Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  “You want me to warn them about the Cagoulard conspiracy?”

  “No. The French people would resent your claim to know more about their affairs than they do. I don’t mean even that you should name the Nazis, or the Fascists, or the Falangistas, or any other group. But surely, as the spokesman of the world’s leading democracy, you can warn our people that the dictatorships which are spreading over the world are an evil force, the enemy of every freedom-loving man and woman. Surely it is your duty, as the leader of the free world, to speak out against aggression, and say that some way must be found to quarantine the aggressors and make it impossible for them to disturb the peace and order of the world.”

  Lanny had had his say, and he knew when to stop. The President sat staring before him with a frown on his face, and Lanny watched him. A large and decidedly noble head—or so it seemed to an admirer; graying hair, beginning to thin at the front and on top; broad heavy shoulders and vigorous arms lying relaxed on the bedsheet; blue and white-striped pajama coat open over a powerful chest. In that large head was a brain, and inside it, by some process beyond the comprehension of all the scientists on earth, a chain of thoughts was being generated which might change the destiny of the world. Lanny was afraid to breathe or to blink an eyelid for fear of interrupting those thoughts.

  At last the President spoke, his voice low and grave. “You are right, Lanny. I believe I will do it. It will raise merry hell, but the time has come for speaking out. I am scheduled to leave for a trip to the west and I shall be making several speeches. Would you like to write one of them?”

  All the savoir faire that Lanny Budd had acquired in a leisure-class lifetime failed him at that juncture, and he blurted out: “Me, Governor?”

  “I have a lot to do, and the mark of a good executive is never to do anything that he can get done. You have your mind full of this subject, and why not get it off? I don’t say that I won’t change it a lot; but you make the first draft.”

  “O.K., if you say so.”

  “Let us get the key phrases on paper without delay. Do you use a typewriter?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, there’s one over in the corner. Turn on the light and imagine yourself the greatest educator in the world. You are going to write a few sentences which all literate people on earth will read and give thought to.”

  “My God!” exclaimed the son of Budd-Erling. “If I am able to hit the keys straight!”

  This amiable great man was not above being pleased by his visitor’s naïveté, and he had learned to take his multiple duties with a flavoring of gaiety. “Don’t use too violent language,” he cautioned. “Remember your responsibilities!”

  XII

  Lanny went to the typewriter and seated himself, took off the cover, turned on the light, and put in a sheet of paper. His head was in a whirl, but the whirl was full of words and phrases, because he had been a talker all his life, and now for many years his talk had been of the perils of Nazi-Fascist dictatorship. Sentences took form, and he found that his fingers were equal to the task of hammering them out. When he had finished, he read: “The present reign of international lawlessness began a few years ago. It began through unjustified interference in the internal affairs of other nations or the invasion of alien territory in violation of treaties; and has reached a stage where the very foundations of civilization are seriously threatened.”

  “O.K.,” said the President, and Lanny’s head was more in a whirl than ever. But still, it didn’t keep another sentence from coming. He typed it and then read: “Innocent peoples, innocent nations, are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy which is devoid of all sense of justice and humane considerations.”

  Again the listener said: “O.K.”

  Then a third sentence, one which seemed crucial to its author: “When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.”

  “Excellent!” exclaimed the President. “Take that for your keynote. Everybody in the world understands the nature of a quarantine.” Then he ordered: “Read it all over to me.” After listening he asked: “If I say something like that, will you be satisfied?”

  “Oh, Governor! It will make me as proud as a dog with two tails.”

  F.D. chuckled. “Where did you get that phrase?”

  “Somewhere in England they have such dogs.” Lanny liked his fun, too.

  The President sat in thought, and it was not about dogs’ tails. “Consider this for a moment,” he said. “The German people have had some real grievances, have they not? There were clauses in the Versailles treaty which couldn’t be enforced and shouldn’t have been there.”

  “Indeed yes, Governor. I got myself into hot water by speaking out against them.”

