youth put in a neat brown uniform and taught to sing hearty songs, which fortunately few tourists could understand!
She told Lanny to order, so he called for chicken paprikás, apfelstrudel, and a light wine. Then, when the waiter had left, he said: “I have just come back from a business trip to Geneva and Paris.”
“You take many trips,” replied the lady. “Your friends must envy you.”
“One comes to know all the roads, and they seem rather monotonous. I turn on the radio, and listen to music when I find the news too painful.”
She wanted to know what he thought of the international situation, and he remarked that these crises came frequently, and had done so ever since he had first opened his eyes in Switzerland. He wouldn’t say a word about politics in any restaurant in Germany—for waiters had a way of slipping silently up behind you, and at a signal a man would appear from nowhere, take a seat at a table close by, and start gazing attentively at the menu card.
VIII
Wait until the meal had been eaten, and they had strolled to a bench in the park. More and more Germans had taken to meeting that way, and the police had found it out; Lanny said: “I have an interesting story to tell you; but don’t be surprised if in the middle of it I start talking about the animals in the Zoo. I read that there is a new baby hippopotamus.”
“Also toucans have been hatched,” smiled the lady. “I think that toucans are delightful.” Then, after a look about her: “What is the story?”
Lanny had already told about Madame, and about the feeble spirit of Sir Basil, who interfered so greatly with efforts at psychic research. It wouldn’t do to be rude to him, because that might offend Tecumseh, and possibly hurt the old woman’s mediumship. You just had to submit to boredom, and after many weeks you would get your reward. Lanny’s might or might not have come—it all depended upon whether Miss Creston’s maternal grandmother had happened to be named Marjorie Kennan.
“How perfectly amazing!” exclaimed the granddaughter. “That was her name! What did she say?”
“Her home was on the Eastern Shore?”
“Yes; that is where I was born.”
“Lanny told the story, exactly as it had happened—except that he made it more emphatic that Laurel was in danger and that she should leave Germany at once. He discovered that his companion was interested in the psychic aspects of the incident, but not in the matter of her own safety. “That sounds exactly like grandmother! She was an extremely dictatorial person, and insisted upon trying to run the lives of every member of the family, and even of her friends. That is one of the reasons I left home—I wanted to think my own thoughts and make my own decisions.”
Laurel Creston wanted to talk about that grandmother, and what the “control” had said about her appearance and manner; also about the old mansion—it was quite possible that the roof leaked and that a pillar had fallen; Laurel would write to members of the family and find out. A most extraordinary thing, that an old woman on the Cap d’Antibes should speak the name of a person who had died in Baltimore several years ago! Was Lanny certain that he had never heard her name mentioned by any of the Holdenhursts or their friends? Lanny assured her this could not have happened.
All very interesting; but Lanny realized that it wasn’t getting him anywhere in the matter of Miss Creston’s future conduct. When he remarked: “You don’t take the old lady’s warning very seriously?” the reply was: “I didn’t let her regulate m
y life when she was on earth, and I can’t let her do it from the spirit world.”
“I found her warning impressive, and I wondered if you could be doing anything besides writing stories, that might get you into trouble in this country.”
“You read the Bluebook, Mr. Budd?”
“Indeed, yes, and your nom did not throw me off the track. As a story, it is a masterpiece. I wondered what you could have experienced or witnessed that gave you such an extraordinary realization of what is going on here in Germany——”
Lanny took a swift glance, and then continued: “When it gets a little cooler we must go and see the baby hippopotamus. I saw one in the New York Zoo many years ago and they are delightful creatures; they have the tiniest little ears, and when the flies bite they wiggle them so fast that you can hardly see them. They are difficult to raise because their parents apparently do not distinguish the difference between a concrete wall and the soft mud of a river bank, and they sometimes crush their offspring.” And so on, until a large stout Berliner had passed out of hearing. Then Lanny said: “I am really concerned about it, Miss Creston, because the authorities are bound to conclude that you have inside sources of information, enabling you to write with such vividness.”
