Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  Perhaps right now was a chance for Beauty to have what she wanted. Sophie Timmons, Baroness de la Tourette, had come up from the Riviera for a lark, and now Beauty phoned to Emily Chattersworth, who came to town, and those three old stagers put their heads together. They had done so on previous occasions, trying to decide the destinies of this eligible but provoking man. Here he was thirty-eight—the dark secret was shared among the three who had known him from babyhood—and still drifting around at loose ends, a prey to any designing female who came along, instead of having a wife and settling down to raise a family in some place where these three conspirators could have the fun of watching. It was they who had made the Irma Barnes match—so promising, they still couldn’t understand how it had failed.

  The new wife had to be an American, they decided. There was a large American colony in Paris, and many visitors, and after due canvassing they pitched upon a damsel named Mary Ann Everly, a nice old-fashioned name for a debutante, just out of Bryn Mawr and doing her grand tour with her mother. She had soft brown eyes and a gentle manner, a quiet young thing; they all knew that Lanny disliked the noisy ones who would chatter while he wanted to read the speeches in the previous day’s Chambre. No less important, the family had scads of money; old Philadelphia people, the father a banker, Episcopalian and everything proper. The girl was modern—they all learn the facts of life nowadays, and talk about whatever comes into their heads.

  The way it was arranged, Emily was to invite the mother and daughter to lunch, and Beauty and Sophie were to keep out of the way, since it would look too pointed if the whole crew were there to gang up on Lanny. Not that they could fool him anyhow, but they must do their best. Emily would keep the mother busy, and Lanny and the girl would go for a stroll in a great beech forest, haunted by the ghosts of thousands of German soldiers—but the girl wouldn’t know that, and Lanny wouldn’t mind, knowing how all France was haunted by the ghosts of soldiers of every nation and tribe. Or he could take her paddling in a canoe on a little artificial lake. The match with Irma had been made at Sept Chênes, Emily’s place above Cannes; the locale now would be different but the strategy the same.

  IX

  Lanny had mailed a set of notes to Gus Gennerich, calling attention to the fact that his previous account of the Cagoulard conspiracy had been sustained in every detail; also predicting that there would be no prosecutions, and that the share of the army and air force in the conspiracy would be hushed up. Later he sent a memorandum confirming his statement that the Nazi embassy had a château near Paris where they held and tortured anti-Nazi Germans, and suggesting that it might be well for the F.B.I. to look into the rumors that such Germans in New York had been kidnaped and spirited on board the Bremen and other steamers.

  Now he prepared a summary of the state of the French air force as compared with the German; adding that he had got this direct from Mr. Tailor and it could be accepted as authoritative. Going over all this in his mind, Lanny decided that it constituted a good week’s work for a presidential agent. If all hundred and three of them turned in as much copy, F.D. would have his hands full indeed.

  As usual Robbie had invited his son to accompany him to Germany, and this time the son accepted. Since he hoped to make use of Kurt on this trip, he stopped in at a music store and purchased a new four-hand piano arrangement of an orchestral work by Hindemith; then he phoned Kurt, asking if he should drop in and practice it with him. Kurt couldn’t resist this temptation—despite the fact that the composer was a modernist; this poison had so infected Europe that not even a fountainhead of Nazi propaganda could entirely escape its effects. They sat side by side and pounded away for an hour or two, Lanny making some mistakes and Kurt correcting them; that was their old relationship, so they finished in a glow of satisfaction.

  Lanny told of his plans, and said: “You know Robbie has an important deal with Hermann Göring.”

  “I have heard so,” replied Kurt, whose business it was to know everything. “It’s been useful to us, and still more so to Robbie, I imagine.” A typical Nazi assumption, which Lanny accepted with due humility.

  “Are you going home for Christmas?” he inquired, and when Kurt answered in the affirmative, Lanny added: “I expect to stay a while, because I’ve been neglecting Hermann’s picture business and he may want me. We’ll get Heinrich Jung, and have a regular old home week. Perhaps we can call on the Führer.”