  “Then suppose we make it harder for the Nazis by admitting that fact. Let us put in a paragraph that will cut the ground from under them. Take this—” and he dictated, phrase by phrase, while Lanny typed: “It is true that the moral consciousness of the world must recognize the importance of removing injustices and well-founded grievances; but at the same time it must be aroused to the cardinal necessity of honoring the sanctity of treaties, of respecting the rights and liberties of others, and of putting an end to acts of international aggression.”

  Lanny typed those words, and read them back. “Will that do any harm?” the other asked.

  “It shows me what it means to be a statesman.”

  So both were pleased, with themselves and with each other. “I want a speech of say twenty minutes,” explained the President, “about ten typewritten pages. How soon could you have that ready?”

  “I’ll do it tonight. Believe me, I won’t do any sleeping till it’s finished.”

  “Get it to Gus’s hotel as soon as it’s ready. I’ll tell him to expect it. I think I’ll use it in Chicago, where I’m scheduled to speak at the opening of the Outer Drive Bridge. How Bertie McCormick will foam at the mouth!”

  “Don’t lose your nerve and back out on me, Governor.”

  “I’ll probably change your text so that you won’t know it, but the substance will be there. I’ve had something of the sort in my noodle for a long time. I tell you in advance, nothing I have said in my entire career has aroused such a fury of opposition as those half-dozen sentences will—and it won’t be only among the Republicans!”

  XIII

  Lanny went to his hotel room, set up his own typewriter, and went to work. He didn’t need to order any coffee, for he was in a state of exaltation. Now, at last, he was going to change the world! Everything he had ever done in his life was preparation for this job. His head was so full of ideas that it was hard to sort them out. An exposé of all Fascist aggression, a call to solidarity of all democratic forces—and all in three thousand words!

  He paced the floor and ordered his thoughts. The Nazi-Fascist piling up of armaments; the efforts of the peace-loving nations for an understanding; the Covenant of the League, the Briand-Kellogg Pact, the Nine Power Treaty. When he had got it clear in his head he sat and typed—all through the small hours of the morning. He revised and marked out and tore up and retyped, and worked in a fever, until the sunlight was streaming into the room. The final task—the making of a clean copy—he might have entrusted to the hotel stenographer; but he thought: “Suppose F.D. delivers it as I wrote it, and then she remembers it!” No, he had to do it all.

  He allowed himself the luxury of one carbon copy, which he would seal up and put away in his safe-deposit box in the First National Bank of Newcastle, of which Esther Budd’s father was president. All the earlier drafts were torn into small pieces and sent down into the capacious sewers of the city of Washington. The first copy was sealed in an envelope and addressed to Gus Gennerich’s suite in the Hotel Mayflower. Lanny called a messenger and entrusted him with the precious missive, cautioning him that it was important and giving him a
half-dollar to stimulate his sense of duty. Lanny waited until Gus had telephoned: “O.K., Zaharoff.” Then he pulled down the shades, shut off his phone, hung out his Do Not Disturb sign, and slept the sleep of one who has succeeded in reversing the foreign policy of his country.

  BOOK THREE

  Most Disastrous Chances

  9

  His Honor Rooted in Dishonor

  I

  In Newcastle, Lanny found his father in a high state of discontent. Budd-Erling Common had lost seven points on the market in the past week. Other stocks had done even worse; business was receding, and another panic was in the air. After all that New Deal spending, nobody had money enough to buy anything, and goods were piling up in the warehouses. Of course Robbie blamed That Man; Lanny, hiding his guilty secret, felt himself more than ever the snake in the grass. He listened politely and didn’t say a word while Robbie denounced the madness of trying to bring back prosperity by spending; here we had piled up a huge public debt—and where were we? No place that Robbie Budd wanted to be!

  Troubles never came singly. Those C.I.O. organizers who had slipped into the Budd-Erling plant and poisoned the minds of the workers had now got to the stage where they were presuming to demand a conference with Robbie’s executives. There was supposed to be something called a Wagner act which compelled Robbie to negotiate with them, but he had set his jaw; he wasn’t going to recognize the act, he would close up his business before he would let any gang-leaders come in and tell him how to run it. Lanny wanted to say: “You are the original anarchist, Robbie,” but instead he told how he had just sold for thirty thousand dollars a painting which he had bought for a little more than four thousand.

