Horace Hofman got along fine with the “spirits,” or whatever they were. He handled them with the same delicate touch he would give to a complicated lock; he spoke in a soft persuasive voice and they responded as if it were magic. He found this fascinating as any game, and remarked to Lanny: “It appears there are stranger things in the deeps of the mind than in the sea.”
VIII
Lanny phoned to his friend Leutnant Rörich at the Château de Belcour. “You promised to spend an evening with me”; and the other replied: “You promised to invite me.” Lanny explained that he had been to Chicago since their meeting. They made a date for the next evening, and Lanny said: “Bring a friend with you, and we’ll make his eyes pop open.”
So here came two junior SS officers, prepared to make a night of it. Bruno Fiedler was the name of the other, and he had a tendency to put on fat; his face was round and red, with yellowish bristles which he should have shaved twice a day, but evidently didn’t. His eyes were narrow and sly, and Lanny thought at the first glance: “I won’t fool you so easily as Rörich.”
They were as excited as two schoolboys. They were going to see the real wickedness of Paris, famed throughout the world. Members of the master-race were taught to despise French decadence, but of course they could despise it better if they knew what it was, and they were full of curiosity to find out. Lanny had never gone in for that sort of thing, but he had listened to the conversation of his playboy friends both native and foreign, of artists, journalists, diplomats, munitions buyers, tourists, and the riffraff that came to what they called “gay Paree” in search of thrills which they missed at home.
Lanny took his Nazis to one of the de luxe places of pleasure, where you could have anything for a price. He had ordered a cabinet particulier with dinner for six. They noted the extra places and asked who was coming. Lanny replied: “What sort of ladies do you prefer? German?” They said No, they had plenty of German ladies at home. He went on: “Algerian? Senegalese? Or perhaps from Dahomey?” He was being funny; they were starting off on a note of hilarity. They said they wanted French ladies; they had heard reports that French ladies were extraordinarily passionate, but so far they had been disappointed.
Lanny called the waiter and ordered three canapés, three quarts of champagne, and three passionate French ladies. The waiter bowed three times and said “Oui” three times and everybody was merry. Presently there came prancing into the room three ladies, undoubtedly French and reasonably young, all painted and powdered, with bosoms just a trifle more bare than one would find in good society; skirts above the knees, showing embroidered garters slightly soiled, openwork stockings and slippers with abnormally high heels. They came all smiles and dimples, and with practiced eyes each chose her man and made a rush for the seat at his right hand. They gave their first names, and the gentlemen did the same; champagne corks popped and bright conversation in French began quickly. Lanny saw that he had got the youngest and prettiest of the trio, and Leutnant Fiedler didn’t like that; in his role of perfect host Lanny said to his lady: “Devote yourself to the other gentleman, Fifi; he is new in Paris and wants more than his share.” This was considered delightfully clever, and the fun grew faster.
Lanny left his wine glass almost untouched, and concentrated upon thinking up bright remarks and making his friends have a good time. Presently Hans Rörich noticed that their host was getting less than his share of the delightful sparkling drink, and he said: “You are reneging on us, Herr Budd. Empty your glass!”
“I have to make an embarrassing confession,” replied the American. “I cannot drink champagne.”
“Why not?”
“It goes straight to my head.”
The young Nazis thought that was delightful. An American millionaire, such a man of the world and so self-assured, having to admit that he couldn’t carry his liquor! “For shame on you!” cried Fiedler. “Drink it down!”
“You bring us out for an evening and then spoil all the fun!” put in the other Nazi. Of course that was part of the fun.
“I go clean off my head,” Lanny pleaded. “I behave like a fool.”
“Kolossal!” exclaimed Fiedler; and Fifi clapped her hands: “Ça sera fameuse!”
The host flushed with embarrassment. “Really,” he said, “you won’t like it. I say things that are shocking.”
“Merveilleuse!” exclaimed Toinette, and Belle and Fifi pounded on the table with their knives and forks: “Buvez! Dites les choses horribles!”