“Imagination is what makes us writers, Mr. Budd. It is always incomprehensible to those who don’t have it.”
“That is the point—it will be incomprehensible to the police. Understand, dear lady, I am concerned to spare you what might be a disagreeable experience—not merely for you, but for the people who have given you information.”
“Yourself included?” inquired the lady, with a little laugh which was perhaps intended to take the sting out of the question.
“I see you won’t let me be serious,” he replied. “I am trying to persuade you that the nom-de-plume of Mary Morrow will not fool the Gestapo any longer than it fooled me. It seems to me more than likely that an investigation is already under way, to find out who is talking to you and supplying the unpleasant details about the Third Reich. If so, you can count upon it that your papers will be read in your absence from your room—and don’t imagine that locks and keys will help, for they will come supplied with the means to open your escritoire and your trunk without damaging them. They will know whom you correspond with, and when you walk out into the Tiergarten and meet someone, they will know that it is because you have something to say that you don’t want to have overheard.”
“Really, my friend,” replied the lady, “I appreciate your motives, just as I did those of my grandmother. But I say to you what I said to her: I have an impulse to write, and I want to write about the most important things I can find. I seek information, and when I find people so concerned to keep me from getting it I become more than ever convinced that I am on the right track. For your comfort, let me add that I don’t plan to stay much longer.”
“Ah, why didn’t you say that before?” exclaimed the man.
IX
Lanny had thought that perhaps in these critical times the Nummer Zwei Nazi might find it necessary to call off the week-end at Karinhall. But when he suggested this to the Oberst, the answer was that the great man rarely permitted his duties to interfere with his social life. He had trained subordinates to carry out his orders and could be sure they were doing so; in emergencies he could, like his Führer, govern from anywhere in the Reich. Lanny, who had heard both these governors bellowing over the telephone, smiled to himself.
The big six-wheeled baby-blue limousine drew up in front of the Adlon, creating excitement. Lanny’s exit through the lobby, preceded by his bags, took on the nature of a royal progress; he could see the stares and imagine the whispers: “Er geht nach Karinhall!” It took only a minute to drive to the ministerial residence, and here came Der Dicke, fully restored as to both vigor and rotundity, and beaming with the fun of being alive. Why did he enjoy so much the company of an American, a decade younger than himself? Lanny guessed that it was because he liked to have his jokes returned in kind. A vigorous man gets tired of the conversation of underlings, and wants something to sharpen his wits upon. The Reichsmarschall’s subordinates would not dare to make a remark that might offend him, even when they were drunk; but Lanny, without getting drunk, would return every rapier thrust, and the fat man would chuckle with delight.
Right now he was tired of politics and wanted to be the lover of art. Lanny reassured him as to the fine stuff in the shipment now on its way to New York, and Der Dicke told about the sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries which he was buying for the marble walls of his enormous new dining hall. He had accurate sketches of them, and wanted to show these to Lanny and get his judgment. He was buying them from the American newspaper publisher, Mr. Hearst, through a woman agent in London. “He would be a valuable client for you, Lanny.” When Lanny replied that he had never had the pleasure of meeting this gentleman, the other talked about him at some length; he had visited Germany recently, and made a favorable impression upon them all—a man of brilliant mind, a typical man of the West, tall, vigorous, dominating.
“It is hard for an American to understand the National-Socialist point of view,” remarked Göring; “and still harder to advocate it publicly. Mr. Hearst, I should say, does as well as anyone in his country.”
Lanny replied: “I have visited several of the cities in which his papers are published, and in every one there is strong sympathy with your cause, and a movement which you may count upon in a crisis.”