  “I’ll see if it can be arranged,” said Kurt. “He’s likely to have his hands full very soon. Schuschnigg has been making a lot of trouble and may have to be taught a lesson.”

  It was an indiscretion, of course. Kurt was human, in spite of being an exemplar of the master race, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to show an adoring friend and pupil how much he knew about his great leader’s purposes. Lanny would get off another rush note to Gus, saying that there was reason to expect an invasion of Austria in the new year.

  X

  Coming back from this visit, Lanny found a message to call Emily Chattersworth. He did so, and was invited to lunch at Les Forêts the following day; some friends she especially wanted him to meet. Lanny, suspicious as a much-hunted stag, guessed right away that the does were after him again; however, he couldn’t say No to an elderly doe who had been a second mother to him, and was now growing feeble and didn’t get about very much. All right, he would come; after all, yearling does are pleasant to look at, and it couldn’t do any harm to browse for a while in company with a carefully selected one. Lanny went up to see his mother, and found her looking as innocent as any tame doe in a paddock. She asked how Kurt was, and was politely surprised by the news that Lanny had had a call from the châtelaine of Les Forêts.

  Mary Ann of the Philadelphia Everlys proved to be about the nicest Everly ever. She was twenty but looked even younger; rather small, with the sweetest little round face, a tip-tilted nose, and wide brown eyes taking in every feature of this fascinating new old world. Of course she couldn’t really be as innocent as she looked; one glance at her competent mother, and Lanny could be sure that Mary Ann had been told what she was here for, but perhaps with a warning that this was a dubious man, who had been divorced by a monstrously rich wife because of “incompatibility of temperament.” But that wouldn’t keep him from being an object of curiosity. Emily, old darling, wouldn’t have failed to mention that he was an art expert of high repute, having some of the wealthiest collectors at home as his patrons.

  Lanny knew that he was there to entertain these visiting ladies, and he pulled out his best bag of tricks. He talked about this very splendid home and the many interesting sights he had seen here: Anatole France discoursing on the lawn, and Isadora Duncan dancing in the drawing-room, with Lanny playing, scared stiff for fear she would notice how many notes he was missing. And the famous people who had frequented Emily’s salons—a roster of the great names, not merely of France and England, but of far-off places such as India and China. Part of the time Lanny had been too young to understand all they were saying, but he remembered their faces, and what people had said about them, which was enough to constitute culture in the smart world.

  He described Hansi Robin playing the violin here, and Lanny’s half-sister Bess falling head over heels in love with him. He made a funny story of his proud New England stepmother, shocked by the idea of her daughter marrying a Jewish fiddler, and the surprise she had got when Hansi visited her home town, and everybody treated him as if he were the grandson of the Jewish Jehovah. Hansi and Bess were now in London, and next week Hansi was scheduled to play with one of the Paris symphonies; he was going to give his rendition of the Bruch concerto, which Lanny said was something not to be missed. Courtesy suggested that he should invite his hostess and her guests to hear it, and when the older ladies accepted, Mary Ann was so happy as to seem almost but not quite indiscreet.

  She had come abroad to see the places and things she had been reading about since childhood, and was prepared to renew all the thrills she had ever experienced.
Her eagerness was genuine and quite touching. After lunch Lanny took her for a stroll in the beech forest, and told her how a whole division of the German army had been trapped here; he described the scene of wreckage after the battle, and showed the stumps of trees which had been shot into splinters. He told about the elderly librarian, M. Priedieu, who had been so shocked at the sight of the boches dumping the Louis Quatorze furniture out of the windows that he had dropped dead.

  When they came back to the drawing-room, Emily asked Lanny to play for them, and he obliged. Doubtless Chopin is well known in the Quaker city of brotherly love, but its topmost social set might have difficulty in fitting him into its code of etiquette and ethics. He was an impulsive and unhappy lover, and the invasive and dominating George Sand carried him off and broke his heart and then made a novel and autobiography out of it. He died miserably of tuberculosis, and the only joy he had was putting his melancholy and anguish into music, along with the glory of his proud race. He made for himself a style which in course of the years became synonymous with piano technique; the sweeping phrases fitting the instrument as a well-worn glove fits the hand.