In short, they were absolutely determined to see Lanny drunk, and he would have been the poorest of sports if he had refused to oblige them. “All right,” he said. “It’s your funeral,” and quaffed his glass of “fizz-water.” The waiter, sharing the fun, filled it up promptly, and they wanted their host to drink that, but he said: “No, no, please. Wait a while.” So they waited, watching him covertly while pretending to talk about other things.
IX
In the course of two decades of fashionable life, Lanny Budd had had opportunity to observe the effects of liquor upon a number of fortune’s darlings; one of them Dick Oxnard, painter of genius and favorite of New York society, who had drunk himself into an early grave. Lanny knew every symptom; so, in a minute or two, he put a silly grin on his face and then tried hard to get it off but couldn’t. The Nazi officers looked at one another and winked; Rörich looked at his one lady and Fiedler at his two, and all were delighted. Lanny would blink and roll his eyes, and then all five would giggle and hardly be able to stop.
“Drink some more!” exclaimed Rörich, and Fifi offered Lanny’s glass to him. He took it and held it unsteadily, spilling some. He rose, lifted it high, waved it unsteadily in the air, and proclaimed: “Heil Hitler!” Of course the two Nazis rose, and held up their glasses; the French ladies, having been hired to do what they were told, followed suit. They drank the toast and resumed their seats. Lanny blinked, gulped two or three times, and rose again, exclaiming: “Der grösste Mann der Welt!” All rose and drank again, and he said: “Mein Freund Adi! Prosit, Adi!” and drank a bit more. He took it in small sips, talking wildly in between, which enabled him to seem to be taking a great deal.
Drunkenness affects different men in different ways, and now with Lanny Budd it took the form of singing the praises of lieb’ Vaterland and all its achievements. Hiccuping now and then, and stumbling over his own tongue, he said that German was the language he liked to speak and Germans were the people he liked to be with; he was one of them in soul, and begged them to let him see them often. He hoped they would excuse him for weeping with happiness when he spoke of his visits to Schloss Stubendorf as a boy, and of Kurt Meissner, who had been getting ready to become the greatest musician in the world; of Heinrich Jung, son of the Oberförster, who, without knowing it, had been getting ready to become one of the leaders of the Hitlerjugend. He told how, after the war, Heinrich had visited the great Adi in prison, and had told Lanny about this new Führer, destined to redeem first Germany and then the world.
“The world is rotten,” declared the playboy. “France is rotten—look at this and you can see how rotten it is.” He waved his hand, indicating the room, the table, the food, the Damen. He was speaking German, so the Damen didn’t know they were Damen and wouldn’t hear that they were verfault. Lanny hiccuped and said Verzeihung, and explained that it did him grief when he thought about the corruption of Frankreich, and he became absolut schwärmerisch when he thought about the virtues of Deutschland. He didn’t mind piling it on, because he was supposed to be drunk, and by that time his friends were somewhat drunk also.
It was a moving speech, received with many a Hurra and a Heil. It culminated in the announcement that rotten Frankreich was going to be cleaned up and so was rotten Europa. Lanny knew all about it, and guessed that his National-Socialist friends knew also; but perhaps they didn’t realize how near Der Tag had come. “We are ready to act, we Hooded Men,”—and Lanny proceeded to take off his hood and reveal himself as a leader of the
coming leisure-class coup d’état, one of its paymasters, and an intimate of the men of action who were going to carry it through. Lanny took another sip of champagne and named these leaders and their important social positions; he told where the arms were stored and named the key places which were to be seized—he didn’t have to worry about accuracy, because the young Nazis were in a state of exaltation, seeing their Fifth Column taking possession of France without having to fire a shot, and they weren’t in any condition to make notes or remember details. Lanny watched the women, to make sure they gave no signs of understanding German, but were proceeding in the normal way to get as much champagne into them as an American millionaire was willing to pay for.
