Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  He gave out, and stopped at one of the turns, saying: “It is too far to climb this afternoon; but some day next autumn, when it is done, I will take you to it. Schauen Sie mal!” He pointed to a spot high up on the mountainside, to what appeared to be a gray cliff. “Sehen Sie etwas?”

  Lanny could see nothing, and his host explained that he wasn’t supposed to; the entrance to the Kehlsteinhaus was expertly camouflaged and invisible from below. The road wound up there and entered into a tunnel cut into the mountain. When it was done, there would be bronze doors that opened automatically at the approach of a car and closed behind it. Inside was a shaft going straight up through the mountain, a distance of some two hundred meters. There was an elevator in the shaft, now used by the workers; when the task was completed, it would be replaced by a guest elevator accommodating eighteen persons. Everything would be run by electricity, of course. At the top would be a real retreat, where nobody could ever interfere with the meditations of a dreamer of new worlds. The house would be small, with just room for the Führer and a couple of attendants. The living room would be glass on three sides, and would overlook these Alps for a hundred miles. “Believe me,” said Adi, “the scenery is not to be forgotten.”

  “It appears that you Germans have the love of mountains in your blood,” remarked the visitor.

  “That is true. My great teacher, Professor Haushofer, has shown me on a map that our people, emigrating to the east and southeast, have always avoided the lowlands and settled in the higher and more wooded country. And you know what a part mountains and forests have played in our legends and our art. When the gods ascend to Valhalla on a rainbow, it starts from a mountaintop.”

  “I will play you the music when we get back to the house,” said the smiling Lanny. “Will you permit me to suggest a name for your retreat when it is finished? Perhaps others wouldn’t understand, but you and I and Herr Hess can keep it as our secret. Call it ‘Mohammed’s Mountain.’”

  The Führer of the Nazis looked at his guest for a moment, startled; then he began to laugh, and was so pleased over the Witz that he chuckled all the way around a half-turn in General Todt’s masterpiece of road construction.

  VIII

  After dinner the Führer indicated his desire for some music. Brassin’s piano transcription of Siegfried was produced, and Lanny played first the Waldweben and then the Feuerzauber. This music of forest and mountain was directed at Adi, a reminder of their recent conversation; it might have been in these Alpine forests that the little bird had sung to the young hero, and it might have been on the Kehlstein’s top that the magic fire had protected the sleeping maiden. Beautiful beyond expression was the soul of the German hero, and tragic was his doom, to have a spear driven through his back by a treacherous foe. Truly the time had come for a new dispensation, a legend in which that doom should be averted; someone should warn the hero, and let him be the first to throw the spear!

  The music over, the Führer disappeared, and Hess signed to Lanny, who went to Madame’s room and told her to be prepared for another visitor. Afterwards Lanny went to Hess’s apartment, close to the master’s, and they sat and talked while awaiting developments. Lanny was interested to probe the mind of this silent man and learn about his life. He had been born in Alexandria, Egypt, and Tecumseh had talked about seeing a blue sea with many ships, and a dark people; this had sounded mysterious—but Lanny soon decided that, so far as Hess was concerned, the mystery was all on the outside, and that the intelligence behind it was commonplace.

  Rudolf Hess was the perfect subordinate; he had only one thought in the world, which was to please Hitler and help him. Hitler had told him to run the Party and make it a fit instrument to run Germany; all right, the Deputy had taken up that burden—which meant filling his mind with the details of thousands of personalities and as many jobs, making sure that the round pegs got into the round holes and the square into the square. He would follow the pattern of Adi himself, and become furious and terrible, and so get his orders obeyed. He wasn’t naturally a cruel person, Lanny judged; he did what his job required. The same thing was doubtless true of Hitler, who had a sentimental streak and was devoted to children, also kept a great many pet birds and was sad when one of them died. Perhaps it could have been said of Mohammed: he would never have killed people if only they had been willing to submit promptly to the will of Allah as revealed to Allah’s prophet.

