Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  It was permissible for Lanny to mention that a young friend of his had not been heard from in Germany; whereupon this hiveful of mediums set to work secreting wax and honey for him. Most of it appeared to be synthetic; Lanny became sure that some clever trickster had guessed that the missing person was a relative of Johannes Robin, himself recently named in the newspapers as missing, and now suddenly arriving with the Budds. Since Hansi had been interviewed in Paris on the subject, it couldn’t be he who was lost. Since Freddi had been in London and was known to all friends of the Budds, it really wasn’t much of a detective job to get his name. Every issue of the Manchester Guardian was full of stories about concentration camps and the mistreatment of the Jews; so the spirits began pouring out details—the only trouble being that no two of them agreed on anything of importance.

  There was only one medium whom Lanny knew and trusted, and that was Madame; but her control, Tecumseh, was still cross with Lanny and wouldn’t take any trouble for him. In New York the control had been willing to repeat French sentences, syllable by syllable, but now he refused to do the same for German. He said it was too ugly a language, with sounds that no civilized tongue could get round—this from a chieftain of the Iroquois Indians! Tecumseh said that Freddi was not in the spirit world, and that the spirits who tried to talk about Freddi didn’t seem to know anything definite. Tecumseh got so that he would say to a sitter: “Are you going to ask me about that Jewish fellow?” It threatened to ruin Madame’s mediumship and her career.

  VIII

  Marceline had been invited to spend the summer with the Pomeroy-Nielsons, as a means of making up for the yacht cruise which had been rudely snatched away. Marceline and Alfy, having the same sixteen years, were shooting up tall and what the English call “leggy.” It is the age of self-consciousness and restlessness; many things were changing suddenly and confusing their young minds. With other friends of the same age they played with delicate intimations of love; they felt attraction, then shied away, took offense and made up, talked a great deal about themselves and one another, and in various ways prepared for the serious business of matrimony. Marceline exercised her impulse to tease Alfy by being interested in other boys. She had a right to, hadn’t she? Did she have to fall in love the way her family expected? What sort of old-fashioned idea was that? The future baronet was proud, offended, angry, then exalted. Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt!

  Irma and Lanny motored up for a week end, to see how things were going. A lovely old place by the Thames, so restful after the storms and strains of the great world; especially after Berlin, with its enormous and for the most part tasteless public buildings, its statues, crude and cruel, celebrating military glory. Here at The Reaches everything was peaceful; the little old river seemed tame and friendly, safe to go punting on, just right for lovers and poets. It had been here a long time and would stay while generation after generation of baronets appeared, grew up and studied at the proper schools, wore the proper comfortable clothes, established “little theaters,” and wrote articles for newspapers and weeklies proving that the country was going to pot.

  Here was Sir Alfred, tall, somewhat eccentric, but genial and full of humor; his hair had turned gray while his mustache remained black. Excessive taxes had completely ruined him, he declared, but he was absorbed in collecting records of twentieth-century British drama for a museum which some rich friend was financing. Here was his kind and gentle wife, the most attentive of hostesses. Here was Nina, helping to run this rambling old brick house, built onto indefinitely by one generation after another and having so many fireplaces and chimneys that in wintertime it would take one maid most of her time carrying coal-scuttles. Here were three very lovely children, eager and happy, but taught to be quieter than any you would find in America.

  Finally here was the lame ex-aviator whom Lanny considered the wisest man he knew, the only one with whom he could exchange ideas with complete understanding. Rick was one who had a right to know everything about Lanny’s German adventure, and they went off on the river where nobody could hear them if they talked in low tones, and Lanny told the story from beginning to end. It would be better that not even Nina should hear it, because there is a strong temptation for one woman to talk to the next, and so things get passed on and presently come to the ears of some journalist. After all, Johannes was a pretty important man, and his plundering would make a rare tale if properly dressed up.

