Lanny went to call on Lincoln Steffens at his hotel. After listening to his father and his father’s new business associate, the youth wanted someone to tell him that the world wasn’t created entirely to have money made out of it. Sitting in his little hotel room, confined by a cold, Stef said that the money-makers were having their own way everywhere; but the trouble was they couldn’t agree among themselves, and kept flinging the world into one mess after another. So there were revolts; and the question was, would these revolts be blind, or would they have a program?
Stef told what had just happened to an artist friend of his, a brilliant cartoonist of Greenwich Village, the artists’ quarter of New York. Robert Minor had gone in a fine state of enthusiasm to look at the new revolutionary Russia, and had then come to Paris. He visited the headquarters of the railwaymen, then threatening their strike, and told them what the Russians were doing. As a result, a couple of French flics had picked him up at his lodgings and taken him to the Préfecture and grilled him for half a day; then they had turned him over to the American army authorities at Koblenz, who had held him prisoner in secret for several weeks. They had talked about shooting him; but he had managed to smuggle out word as to his whereabouts, and the labor press of Paris had taken up the case. It happened that “Bob’s” father was a judge in Texas and an influential Democrat; so in the end the army authorities had turned their prisoner loose.
Lanny mentioned how his Uncle Jesse likewise had been questioned by the police, and had threatened them with publicity. Jesse had been sure they wouldn’t jail an American just for making speeches.
“This was a special kind of speech,” answered Stef. “Bob advised the railwaymen how to stop the invasion of the Black Sea by calling a strike on the railroads to Marseille.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s different,” the youth agreed.
The muckraker asked whether Lanny hadn’t been spied on himself. Lanny was surprised, and said he hadn’t thought about it. Stef replied: “Better think!” He imparted a piece of news—that two of those members of the Crillon staff who had tried to resign had had dictographs put in their rooms—presumably by the Army Intelligence. This news worried Lanny more than he cared to let his friend know.
“How do you know a spy when you meet him?” he asked, and the other answered that often you didn’t until it was too late. It was generally somebody who agreed with your pinkest ideas and went you one or two better. Lanny said he hadn’t met anyone like that as yet—unless it was Stef himself!
This world observer, whose ideas were so hard to puzzle out, told some of his own experiences since his return from Russia. The Intelligence had thought it necessary to dog his footsteps continually. “There is a Captain Stratton—”
“Oh, yes!” broke in the youth. “I saw a lot of him at the Crillon.”
“Well, he and another officer took the trouble to get the next table in a restaurant where I was dining with a friend. I saw that they were listening to our talk so I invited them over, and told them all about what I had learned in Russia, and had reported to Colonel House. I tried my best to convert them.”
“Did you succeed?” asked Lanny, delighted.
“Well, they stopped following me. Maybe the reason was what President Wilson did a day or two later. I suppose he had heard that I was being shadowed, and he chose a tactful way to stop it. You understand, he has refused to see me and hear what I have to report on Russia; having made up his ‘one-track mind’ that he’s not going to stop the war on the Soviets, he doesn’t want to be upset by my facts. But he knows how I came to go to Russia, and he has no right to discredit me. I was one of a crowd of newspapermen waiting in the lobby of the hotel, when he passed through and saw me, and he came and bent over me and pretended to whisper something into my ear. He didn’t say a word that I could make out; he just made murmurs. Of course his purpose was to tell everybody that I still had his confidence.”
“So now you can be as pink as you please!” chuckled the other.
V
The German delegation arrived, and the much-postponed signing was set for the twenty-eighth of June. The signers were two subordinates, but the Allies were determined to make a ceremony of it. The setting was the great Hall of Mirrors of the Versailles palace, where the victorious Germans had established their empire forty-eight years earlier, and had forced the French to sign the humiliating peace surrendering Alsace-Lorraine. Now the tables were turned, and with all pomp and circumstance the two distressed German envoys would put their signatures to the statement that their country alone had been to blame for the World War.
Every tourist in France visits the Versailles palace, and wanders through the magnificent apartment where once the Sun King ate his meals and the population had the hereditary right to enter and stare at the greatest of all monarchs gulping his potage and at his queen and princesses nibbling their entremets. Lanny had been there with his mother and Kurt, motored by Harry Murchison, nearly six years back; that lovely October day stood out in his memory, and as he recalled it he had many strange thoughts. Suppose that on that day he had been able by some psychic feat to peer into the future and know that his German friend, adoring his mother, was to become her lover! Suppose that Beauty had been able to perform the feat and foresee what was going to happen to Marcel—would she have married Harry Murchison instead? Or suppose that the Germans, at the signing of the first Peace of Versailles, had been able to foresee the second!
Only about a thousand persons could be admitted to witness the ceremony, and Lanny Budd was not among the chosen ones. If he had cared very much he might have been able to wangle a ticket from his Crillon friends, whom he still met at Mrs. Emily’s and other places. But he told himself that he had witnessed a sufficiency of ceremonies to last the rest of his days. No longer had he the least pleasure in gazing upon important elderly gentlemen, each brushed and polished by his valet from the tips of his shoes to the roof of his topper. The colonel from Texas wore this symbol of honorificabilitudinitas on occasions where etiquette required it, but he carried along his comfortable Texas sombrero in a paper bag, and exchanged head-coverings as soon as the ceremony was completed. Nothing so amusing had happened in Paris since Dr. Franklin had gone about town without a wig.