  Concerning psychic and occult matters the Deputy Führer was not very well instructed, and Lanny thought it would be easy to take him in, if ever he wanted to—and he might. Hess had accepted the idea of spirits naïvely, and apparently didn’t know that there were other theories by which the phenomena might be accounted for. He asked questions about these, and Lanny told what he had read, without committing himself either way. “I don’t know” is easy to say, but is unsatisfactory to many minds; and Hess had by now made up his mind that he had talked to the spirits of Franz Dieckhoff and the soldier Hans. Why should a man’s own subconscious mind want to play tricks upon himself? It was a silly idea. Lanny could have pointed out many things that seemed equally silly to him, but were in the book which the Führer and his Deputy had composed. They had told the German Volk how they were going to deceive the German Volk, and had told Germany’s enemies how they were going to thwart and defeat those enemies.

  “Tell me a little about Pröfenik,” suggested the guest, “and why you don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t think he has ever played any tricks on me,” replied the Deputy Führer. “But he produced physical phenomena for persons I know, and they thought the whole thing was faked.”

  “I found him interesting,” declared the American. “He talked about matters which had puzzled me, and I think he threw light on them. How would it do if you and I were to pay a call on him, sometime when we are in Berlin?”

  “By all means let us do it. I’d be interested to see what you make of that old fellow.”

  IX

  Somewhere inside Lanny was a shivering all this time—because Adi was with Madame, and what might be happening? It might be the worst—and so indeed it proved. There came a tap upon the door—one of those good-looking young secretaries, betraying agitation. “The Führer wants you at once; in his study.” Hess leaped up without a word and left the room with long strides.

  Lanny hurried to Madame, and found her slumped in her chair, writhing as if in pain, and moaning. He knew what that meant; something had gone wrong with the séance, and he had a long job of comforting and consoling to do. She had come out of her trance, and he put his arm about her flabby old shoulders and took one of her trembling soft hands and started talking to her as to a sick or badly frightened child. “Never mind, Madame; it’s all right, there’s no harm done. I am here and you are safe.”

  She went on groaning; she suffered pain whenever a séance was broken off abruptly. Lanny half lifted her and half led her to the bed, and there she curled up, weeping; it was a nervous spasm, which she described as something clutching her stomach; he judged it was the solar plexus. He got a bottle of smelling-salts which she kept on her dresser. He went on murmuring words of sympathy and affection, for that was what a poor, lonely, and frightened old woman most needed in the world—somebody to be a son to her and care for her, even if these shocks, which enraged Tecumseh, should cause him to desert her and so ruin her psychic gift.

  Presently she murmured: “Who is that man—that terrible man?” Lanny went and shut the door of the room, and then said: “Never mind, Madame; he is a sick man, and perhaps the spirits offended him.”

  “When I came out of my trance he was rushing up and down the room, cursing and screaming. What is the matter with him?”

  “He is a very unhappy man, and something must have pained him deeply; some memory.”

  “I never heard of such behavior. I am afraid of him. I don’t want to stay in the house with him.”

  “He won’t do you any harm, Madame, I assure you. I won’t let any harm come
to you.”

  “He heard me groan and he shouted to me to shut up; then he rushed out of the room. I don’t want him to come near me again.”

  “I doubt if he will want to. Don’t worry; it will come out all right. People have unhappy memories, things they cannot bear to be reminded of. Perhaps the spirits insulted him, as they did Sir Basil the first time.”

  “I am no longer so young as I was, and I cannot stand such things. Tecumseh will be furious, I know.”

  Lanny had to go on soothing this near-child, teasing her a little, also. He told her that her performance must have been extraordinarily good—really it was a compliment that was paid her, for a man didn’t get excited about any revelation unless it was true. She was the most wonderful medium that Lanny had ever met, and he had tried dozens of them. Even if she never produced another spirit she had earned her place in the books—Lanny was going to have somebody write a book about her some day, and it would have her picture as a frontispiece. So on until he got her calmed, and she promised to go to sleep and not worry about the incident any more. But she would surely lock the door of her room on the inside!