  Rick was quite shocked when he learned how Lanny had permitted the Berlin newspapers to publish that he was a sympathetic inquirer into National Socialism. He said that a thing like that would spread and might blacken Lanny forever; there would be no way to live it down, or to get himself trusted again. Lanny said he didn’t mind, if he could save Freddi; but Rick insisted that a man had no right to make such a sacrifice. It wasn’t just a question of saving one individual, but of a cause which was entitled to defense. Socialism had to be fought for against the monstrosity which had stolen its name and was trying to usurp its place in history. Lanny had thought of that, but not enough, apparently; he felt rather bad about it.

  “Listen, Rick,” he said; “there have to be spies in every war, don’t there?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What if I were to go into Germany and become a friend of those higher-ups, and get all the dope and send it out to you?”

  “They would soon get onto it, Lanny.”

  “Mightn’t it be possible to be as clever as they?”

  “A darned disagreeable job, I should think.”

  “I know; but Kurt did it in Paris, and got away with it.”

  “You’re a very different man from Kurt. For one thing, you’d have to fool him; and do you think you could?”

  “Beauty insists that I couldn’t; but I believe that if I took enough time, and put my mind to it, I could at least keep him uncertain. I’d have to let him argue with me and convince me. You know I have a rare good excuse for going; I’m an art expert, and Germany has a lot to sell. That makes it easy for me to meet all sorts of people. I could collect evidence as to Nazi outrages, and you could make it into a book.”

  “That’s already been done, you’ll be glad to hear.” Rick revealed that a group of liberal Englishmen had been busy assembling the data, and a work called The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror was now in press and shortly to be published. It gave the details of two or three hundred murders of prominent intellectuals and political opponents of the Nazi Regierung.

  Lanny said: “There’ll be other things worth reporting. If I go back to Germany on account of Freddi, I’ll get what facts I can and it’ll be up to you to figure out what use to make of them.”

  IX

  Lanny didn’t mention the name of his German agent, Hugo Behr, but he was free to tell about the left-wing movement developing inside the Nazi party. He thought it was of great importance. It was the class struggle in a new and strange form; the war between the haves and the have-nots, which apparently couldn’t be kept out of any part of modern society. A leader might sell out a popular movement, but could he carry his followers along? Many people in Germany thought that Hitler could take his party wherever he chose, but Lanny saw it differently—he said that Hitler was extraordinarily sensitive to the pressure of his followers, and agile in keeping the lead wherever they were determined to go. “He got money from the biggest industrialists, and Johannes insists that he’s their man; but I believe he may fool them and jump some way they have no idea of.”

  “Isn’t there a third power,” ventured Rick—“the army? Can anybody in Germany do anything without the consent of the Reichswehr?”

  Lanny told of his talk with Emil and with Stubendorf, both of whom had agreed that they would obey the government loyally. Rick said: “Emil, yes; he’s a subordinate. But would Stubendorf tell you his real thoughts? My guess is that he and his Junker crowd will serve Hitler so long as Hitler serves them; that is, to bring about rearmament, and get the Corridor and the lost provinces back into
the Fatherland.”

  “Naturally,” admitted Lanny, “Stubendorf thinks first about his own property. What he’d do after that I don’t know.”

  “All Germans put their army first,” insisted Rick. “The Social-Democrats brought about the revolution with the help of the common soldiers, but right away they became prisoners of the officer caste and never made any real change in the army’s control. The Finance Minister of the Republic always had to be a man satisfactory to the Reichswehr, and no matter how much the politicians talked about social reforms they never made any cuts in the military budget.”

  Rick listened to all that his friend had to tell, and asked many questions, but refused to believe that Hitler could be pushed or dragged to the left. “No revolutionist who has become conservative ever goes back,” he said, and added with a wry smile: “He learns to know the left too well, and has made too many enemies among them.”

  Lanny asked: “Won’t he go if he sees another wave of revolt on the way?”

