“Thank you, Ex—Göring.”
“I am sure you understand that we Nazis are playing for no small stakes. You are one of the few who possess imagination enough to know that if you become my friend you will be able to have anything you care to ask for. I am going to become one of the richest men in the world—not because I am greedy for money, but because I have a job to do, and that is one of the tools. We are going to build a colossal industry, which will become the heritage of the future, and most certainly we are not going to leave it in the hands of Jews or other. Bolshevist agencies. Sooner or later we shall take over the industry of Russia and bring it into line with modern practices. For all that we need brains and ability. I personally need men who see eye to eye with me, and I am prepared to pay on a royal scale. There is no limit to what I would do for a man who would be a real associate and partner.”
“I appreciate the compliment, my dear Göring, but I doubt my own qualifications for any such role. Surely you must have among your own Germans men with special training—”
“No German can do what I am suggesting to you—an American, who is assumed to be above the battle. You can go into France or England and meet anybody you wish, and execute commissions of the most delicate sort without waste of time or sacrifice of your own or your wife’s enjoyment. Be assured that I would never ask you to do anything dishonorable, or to betray any trust. If, for example, you were to meet certain persons in those countries and talk politics with them, and report on their true attitudes, so that I could know which of them really want to have the Reds put down and which would rather see those devils entrench themselves than to see Germany get upon her feet—that would be information almost priceless to me, and believe me, you would have to do no more than hint your desires. If you would come now and then on an art-buying expedition to Berlin and visit me in some quiet retreat like this, the information would be used without any label upon it, and I would pledge you my word never to name you to anyone.”
III
Lanny perceived that he was receiving a really distinguished offer, and for a moment he was sorry that he didn’t like the Nazis. He had a feeling that Irma would be willing for him to say yes, and would enjoy helping on such international errands. Doubtless the General had invited her to lunch in order that he might size her up from that point of view.
“My dear Göring,” said Irma’s husband, “you are paying me a compliment, and I wish I could believe that I deserve it. To be sure, I sometimes meet important persons and hear their talk when they are off their guard; I suppose I could have more such opportunities if I sought them. Also I find Berlin an agreeable city to visit, and if I should run over now and then to watch your interesting work, it would be natural for you to ask me questions and for me to tell you what I had heard. But when you offer to pay me, that is another matter. Then I should feel that I was under obligations; and I have always been a Taugenichts—even before I happened to acquire a rich wife I liked to flit from one place to another, look at pictures, listen to good music or play it not so well, chat with my friends, and amuse myself watching the human spectacle. It happens that I have made some money, but I have never felt that I was earning it, and I would hate to feel that I had to.”
It was the sort of answer a man would make if he wished to raise his price; and how was a would-be employer to know? “My dear Budd,” said the General, in the same cautious style, “the last thing in the world I desired was to put you under any sense of obligation, or to interfere with your enjoyments. It is just because of that way of life that you could be of help to me.”
“It would be pleasant indeed, Exzellenz, to discover that my weaknesses have become my virtues.”
The great man smiled, but went on trying to get what he wanted. “Suppose you were to render me such services as happened to amuse you, and which required no greater sacrifice on your part than to motor to Berlin two or three times a year; and suppose that some day, purely out of friendship, I should be moved to present you with a shooting preserve such as this, a matter of one or two hundred square kilometers—surely that wouldn’t have to be taken as a humiliation or indignity.”
“Gott behüte!” exclaimed the playboy. “If I owned such a property, I would have to pay taxes and upkeep, and right away I should be under moral pressure to get some use out of it.”
“Can you think of nothing I might do for you?”
Lanny perceived that he was being handled with masterly diplomacy. The General wasn’t saying: “You know I have a hold on you, and this is the way you might induce me to release it!” He wasn’t compelling Lanny to say: “You know that you are holding out on me and not keeping your promise!” He was making things easy for both of them; and Lanny was surely not going to miss his chance! “Yes, Göring,” he said, quickly, “there is one thing—to have your wonderful governmental machine make some special effort and find that young son of Johannes Robin.”
“You are still worried about that Yiddisher?”
“How can I help it? He is a sort of relative—my half-sister is married to his brother, and naturally the family is distressed. When I started out for Berlin to show my Detaze-paintings, I had to promise to do everything in my power to find him. I have hesitated to trouble you again, knowing the enormous responsibilities you are carrying—”
“But I have already told you, my dear Budd, that I have tried to find the man without success.”
“Yes, but I know how great the confusion of the past few months has been; I know of cases where individuals and groups have assumed authority which they did not legally possess. If you want to do me a favor I shall never forget, have one of your staff make a thorough investigation, not merely in Berlin but throughout the Reich, and enable me to get this utterly harmless young fellow off my conscience.”
“All right,” said the Minister-Präsident; “if that is your heart’s desire, I will try to grant it. But remember, it may be beyond my power. I cannot bring back the dead.”
IV
Back in Berlin, Lanny and his wife went for a drive and talked out this new development. “Either he doesn’t trust me,” said Lanny, “or else I ought to hear from him very soon.”
“He must pretend to make an investigation,” put in Irma.