X
This wasn’t the sort of conversation the two Schutzstaffel officers had come prepared for; and presently the befuddled host realized it, and hiccuped: “I’m doing all the talking. I am drunk, by God—just as I told you!” He started to grow unhappy because of his bad manners; but his friends consoled him—it was most intellectual conversation. They wished to prove that they too could take part in such conversation, and assured him that Americans were great people and worthy of sharing Germany’s high destiny. Lanny Budd and his guests would be friends for life. Yes, they knew what the Hooded Men were doing, and were ready to help whenever called upon.
“Nein, nein, wartet nur—you wait—let the French do it—hic!” Lanny had a different role for his Nazi comrades. “What you do is take care of the Germans—German traitors. You know you got German traitors in Paris?”
The host was started on another confused discourse. There were Reds and all sorts of betrayers of the Fatherland in Paris, slandering the great Führer and noble Nazis, and sending their lies back into Germany. “We Cagoulards have spies among them and we know who they are; maybe you—hic—like me to tell you?”
The Schutzstaffel officers said they didn’t need any Auslanders telling them about German traitors; they had their own means of watching the vermin—but all the same they were grateful to their American friend for this warning. The three had another explosion of schwärmerei; they clasped hands across the table—this was easy because the corrupted French ladies were by now sunk back in their chairs, about ready to fall asleep. The three uncorrupted gentlemen sang a song telling the dear Fatherland that it could sleep in peace because its hero-sons were keeping watch. They sang about the streets being free to the brown battalions, and then about Germany belonging to us today and tomorrow the rest of the world. In between songs the nazified American would sip a few more drops of champagne and renew his offer to find out for his German friends what the traitors and snakes and vermin were doing here in Paris.
“Nein, nein,” Rörich insisted. “We have our ways to take care of them—nicht wahr, Bruno?” And Bruno, whose face was now the shape and color of a harvest moon rising over dusty fields, replied: “Du musst es ja wissen!”
“What do you do with them?” demanded the American. “Take them back to Germany?”
“We take care of them! They don’t spill any more poison in the Ausland.”
Lanny became excited. “Pass auf, Menscbenkind! They are fooling you. They are sending stuff into Germany all the time. I have seen it with my own eyes. Heinrich Jung showed me some of it in his office in Berlin.”
Maybe that wasn’t exactly drunken conversation; but the young Nazis were drunk enough by now so that they couldn’t tell the difference. They were being challenged, and had their honor to defend. Rörich mumbled: “Maybe a few”; and Fiedler proclaimed angrily: “Nobody pays any attention to such Pöbel.”
“You are mistaken,” insisted Lanny. “The Führer told me himself it is a great menace. Do you mean to oppose the Führer’s word?”
No, of course; neither of them dreamed of opposing the Führer’s word. Neither of them could say that they had ever been spoken to by the Führer; but here this American made the claim, and proceeded to prove it before their eyes. He pulled out the clipping from the Munich newspaper. “Here is an article telling of my visit to the Führer at the Braune Haus, and here is my picture to prove that it was nobody else. I had called on him once before in his apartment in Berlin, and afterwards I visited him for an evening in Haus Wachenfels, at Berchtesgaden. I played Beethoven for him and he had Kannenberg sing songs for me. Do you know Kannenberg?”
They were staring at him; awestricken. They had heard of the fat and jolly Bierkellner who was the Führer’s steward, but had never laid eyes upon him. How could they stand up before such authority?
“The Führer said to me: ‘It is a grave peril to my Regierung, the activity of these Schweinehunde in the Ausland. They must be rooted out. They lie about us; they poison the outside world against us. Sie müssen ausgerottet werden’—hic! That is what the Führer said; and what are you in Paris doing about it?”
XI
This was, for all practical purposes, as if the Führer himself were here, demanding an accounting. The two underlings were greatly distressed. “We are doing our best,” pleaded Rörich. “We know these people and we watch them.”
“Watching is not enough. They have to be put out of business. They have to be liquidated—purged!”
“There is a limit to what we can do in France, mein Lieber.”