  “He won’t see it, because it won’t be coming. One wave is enough for one generation. Strasser and Röhm and your friend Hugo may shout their heads off, but when Adolf tells them to shut up they will shut. And it’s my belief that whatever ‘socializing’ Adolf does in Germany will be to make the Nazi party stronger, and enable him to smash Versailles more quickly and more surely.”

  X

  The Conference on Limitation of Armaments was practically dead, after more than a year of futile efforts. But the nations couldn’t give up trying to stop the general breakdown, and now sixty-six of them were assembled in a World Economic Conference. It was meeting in South Kensington with the usual fanfare about solving all problems. Rick, ever suspicious of what he called capitalist statesmanship, said that it was an effort of the Bank of England to get back on the gold standard, with the support of the United States, and of France, Switzerland, Holland, and the few nations still ruled by their creditor classes. While Lanny was watching this show and renewing old acquaintances among the journalists, President Roosevelt issued a manifesto refusing to be tied to this gold program. His action was called “torpedoing” the Conference, which at once proceeded to follow all the others into the graveyard of history.

  Lord Wickthorpe was back at home, and desirous of repaying the hospitality which he had enjoyed in Paris; the more so when he learned that his American friends had just returned from Germany and had been meeting some of the Nazi head men. The young couple were invited to spend several days at Wickthorpe Castle, one of the landmarks of England. It was of brown sandstone, and the central structure with two great crenelated towers dated from Tudor days; two wings and a rear extension had been added in the time of Queen Anne, but the unity of style had been preserved. The ancient oaks were monuments of English permanence and solidity; the lawns were kept green by rains and fogs from several seas, and kept smooth by flocks of rolypoly sheep. Irma was fascinated by the place, and pleased her host by the naïveté of her commendations. When she heard that the estate had had to be broken up and tracts sold off to pay taxes, she counted it among the major calamities of the late war.

  The Dowager Lady Wickthorpe kept house for her bachelor son. There was a younger brother whom Lanny had met at Rick’s, and he had married an American girl whom Irma had known in café society; so it was like a family party, easy and informal, yet dignified and impressive. It was much easier to run an estate and a household in England, where everything was like a grandfather’s clock which you wound up and it ran, not for eight days but for eight years or eight decades. There was no such thing as a servant problem, for your attendants were born, not made; the oldest son of your shepherd learned to tend your sheep and the oldest son of your butler learned to buttle. All masters were kind and all servants devoted and respectful; at least, that was how it was supposed to be, and if anything was short of perfection it was carefully hidden. Irma thought it was marvelous—until she discovered that she was expected to bathe her priceless self in a painted tin tub which was brought in by one maid, followed by two others bearing large pitchers of hot and cold water.

  After the completion of this ceremony, she inquired: “Lanny, what do you suppose it would cost to put modern plumbing into a place like this?”

  He answered with a grin: “In the style of Shore Acres?”—referring to his own bathroom with solid silver fixtures, and to Irma’s of solid gold.

  “I mean just ordinary Park Avenue.”

  “Are you thinking of buying this castle?”

  Irma countered with another question. “Do you suppose you would be happy in England?”

  “I’m afraid you couldn’t get it, darling,” he evaded in turn. “It’s bound to be entailed.” He assured her with a grave face that everything had to be handed down intact—not merely towers and oaks and lawns, but servants and sheep and bathing facilities.

  XI

  Neighbors dropped in from time to time, and Lanny listened to upper-class Englishmen discussing the problems of their world and his. They were not to be persuaded to take Adolf Hitler and his party too seriously; in spite of his triumph he was still the clown, the pasty-faced, hysterical tub-thumper, such as you could hear in Hyde Park any Sunday afternoon; “a jumped-up house-painter,” one of the country squires called him. They were not sorry to have some effective opposition to France on the continent, for it irked them greatly to see that rather shoddy republic of politicians riding on the gold standard while Britain had been ignominiously thrown off. They were interested in Lanny’s account of Adolf, but even more interested in Göring, who was a kind of man they could understand. In his capacity as Reichsminister, he had come to Geneva and laid down the law as to Germany’s claim to arms equality. Wickthorpe had been impressed by his forceful personality, and now was amused to hear about the lion cub from the Berlin zoo and the new gold velvet curtains in the reception room of the Minister-Präsident’s official residence.