The important thing now was that the much-debated document would be signed and peace returned to the world. Or would it? On the table in his hotel room lay newspapers in which he could read that the treaty to be signed that day left France helpless before the invading foe; and others which insisted that it was a document of class repression, designed to prepare the exploitation of the workers of both Germany and France. Lanny had read both, and wished there was some authority that would really tell a young fellow what to believe!
VI
The telephone rang: the office of the hotel announcing “Monsieur Zhessie Bloc-léss”—accent on the last syllable. Lanny didn’t want to have his uncle come up, because that would look like intimacy, so displeasing to Robbie if he should happen to return. “I’ll be down at once,” he said.
In the lobby of the marble-walled Hotel Vendôme he sat and exchanged family news with his relative who didn’t fit the surroundings, but looked like a down-at-heels artist lacking the excuse of youth. Uncle Jesse wanted to know, first, what the devil was Beauty doing in Spain? When Lanny answered vaguely, he said: “You don’t have to hide things from me. I can guess it’s a man.”
But Lanny said: “She will tell you when she gets ready,” and that was that.
More urgently the painter was interested to know what had become of that mysterious personage who had paid him three silent midnight visits. At the risk of seeming uncordial, Lanny could only say again that his lips were sealed. “But I fear he won’t visit you any more,” he said. “You know about the public event which is to happen today.”
“Yes, but that isn’t going to make any difference,” insisted the other. “It doesn’t mean a thing.” They were speaking with caution, and the painter kept glancing abou
t to be sure no one was overhearing. “Your friends are still going to be in trouble. They are going to have to struggle—for a long, long time.”
“Maybe so,” said Lanny; “and it may be they’ll call on you again. But as matters stand, I’m not in a position to inquire about it, and that’s all I can say.”
The uncle was disappointed and a trifle vexed. He said that when the owners of hunting forests put out fodder for the deer in winter, the creatures got the habit of coming to the place and thereafter didn’t scuffle so hard for themselves. Lanny smiled and said he had observed it in the forests of Silesia; but when it was a question of scuffling or starving, doubtless they would resume scuffling.
“Well,” said the painter, “if you happen to meet your friend, give him these.” He took a little roll of papers from the breast pocket of his coat. “These are samples of the leaflets we have printed. I’ve marked on each one the number of copies distributed, so he can see that none of his fodder has been wasted.”
“All right,” said Lanny. “I’ll give them to him if I see him.” He put the papers into his own pocket, and sought for another topic of conversation. He told of visiting Stef and how Stef had a cold. He repeated some of the muckraker’s stories about espionage on the Reds.
“I, too, have tried the plan of chatting with the flics,” said the painter. “But I’ve found no idealism in their souls.”
Lanny repeated the question he had asked of Stef. “How do you recognize a flic?”
“I wouldn’t know how to describe them,” replied the other. “But when you’ve seen a few you know the type. They are always stupid, and when they try to talk like one of us it’s pathetic.”
There was a pause. “Well, I’ll get along,” said Jesse. “Robbie may be coming and I don’t want to annoy him. No need to tell him that I called.”
“I won’t unless he asks me,” replied the nephew.
“And put those papers where he won’t see them. Of course you can read them if you wish, but the point is, I’m not giving them to you for that purpose.”
“I get you,” said Lanny, with a smile.
VII
The youth saw his visitor part way to the door and then went to the apparatus you called a “lift” when you were talking to an Englishman, an “elevator” to an American. At the same moment a man who had been sitting just across the lobby, supposedly reading a newspaper but in reality watching over the top of it, arose from his seat and followed. Another man, who had been standing in the street looking through the window, came in at the door. Lanny entered the elevator and the first man followed him and said to the operator: “Attendez.” The second man arrived and entered and they went up.
When they reached Lanny’s floor he stepped out, and so did the other two. As soon as the operator had closed the door, one man stepped to Lanny’s right and the other to his left and said in French: “Pardon, Monsieur. We are agents of the Sûreté.”
Lanny’s heart gave a mighty thump; he stopped, and so almost did the heart. “Well?” he said.
“It will be necessary for you to accompany us to the Préfecture.” The man drew back the lapel of his coat and showed his shield.
“What is the matter?” demanded the youth.
“I am sorry, Monsieur, it is not permitted to discuss the subject. You will be told by the commissaire.”
So, they were after him! And maybe they had him! Wild ideas of resistance or flight surged into his mind; it was the first time he had ever been arrested and he had no habit pattern. But they were determined-looking men, and doubtless were armed. He decided to preserve his position as a member of the privileged classes. “You are making a very silly mistake,” he said, “and it will get you into trouble.”
“If so, Monsieur will pardon us, I trust,” said the elder of the two. “Monsieur resides in this hotel?”