  Robbie couldn’t but be tickled by news such as that. Better than he had ever managed to do in all his business career! There must be a catch in it somewhere, and he asked: “Won’t that old woman find out that you’ve overcharged her?”

  Lanny replied: “Mrs. Fotheringay is a perfect lady, and never mentions what she has paid for her art treasures. I doubt if she remembers for more than a few days. She got something that will bring her happiness every time she looks at it; and nobody found it but me.”

  The cautious father wanted to know what his son was going to do with all that money. He would have been pleased if the son had answered: “Put it into Budd-Erling.” But Lanny was noncommittal; he had something in mind that he would tell about later. The father said: “I hope to God you’re not giving it away to those radicals of yours.” Robbie cherished the notion that the “radical movement” was in great part the creation of his son’s perverted generosity.

  Lanny had thought it over and decided to feed his father some of that soothing syrup which he was administering to the rest of the fashionable world. “No,” he replied, gravely. “I’ve about made up my mind that the world isn’t going to change as fast as I hoped. I’m definitely done with politics. I’m going to retire and cultivate my own garden.” It was pathetic to see how eagerly the father gulped this down. It made him so happy that he forgot the stock market and the C.I.O. for the rest of the evening.

  They were settled in his den, and while he smoked a long dark cigar that came out of a gold-foil wrapper, Lanny told about his visit to the de Bruynes and the later one to Le Creusot. He didn’t say that he had undertaken to act as go-between for the Hooded Men and the Nazis; he said that he had talked airplanes—which was true—and that the Baron had admitted being uneasy because the Germans were forging so far ahead of his country. Lanny had told him what the new Budd-Erling pursuits were able to do, and now the Baron wanted to have Robbie Budd call upon him. Robbie didn’t need to have it pointed out to him that that might mean something really big. “I’ve been planning to see Göring,” he said. “I’ll see the Baron first, and that will help me with the General.” It is the essence of the munitions man’s technique to play two rival countries each against the other.

  Lanny told about the Cagoulard conspiracy and the fortification in the de Bruyne garden; also the talk with Quadratt, and the Nazi effort to unite all the different sorts of “shirts” in America. It was Lanny’s hope that his father might “open up” on this subject, but all Robbie said was: “The New Deal is doing its best to force something like that on us, and if they keep asking for it, they may get it.” Lanny was pretty sure his father had information along this line, but the only way Lanny could have got it was by doing with Robbie what he had already done with Kurt: pretending to change his viewpoint and approve the conspiracy. But Lanny couldn’t bring himself to take that step. Robbie would go far enough without any encouragement. With it, he might get himself seriously involved, and Lanny wouldn’t take that upon his conscience. Back to the ivory tower!

  II

  There was another bee buzzing under a psychical researcher’s hat. This bee made the noise: “Huff”—and then “Huffy”—and then “Huffner.” This bee said: “Key-master,” and then “American.” Upon Lanny’s arrival in New York, it occurred to him to consult the classified part of the telephone book under “Locksmith.” He didn’t find a Huff, or Huffy, or Huffner; so he looked for a locksmith not too far from his hotel, and strolled there and said to the man: “I have a safe in my home in Connecticut and have lost the combination. What do I have to do?”

  “You have to go to a man who knows how to open safes,” was the not very illuminating reply.

  “Do you know how?”

  “No, sorry; I’m just an ordinary locksmith.”

  “Can you recommend somebody to do it?”

  “The best man in New York is Horace Hofman.”

  Lanny repressed a start. Huff—Huffy—Huffner—Hofman! “Is he an ethical person?”

  “He was one of the founders of our American Association of Master Locksmiths. You won’t find any better man in the business.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “He has a place up in Harlem, with more keys in it than any other place in the world, so he claims.” The man produced his telephone book and gave Lanny the address. “Hofman with one ‘f’” he said, and Lanny thanked him and went to a near-by telephone booth and called the number.