  Lanny said: “The important thing for you gentlemen to remember is that Göring is an air commander, and that rearmament for him is going to mean fleets of planes. They will all be new and of perfected models.”

  Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, ex-aviator, had laid great stress upon this, but Lanny found it impossible to interest a representative of the British Foreign Office. To him airplanes were like Adolf Hitler; that is to say, something “jumped-up,” something cheap, presumptuous, and altogether bad form. Britannia ruled the waves, and did it with dignified and solid “ships of the line,” weighing thirty-five thousand tons each and costing ten or twenty million pounds. An American admiral had written about the influence of sea power upon history, and the British Admiralty had read it, one of the few compliments they had ever paid to their jumped-up cousins across the seas. Now their world strategy was based upon it, and when anyone tried to argue with them it was as if they all burst into song: “Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep!”

  Irma listened to the discussions, and afterward, as they drove back to London, they talked about it, and Lanny discovered that she agreed with her host rather than with her husband. She was irresistibly impressed by the dignity, stability, and self-confidence of this island nation; also by Lord Wickthorpe as the perfect type of English gentleman and statesman. Lanny didn’t mind, for he was used to having people disagree with him, especially his own family. But when he happened to mention the matter to his mother, she minded it gravely, and said: “Doesn’t it ever occur to you that you’re taking an awful lot for granted?”

  “How do you mean, old darling?”

  “Take my advice and think seriously about Irma. You’re making her a lot unhappier than you’ve any idea.”

  “You mean, by the company I keep?”

  “By that, and by the ideas you express to your company, and to your wife’s.”

  “Well, dear, she surely can’t expect me to give up my political convictions as the price of her happiness.”

  “I don’t know why she shouldn’t—considering how we’re all mor
e or less dependent upon her bounty.”

  “Bless your heart!” said Lanny. “I can always go back to selling pictures again.”

  “Oh, Lanny, you say horrid things!”

  He thought that she had started the horridness, but it would do no good to say so. “Cheer up, old dear—I’m taking my wife off to New York right away.”

  “Don’t count on that too much. Don’t ever forget that you’ve got a treasure, and it calls for a lot of attention and some guarding.”

  BOOK FIVE

  This Is the Way the World Ends

  21

  In Friendship’s Name

  I

  Irma and Lanny guessed that the feelings of Fanny Barnes were going to be hurt because they weren’t bringing her namesake to see her; to make up for it they had cabled that they would come first to Shore Acres. The Queen Mother was at the steamer to meet them with a big car. She wanted the news about her darling grandchild, and then, what on earth had they been doing all that time in Germany? Everybody was full of questions about Hitlerland, they discovered; at a distance of three thousand miles it sounded like Hollywood, and few could bring themselves to believe that it was real. The newspapers were determined to find out what had happened to a leading German-Jewish financier. They met him at the pier, and when he wouldn’t talk they tried everyone who knew him; but in vain.

  At Shore Acres, things were going along much as usual. The employees of the estate were doing the same work for no wages; but with seventeen million unemployed in the country, they were thankful to be kept alive. As for Irma’s friends, they were planning the customary round of visits to seashore and mountains; those who still had dividends would play host to those who hadn’t, and everybody would get along. There was general agreement that business was picking up at last, and credit for the boom was given to Roosevelt. Only a few diehards like Robbie Budd talked about the debts being incurred, and when and how were they going to be paid. Most people didn’t want to pay any debts; they said that was what had got the country into trouble. The way to get out was to borrow and spend as fast as possible; and one of the things to spend for was beer. Roosevelt was letting the people buy it instead of having to make it in their bathtubs.