  X

  Next morning the Führer appeared at breakfast, affable as usual, but apt to become preoccupied without notice. He said nothing to Lanny about what had happened; Hess, meeting the guest in course of the morning, remarked: “You must excuse that little mishap. Our Führer has many painful memories in his past.”

  “I understand, Herr Reichsminister. He has suffered everything the German people have suffered; if it were not so, he could not represent them and redeem them as he is doing.” A carefully thought-out remark, which proved to be exactly right. The Deputy was gratified, and Lanny could be sure he would repeat the words.

  “I hope the old woman was not too much upset, Herr Budd.”

  “I saw her this morning and she is all right. You can be sure she hasn’t the least idea of what goes on at a séance—her trance is complete. So she couldn’t talk about what happened even if she wanted to.”

  “Thank you, Herr Budd. I should like to try her again myself, if it would be agreeable.”

  “Certainly—and any of your friends, if you wish. That is what we came for.”

  Lanny went to reading the morning papers, which were flown from Berlin and motored from Munich, along with the mail. He thought the unfortunate episode was closed, but he failed to allow for the power of gossip in a small community. Humans are gregarious animals, which have lived in herds and hordes and households for millions of years; what each of them feels and does and says is of importance to the others—and especially whatever goes on in the mind of the Old Man of the Tribe, upon whose whims the life of all the others depends.

  Lanny had received some mail forwarded from Bienvenu, and went to his room to write a letter; there he found one of those attractive young Aryan females, engaged in making the bed. She had already had a chance to look upon him, and had evidently found him good; her smiles told him that if he were to close the door and lock it, and then kiss her, she would not reject his advances. This was in accordance with the Nazi sex-code, but Lanny didn’t want any of it. He got what he needed out of his suitcase and was about to leave the room, when the girl said, in a low voice: “Herr Budd, darf ich etwas sagen?”—may I say something?

  Lanny stopped and said: “Ja, freilich.”

  She came closer, and whispered: “What happened last night: it was Geli.”

  “So?” replied Lanny. “Wirklich?”

  “You know that story?”

  “It is better not to talk about it,” said the proper guest, and went out quickly.

  XI

  Oh, yes, Lanny knew that story; one which was whispered everywhere by the refugees and other enemies of the Regierung. He had never before heard it referred to inside the Fatherland—perhaps because it was too terrible and too dangerous. Greta Raubal had been the child’s name, and Hitler had called her Geli, pronounced “gaily.” She was the daughter of his half-sister Angela, who had been his housekeeper, first here in the Berghof, after the release from prison, and then in Munich during the days of the Party’s hard struggle for power. The child had flowered into womanhood in those desperately unhappy and abnormal times. Had she fallen in love with the dreamer of a new order, or had the dreamer made love to her, in his own strange and terrifying way? The story varied, according to who was telling it.

  This much was certain: there had been an affair, permitted by the mother, beginning when Geli was very young and continuing to her death at the age of twenty or so. She was blue-eyed and fair, a tall Nordic blond according to Adi’s ideal; she was gentle and submissive, and he, wildly jealous, ruled her with the whip which he liked to carry, even in public. “When you go to woman, forget not the whip,” Nietzsche had written, and Adi had read or at any rate heard of this philosopher, another tormented dreamer on the road to madness.

  There had been no happiness between uncle and niece, only fear on the girl’s part and in the end a desire to escape. But if any man came near her, Hitler drove him away in fury. Otto Strasser told of such an experience; but people distrusted Otto, knowing that he hated Hitler as the murderer of Gregor, Otto’s older brother. Another Party member, employed as a chauffeur, had learned the story and blackmailed the Führer to the tune of twenty thousand marks and an important Party position; this had been an especially unkind cut, since the Führer had praised the man in Mein Kampf as one who had defended him in the Saalschlachten. “My good Maurice!”