  Lanny played the F-sharp minor polonaise, which Liszt admired so extravagantly, and about which he imagined strange things. It is tempestuous music, full of martial clashes, and not easy to play; but if Lanny made slips, the ladies wouldn’t know it. When he got through, there were tears in Mary Ann’s eyes; she tried furtively to wipe them away, because a public display of emotion was so contrary to her mother’s code.

  XI

  Beauty of course wanted to know everything that had happened; she always did, and complained because Lanny left out the most interesting details. She wanted to pretend that she didn’t know whom he had met; he said: “Old goose! She’s a very nice girl, and I invited them to the concert tomorrow. But I’m not going to marry anybody, and I’ve told you often enough. Some day I’ll tell you the reason, but at present I’m not free to, so you’ll just have to trust me and forget it.”

  He had a row of seats for the concert; he was taking Beauty and her husband, and Sophie and hers, and Zoltan, as well as the other three. Robbie didn’t care for highbrow music, and anyhow he was to have a final conference with Baron Schneider before leaving for Berlin the following day. Lanny went to Hansi’s hotel to meet the couple and swap news with them. They were among the few who knew that he was helping the underground, though he had never told them how. He told about Kurt and what he was doing, and about the de Bruynes, and what he had found out about the Cagoulard plot. On this account he mustn’t be seen in public with either Hansi or Bess, but it would do no harm for him to attend the concert, or to come to this hotel after making reasonably sure he wasn’t being followed. He had brought the Hindemith score, and he and Bess played it; Hansi listened but didn’t care much for it. The ultraradical in politics was a conservative in music.

  It seemed to Lanny that his brother-in-law had never been better than in his rendering of the melodious and charming Bruch concerto that evening. He always made a good appearance on the platform, tall, dignified, and wholly concerned with his art. His pale ascetic features and large dark eyes gave an appearance of melancholy appropriate to a Jew in these tragic times. He had had two rehearsals with the orchestra and his performance was impassioned yet without flaw. Concert audiences in Paris are fastidious, but when they get what they want they do not stint their applause. They called Hansi out half a dozen times, and he played as an encore one of his favorites, a movement from a Bach solo sonata, very austere, and difficult to make effective after the sonorities of a large orchestra. The audience gave him another ovation, and his appearance was a triumph.

  What would be the effect of all this glory of art upon a young lady of susceptible age and romantic disposition? She sat next to Lanny, but he had forgotten about her, being concerned with the technical side of what his brother-in-law and friend was doing. So might a relative of the daring young man on the flying trapeze have watched his gyrations and held his breath at the perilous moments. But when it was safely over, Lanny noticed that Mary Ann wasn’t applauding, but sat rigid with her hands clasped together tightly in her lap and the knuckles white. He knew that she was having an emotional experience, and thought: “Maybe she’s fallen in love with Hansi—and if so, that let’s me out!”

  But no, it wasn’t that way; Hansi was wonderful, but he was a god that had come down out of the skies and would return there—along with his wife. Lanny was the host who had selected this entertainment and provided the tickets; and the three elderly Norns who had taken charge of Mary Ann’s fate had no idea of letting him retire to his solitude again. When the concert was over, Mr. and Mrs. Parsifal Dingle and the Baroness and her husband just disappeared without a word. The majestic Emily, accustomed all her life to preside over social arrangements, remarked to Lanny: “I’ll take care of Zoltan and Mrs. Everly; you drive Mary Ann.” It might seem a wee bit pointed, but the salonnière knew that Lanny was leaving for a long stay, and it was now or never.