“There should be no limit. If I, an American, am willing to overthrow the government of France for you—hic—why should you be afraid of a few sneaking traitors hiding in the slums of this city? You should seize them and break them to pieces.”
“We have done it a few times, Herr Budd.” It was still Rörich speaking. “That is Bruno’s job.”
“What do you do, Bruno?”
“I give them something they don’t forget in a hurry.”
Lanny was working himself into a really fierce mood. He stuck out one forefinger and swung it down toward the table. “Woosh! Woosh!”—the whistling of the whip. “You give them die Peitsche?”
“Ja, gewiss.”
“Also! You may believe me, I know about it! Reichminister General Göring sent his staff officer, Hauptmann Furtwaengler, and took me down into the Columbus Haus, and I watched what they did to a fat Jewish Schweinehund. Solomon Hellstein was his name, the banker—you know the Hellstein Bank in Berlin?”
“Natürlich, Herr Budd.”
“They stretched him out on a bench with his fat fanny bare and they laid it on good and plenty. How that old Jew did yell! You should have a place like that here in Paris.”
“Zerbrechen wir uns nicht den Kopf, Herr Budd. Wir haben so etwas.”
We have it! Those were the words Lanny wanted to hear, and there was exultation in his voice. “Give it to them good and plenty!” he cried. “Make them talk!”
“Bruno makes them. It is his job.”
“You do it yourself, Bruno?”
“I flay them alive.”
“You have good muscles?” The son of Budd-Erling got up, staggering slightly, and felt his Nazi friend’s arm. “Ja, those are tough! Let’s try them!” Laughing wildly, he picked up Fifi, who had fallen asleep in her chair, bored by a long conversation which had nothing to do with ladies. She woke suddenly when Lanny turned her upside down over the chair and pulled up her very scanty skirt. “Show me what you do!”
The woman started struggling and kicking and the two Germans started roaring with laughter. It was truly a hilarious scene. Fifi squealed, but Lanny held her down, and kept calling to Bruno: “Go on! Show me!”
“I have no whip,” protested the SS man.
“Take a napkin and tie some knots in it.” Then to Fifi: “Shut up! He only wants to whip you.”
“But I don’t want to be whipped!” wailed the girl. She was starting to fight, and seemed capable; but Lanny said: “Keep still. I’ll pay you a thousand francs.” A girl in her business learns about the whims of rich gentlemen. She became suddenly still, and Lanny turned to Bruno with mounting excitement. “Now! Go to it!”
“Aber, Herr Budd!” protested the Nazi.
“What is the matter? Are you afraid?”
“Nein, Herr Budd—”
“Don’t you know there are women among those Red vermin? Don’t you ever have women prisoners to whip?”
“Ja, natürlich—aber—”
“And you spare them? You don’t break them down—hic—make them tell what they are up to?”
“Nein, nein—”
“Have you got softhearted? Afraid to defend your National Socialism?”
“Natürlich nicht—nimmer, Herr Budd—”
“Also, was ist los? Don’t you know that your Führer whips his women? Have you never heard that?”
“Ja, ja—aber, hier ist nicht Berlin, Herr Budd; hier ist Paris.”
XII
Lanny, working himself into a passion, was threatening to become ugly, as many drunks do. Hans Rörich, who had known him longer, felt it necessary to intervene. He laid his hands on his host’s shoulders pleadingly. “Bitte, bitte, Herr Budd—you must make allowances. We are connected with the Embassy, and we cannot have any sort of disturbance in a foreign country. It is not gentlemanly of you—nicht korrekt!”
Lanny’s mood changed suddenly—this also being a characteristic of drunks. He had been rebuked, and his feelings were wounded. A look of despair came upon his face, and he turned away and hid it in his hands. “Ach! I have offended you! You will never respect me again!”
The two Nazis doubtless had handled drunks before, and understood all this. They grinned to each other as they replied: “Nein, nein, Herr Budd, don’t take it so seriously.”
Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 25