  Nobody knew exactly what had happened at the end. Geli had tried to get away and go to Vienna to study music, and the uncle had flown into one of his hysterical tantrums; he had sent the mother away, and the girl had been found on the floor of her room with a bullet through her heart. This had been shortly before Hitler had become Chancellor, and in Munich he was a powerful man. Göring had flown to the scene and there had been no police investigation; it was called a suicide and hushed up. The body had been buried in Vienna, in consecrated ground—which could hardly have happened if the priest had not believed that someone had killed her. Subsequently, Gregor Strasser had stated that the priest on his deathbed had pointed out this fact to him.

  So there it was, and you could take your choice: either Adi Schicklgruber had murdered his niece or he had driven her to suicide by incestuous attentions. For days he had been near to suicide himself. Too late he had made the discovery that she had been the great love of his life, and no other woman could take her place, try as they would. The tortured man had got a permit to visit Vienna incognito, and had stood by her grave in the Zentralfriedhof late at night and dropped flowers upon it. Now, half a dozen years later; he was master of all Germany, and wanted to go to Vienna again. Lanny wondered if that obscure grave was one of the forces which drew him.

  What had happened in the disturbing séance? Had the free-spoken Tecumseh, a ruler in his own right, dared to say what he thought about incest and murder? Or had Geli herself appeared, and driven her whip-wielding uncle into one of his frenzies of grief and fear? “He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.” But then, Adi rejected the old Hebrew prophets and did not read them. Suppose the spirit of Freddi Robin had come and spoken such admonitions? Or one of Adi’s victims, such as Röhm, whom, after a stormy interview, he had had shot in cold blood? Or possibly Gregor Strasser, organizer of the Sturmabteilung. Lanny had once met Gregor in Adi’s Berlin apartment, and had heard him get a sound dressing-down from his Führer. Later, after he had been killed in the Blood Purge, his spirit, or what claimed to be that, had been reported by Tecumseh; so evidently he was hovering about this bloodstained scene.

  Lanny wondered how this story had got about in the Berghof. Had the beautiful blond secretary been listening at the keyhole? Or did the trusted “Rudi” have some confidant to whom he had whispered the single word Geli? Or had the young Aryan physician been called in to administer restoratives? Anyhow, the rumor was all over the place, and creating such excitement that a
beautiful blond maker of beds had risked her job and perhaps her life by whispering to a guest about it. So much for Adi’s fond dream that he could sneak into a room at night and consult a spiritualist medium without having the German Volk know anything about it!

  The son of Budd-Erling realized that in his desire to ascertain the fate of his wife he might have gravely imperiled his privileges as a presidential agent. Hitler would hardly forget this episode; even though he could not blame Lanny for it, he would associate him with it in his mind, and this would surely not increase his desire to see the person. Might it even be that his tormented and suspicious mind would begin to wonder whether some enemy had deliberately prepared this shock for him? And what should Lanny do about the matter? Should he mention it and try to patch it up? Or should he drop some remarks indicating that he had no idea anything had gone wrong?

  XII

  The guest went down into the great hall and sat in one of the leather armchairs, looking out over Austria. A storm was coming up and dark clouds were scurrying over the tops of the mountains. Political storms, also, were gathering over Austria, and the master of these storms was in the room just over Lanny’s head, planning and directing them. He might be standing at his window, said to be the largest in Germany, looking out upon this same scene, watching the swiftly moving clouds. He might be humming the Walkürenritt, one of his favorite tunes. Here in these mountains, with dark forests all about him, his mind was full of the myths and images of Richard Wagner, and in his predicament he must wish for Wotan to lend him a thunderbolt, or Loki, god of lies, to come whisper some wily stratagem into his ear.