So they were back on the subject of politics. Lanny answered questions about American cities—New York, Boston, Washington, Detroit, Chicago; their various population groups, German, Italian, Irish, and how far these had retained their ancient feelings for the homeland and hatred of the homeland’s enemies. Lanny voiced his idea that the Führer’s unprecedented success was due to his shrewdness in choosing the items of a popular program, offering a hope of economic betterment to the masses; he was afraid, he said, that Mr. Hearst’s lack of political success in the States was due to his having forgotten the “radical” ideas of his early newspaper career. “In those days he was all for ‘trust-busting,’ I am told; but now his program is purely negative, and the result is, the people read Hearst but vote Roosevelt.”
“That is a valuable comment,” declared the Reichsminister who was also head of the Prussian State. “I have always urged upon my subordinates that we must never forget our promises to the people and keep renewing them.”
“I notice that you don’t say ‘carry them out,’” chuckled Lanny; and that was the sort of remark which kept Der Dicke amused.
X
Here was Karinhall, the magnificent estate which, if you could believe the gossips, belonged to the State of Prussia, but which Hermann Wilhelm Göring had taken over and calmly called his own. He had turned a hunting lodge into a palace, and in it he had put the lovely Emmy Sonnemann, tall blonde stage darling of the German people and now their First Lady. Lanny had made the mistake of being too cordial to her, or so his father had thought; now he would be a model of reserve, and direct all his admiration to the tiny Edda, the Crown Princess, though not yet proclaimed. She was a lovely little Nordic, and it was impossible to praise her too fulsomely. The same was true of Göring’s home and most of the things in it. In a conspicuous place stood a sort of lectern of beautifully carved wood, and on it a magnificently printed and bound copy of Mein Kampf, like a Bible in a cathedral. A candle burned on each side of it; and Lanny remembered his talk on the top of the Kehlstein, in which the Führer of the Germans had announced the birth of a new religion, akin to that founded by Mohammed.
Lanny put on his elegant white dress suit; which had been pressed by the hotel valet just an hour before his departure and had a suitcase all to itself so that it might appear without a wrinkle. He dined sumptuously, and proposed an eloquent toast to the success of National-Socialist ideas throughout the world. Later on he was shown the elaborate colored crayon sketches of the Flemish tapestries which were to adorn the walls of the
new dining hall. They represented various Nordic blonde ladies in the altogether, and to make it proper they were labeled after various virtues: Goodness, Mercy, Purity, and so on. Göring told how he had shown these sketches to the British ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson, a tall and proper gentleman who looked not a little like his Prime Minister, and had the same first name, though he spelled it, perhaps out of courtesy, with one letter less. Sir Nevile had commented on the various ladies, and that he did not see Patience among them. Hermann considered this such an excellent Witz that he laughed even in the retelling.
Said the master of Karinhall: “I think the correct Englishman was a little shocked by the idea of so much nakedness in a dining room—nicht wahr, Lanny?” When Lanny opined that it might easily have been so, Der Dicke continued: “These ladies will send thrills all over me and increase my appetite—so, why not?” He added: “Of course I always think of Emmy!” He looked at his wife, then Cried: “Look at her blushing!”—and burst into a roar of laughter. Not for the first time, the son of Budd-Erling imagined himself in the castle of one of those old Teutonic robber barons, of a time even earlier than the weaving of the Flemish tapestries.
XI
Sir Nevile and his puritanical traditions brought up the subject of politics again—no keeping off it! The ambassador had gone to London to report. What was he advising, and what Was London going to do? Lanny wouldn’t say outtright: “Britain will be afraid to move,” for that might have been encouraging war. He wouldn’t say: “Britain will keep her word to Poland,” for that might have provoked Göring to a tirade. The P.A. said: “There is a tug of war going on, and Whitehall sways this way and that. The main problem is how to control the irresponsible press.”
“We have long understood that,” replied Der Dicke. “It compels us to mobilize our armies—which is a costly procedure.” He didn’t say at any time in the course of the evening: “We are going to attack Poland.” He said: “The Führer has made up his mind, and the task of dissuading him would be a hard one. I stuck out my neck the last time, and am resolved not to do it again.”