“I do.”
“Then Monsieur will kindly escort us to his room.”
Lanny hesitated. His father’s business papers were in that room and Robbie certainly wouldn’t like to have them examined by strangers. “Suppose I refuse?” he inquired.
“Then it will be necessary for us to take you.”
Lanny had the roomkey in his pocket, and of course the two men could take it from him. He knew that they could summon whatever help they needed. “All right,” he said, and led them to the room and unlocked the door.
The spokesman preceded him and the other followed, closed the door, and fastened it; then the former said: “Monsieur will kindly give me the papers which he has in his pocket.”
Ah, so they had been watching him and Uncle Jesse! Lanny had read detective novels, and knew that it was up to him to find some way to chew up these papers and swallow them. But a dozen printed leaflets would make quite a meal, and he lacked both appetite and opportunity. He took them out and handed them to the flic, who put them into his own pocket without looking at them. “You will pardon me, Monsieur”—they were always polite to well-dressed persons, Lanny had been told. Very deftly, and as inoffensively as possible, the second man made certain that Lanny didn’t have any weapon on him. In so doing he discovered some letters in the youth’s coat pocket, and these also were transferred to the pockets of the elder detective. Lanny ran over quickly in his mind what was in the letters: one from his mother—fortunately she had been warned, and wrote with extreme reserve. One from Rosemary, an old one, long-cherished—how fortunate the English habit of reticence! One from his eleven-year-old half-sister—that was the only real love letter.
Lanny was invited to sit down, and the younger flic stood by, never moving his eyes from him. Evidently they must be thinking they had made an important capture. The elder man set to work to search the suite; the escritoire, the bureau drawers, the suitcases—he laid the latter on the bed and went through them, putting everything of significance into one of them. This included a thirty-eight automatic and a box of cartridges—which of course would seem more significant to a French detective than to an American.
If Lanny had been in possession of a clear conscience, he might have derived enjoyment from this opportunity to watch the French police chez eux, as it were. But having a very uneasy conscience indeed, he thought he would stop this bad joke if he could. “You are likely to find a number of guns in my father’s luggage,” he remarked. “That is not because he shoots people, but because he sells guns.”
“Ah! Votre père est un marchand d’armes!” One had to hear it in French to get a full sense of the flic’s surprise.
“Mon père est un fabricant d’armes,” replied Lanny, still more impressively. “He has made for the French government a hundred million francs’ worth of arms in the past five years. If he had not done so, the boches would be in Paris now, and you would be under the sod, perhaps.”
“Vraiment, Monsieur!” exclaimed the other, and stood irresolute, as if he hadn’t the nerve to touch another object belonging to a person who might possibly be of such importance. “What is it that is the name of your father?” he inquired, at last.
“His name is Robert Budd.”
The other wrote it down, with Lanny spelling the letters in French. “And Monsieur’s name?”
The youth spelled the name of Lanning, which a Frenchman does not pronounce without considerable practice. Then he remarked: “If you examine that gun, you will see that it has my father’s name as the fabricant.”
“Ah, vraiment?” exclaimed the detective, and took the gun to the window to verify this extraordinary statement. Evidently he didn’t know what to do next, and Lanny thought that his little dodge had worked. But when the detective took the bundle of leaflets from his pockets and began to examine them; and so of course Lanny knew that the jig was up. He hadn’t looked at the papers, but he knew what would be in them. “Workingmen of all countries, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to gain!”
The flic put the papers back into his pocket, and went on piling Robbie’s papers into a suitcase. “It is a m
atter which the commissaire will have to determine, Monsieur.”
38
Battle of the Stags
I
Riding in a taxi to the Préfecture de Police, Lanny thought as hard as he had ever done in his life. Had these agents been following him because they had learned about his connections with a German spy? Or had they been following the notorious Jesse Blackless and seen him hand papers to Lanny? Everything seemed to indicate the latter; but doubtless at the Préfecture they would have Lanny listed in connection with Lincoln Steffens, and with Herron, and Alston—who could guess where these trails might lead? Lanny decided that he had talked enough and would take refuge in the fact that he was not yet of age. Even in wartime they could hardly shoot you for refusing to answer questions; and, besides, the war was coming to an end this very afternoon! Many, many times in five years he had heard Frenchmen exclaim: “C’est la guerre!” Now, for once, he would be able to answer: “C’est la paix!”
The Préfecture is on the Île de la Cité, the oldest part of Paris, having as much history to the square meter as any other place in the world. Like most old buildings it had a vague musty odor. They booked him, and took away his billfold, his watch, his keys; then they put him in a small room with a barred window high up, and an odor of ammonia, the source of which was obvious. The younger of the two detectives sat and watched him, but did not speak. In half an hour or so he was escorted to an office, where he found no less than three officials waiting to question him. All three were polite, grave, and determined. The eldest, the commissaire, was dressed as if he were going to have tea at Mrs. Emily’s. At a second desk sat a clerk, ready to begin writing vigorously—the so-called procès verbal.
World's End (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 75