  “May I speak to Mr. Hofman?” The voice answered: “Speaking,” and Lanny explained: “I am looking for a locksmith who used to know a party named Zaharoff.”

  The reply set a whole swarm of bees to buzzing in or around Lanny’s head. “I used to know a Mr. Zaharoff. I did a good deal of work for him.”

  “May I ask, did you ever do any deep-sea diving?”

  “I did that for Mr. Zaharoff, and very nearly lost my life at it.”

  Lanny wanted to say: “My God!” But his training in the social arts protected him. “Mr. Hofman, my name is Budd. I used to be a friend of Sir Basil Zaharoff, the armaments manufacturer. Is that the man you mean?”

  “That is the one.”

  “May I come and have a talk with you?”

  “Certainly. I am at the shop, unless I am called out on some job.” It was a friendly voice, and apparently that of an educated man. Lanny said he would be there in half an hour.

  It was a small but well-appointed shop, with large rooms in back. The proprietor was a man with rugged and much-lined features; his hair was white, though he appeared to be under fifty. Lanny introduced himself and was invited into a back room, furnished as a combination of den and museum; its walls were hung with more kinds of keys than Lanny had ever imagined to have existed in the world. “This has been my lifelong hobby,” explained the host. “Some of these are the newest and some the oldest keys ever made.”

  “You are no ordinary locksmith, I take it,” replied the visitor. “You might be described as a key-master.”

  “Now I know that you were really a friend of Mr. Zaharoff’s, for that is what he used to call me: der Meister-Schlosser.”

  “I have a strange story to tell you, Mr. Hofman; but first let me ask one or two questions. Did you ever hear of the cruiser Hampshire?”

  “Indeed yes. That was where I cam
e near to losing my life.”

  “You were diving for the gold on board?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Was there anything in your experience to correspond to this: Kitchener’s arm came floating out?”

  “I couldn’t know that it was Kitchener’s; but a human hand came floating out of a room we opened, and then two corpses. They nearly drove us divers mad, because we thought they were chasing us. The heavy door was swung by the current and we were trapped. One man was killed, another had his back broken. I thought my end had come, and when I came to in a hospital I found my hair had turned white. Did Mr. Zaharoff tell you that story?”

  “He never mentioned it during his lifetime; he told me after he was dead.”

  That statement never failed to make people listen. Lanny narrated how his father had been the European representative of Budd Gunmakers, and how he had met the munitions king at the age of thirteen and become one of his friends. When Zaharoff’s duquesa had died, Zaharoff had taken to visiting spiritualist mediums, and Lanny had brought one to him, and many strange and unexplainable incidents had occurred. In one of the latest Zaharoff had revealed his own death, a few hours after it had occurred and before Lanny had read about it in the papers. Recently, at another séance, a voice claiming to be Sir Basil’s had told Lanny about the Hampshire on which Lord Kitchener had died, and about the gold at the bottom of the sea, being covered with sand, and about a human arm floating out. Lanny had his notebook with him, and read the phrases he had jotted down.

  III

  The “key-master” told his story in return. He had become known in the capitals of Europe for his skill in opening safes and locks which no one else could master, and some five years ago his exploits had attracted the attention of “Mr. Zaharoff.” (Lanny had never heard Sir Basil referred to in that way, but he recognized it as an Americanism, and adopted it politely.) Mr. Zaharoff had invited the key-master to a remodeled old château at Biarritz, and provided for him a very elaborate dinner-party, at which paunchy and gray-bearded financiers from all over Europe drank champagne and danced with young girls until they could no longer stand up but fell asleep piled on top of one another. Mr. Zaharoff himself didn’t dance, and very soon realized that he had got up the wrong sort of party for the American; so the two of them sat at the abandoned dinner-table chatting, with a blond beauty wearing a diamond butterfly in her hair sound asleep across the munitions king’s knees. “When you invite such young ladies to parties and then don’t pay any attention to them, you are considered discourteous,” the locksmith explained; and Lanny answered: “I have been there.”