  XII

  Had Mary Ann been told what was going to be done? Probably not. But the mother must have been told; she had looked this prospective son-in-law over, and had doubtless made inquiry concerning Budd-Erling Aircraft. So there was Lanny, driving on the brilliantly lighted boulevards of Paris, with this small-sized package of quick-burning powder on the seat beside him. Chopin and Max Bruch and a magnificent orchestra and la ville lumière and a thousand years of French history were all mixed up in her soul, along with a handsome man who still looked young and who spoke with a soft voice and seemed to have all the languages of Europe and all the culture of the ages on the tip of his agile tongue.

  He wasn’t supposed to take her home right away, of course; he could propose a drive, perhaps in the Bois, and if they stopped a while in a sheltered spot, that would be according to the etiquette of this automobile age. But without any such preliminaries he said: “Mary Ann, may I talk to you frankly for a minute or two?”

  “Certainly,” she replied, and shivered inwardly.

  “You are a lovely girl, and if I were free I should fall in love with you, I am sure. But, unfortunately, my heart is pledged.”

  “Oh!” she said, and all the life seemed to go suddenly out of her voice.

  “My mother doesn’t know it; or rather, she doesn’t want to know it, and keeps fighting against it. It is a very sad story and I’m not free to tell it; but I owe it to you to be frank, so that you won’t think I am indifferent to the lovely qualities that I see in you.”

  “Thank you,” she said; “I appreciate it.” She didn’t say: “You are presuming a great deal as to my state of mind,” or any artificial thing like that. She didn’t mind his knowing that she liked him.

  “I am taking a great liberty, I know; but I have lived most of my life on this old continent, and I really know what I am talking about—far more than I am able to tell. Take my advice, see all you can while you are here, and try to understand what you see, but then go home and don’t come again. And above all, don’t ever think of marrying any European man.”

  “You really think they are that bad?”

  “There are noble exceptions, but your chances of finding one of these, or of recognizing him if you found him, would be slim. In general, European men do not feel about women as you would expect, nor about love or marriage. But that is not the main thing I have in mind; I mean what is coming to Europe and its people. Don’t tie your fate to it, and don’t give your heart to anyone whose fate is already tied to it, as mine is.”

  “You mean another war?”

  “I mean a series of wars and revolutions that may not be over during your lifetime. You may live to see this great city laid in ashes, or bombed to dust and rubble. You may see the same thing happen to many other cities, and half their populations killed, if not by war, then by plague and famine.”

  “Oh, how horrible, Mr. Budd!”

  “I’m not free to tell you what I know; you just have to take my
word that I have special information that has caused me to say to my best friends: ‘Get out of Europe and stay out.’”

  “How soon do you think this will begin?”

  “Within a couple of years at the outside. It may be next spring; it depends upon circumstances which are beyond anyone’s control or guessing. When it comes it will be like a series of strokes of lightning, and I’m not sure that three thousand miles of ocean will be enough to protect anyone from them. But go back to Philadelphia, and marry some man of your own set that you have a chance really to know.”

  She might have made a saucy answer, but she was frightened, and shocked out of all pretending. She said: “Mr. Budd, you are being really kind and I am grateful.” He knew that she would be bound to assume that he was in love with some married woman, and that suited him. But evidently it didn’t suit her entirely, for she added: “If ever you find yourself near Philadelphia, let us be friends.”

  15

  To Have a Giant’s Strength

  I

  Robbie and his son went by plane, because Robbie was in a hurry and the season was not favorable for motoring; they could just as well rent a car in Berlin. They put up at the Adlon as usual, and since they had telegraphed for reservations, the reporters were soon on hand. The Nazis proclaimed themselves revolutionists, bringing in an entirely new order, but the fact was they slavishly followed the customs of the bourgeois world in all things that had to do with power and prestige. When an American airplane manufacturer came to consult Reichsminister General Göring, it was an acknowledgment of Germany’s newly won importance. When his son, an art expert internationally known, came with him, that was an event of lesser importance but not to be overlooked. Each newspaper had in its Archiv the items already published about the Budd family, and dug them out and wove them into the new story. Always Lanny writhed, thinking of his old-time comrades, now underground, reading these items and despising him as one of the renegades, the band-wagon climbers, the worshipers of the bitch goddess Success.