“It needn’t take long to discover a blunder. He can say: ‘I am embarrassed to discover that my supposed-to-be-efficient organization has slipped up. Your friend was in Dachau all along and I have ordered him brought to Berlin:’ If he doesn’t do that, it’s because he’s not satisfied with my promises.”
“Maybe he knows too much about you, Lanny.”
“That is possible; but he hasn’t given any hint of it.”
“Would he, unless it suited his convenience? Freddi is his only hold on you, and he knows that. Probably he thinks you’d go straight out of Germany and spill the story of Johannes.”
“That story is pretty old stuff by now. Johannes is a poor down-and-out, and I doubt if anybody could be got to take much interest in him. The Brown Book is published and he isn’t in it.”
“Listen,” said the wife; “this is a question which has been troubling my mind. Can it be that Freddi has been doing something serious, and that Göring knows it, and assumes that you know it?”
“That depends on what you mean by serious. Freddi helped to finance and run a Socialist school; he tried to teach the workers a set of theories which are democratic and liberal. That’s a crime to this Regierung, and people who are guilty of it are luckier if they are dead.”
“I don’t mean that, Lanny. I mean some sort of plot or conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow the government.”
“You know that Freddi didn’t believe in anything of the sort. I’ve heard him say a thousand times that he believed in government by popular consent, such as we have in America, and such as the Weimar Republic tried to be—or anyhow, was supposed to be.”
“But isn’t it conceivable that Freddi might have changed after the Reichstag fire, and after seeing what was don
e to his comrades? It wouldn’t have been the Weimar Republic he was trying to overthrow, but Hitler. Isn’t it likely that he and many of his friends changed their minds?”
“Many did, no doubt; but hardly Freddi. What good would he have been? He shuts his eyes when he aims a gun!”
“There are plenty of others who would do the shooting. What Freddi had was money—scads of it that he could have got from his father. There were the months of March and April—and how do you know what he was doing, or what his comrades were planning and drawing him into?”
“I think he would have told us about it, Irma. He would have felt in honor bound.”
“He might have been in honor bound the other way; he couldn’t talk about those comrades. It might even be that he didn’t know what was going on, but that others were using him. Some of those fellows I met at the school—they were men who would have fought back, I know. Ludi Schultz, for example—do you imagine he’d lie down and let the Nazi machine roll over him? Wouldn’t he have tried to arouse the workers to what they call ‘mass action’? And wouldn’t his wife have helped him? Then again, suppose there was some Nazi agent among them, trying to lure them into a trap, to catch them in some act of violence so that they could be arrested?”
“The Nazis don’t have to have any excuses, Irma; they arrest people wholesale.”
“I’m talking about the possibility that there might be some real guilt, or at any rate a charge against Freddi. Some reason why Göring would consider him dangerous and hold onto him.”
“The people who are in the concentration camps aren’t those against whom they have criminal charges. The latter are in the prisons, and the Nazis torture them to make them betray their associates; then they shoot them in the back of the neck and cremate them. The men who are in Dachau are Socialist politicians and editors and labor leaders—intellectuals of all the groups that stand for freedom and justice and peace.”
“You mean they’re there without any charge against them?”
“Exactly that. They’ve had no trial, and they don’t know what they’re there for or how long they’re going to stay. Two or three thousand of the finest persons in Bavaria—and my guess is that Freddi has done no more than any of the others.”
Irma didn’t say any more, and her husband knew the reason—she couldn’t believe what he said. It was too terrible to be true. All over the world people were saying that, and would go on saying it, to Lanny’s great exasperation.
V
The days passed, and it was time for the Munich opening, and still nobody had called to admit a blunder on the part of an infallible governmental machine. Lanny brooded over the problem continually. Did the fat General expect him to go ahead delivering the goods on credit, and without ever presenting any bill? Lanny thought: “He can go to hell! And let it be soon!”
In his annoyance, the Socialist in disguise began thinking about those comrades whom he had met at the school receptions. Rahel had given him addresses, and in his spare hours he had dropped in at place after place, always taking the precaution to park his car some distance away and to make sure that he was not followed. In no single case had he been able to find the persons, or to find anyone who would admit knowing their whereabouts. In most cases people wouldn’t even admit having heard of them. They had vanished off the face of the Fatherland. Was he to assume that they were all in prisons or concentration camps? Or had some of them “gone underground”? Once more he debated how he might find his way to that nether region—always being able to get back to the Hotel Adlon in time to receive a message from the second in command of the Nazi government!
Irma went to a thé dansant at the American Embassy, and Lanny went to look at some paintings in a near-by palace. But he didn’t find anything he cared to recommend to his clients, and the prices seemed high; he didn’t feel like dancing, and could be sure that his wife had other partners. His thoughts turned to a serious-minded young “commercial artist” who wore large horn-rimmed spectacles and hated his work—the making of drawings of abnormally slender Aryan ladies wearing lingerie, hosiery, and eccentric millinery. Also Lanny thought about the young man’s wife, a consecrated soul, and an art student with a genuine talent. Ludwig and Gertrude Schultz—there was nothing striking about these names, but Ludi and Trudi sounded like a vaudeville team or a comic strip.
Lanny had phoned to the advertising concern and been informed that the young man was no longer employed there. He had called the art school and learned that the former student was no longer studying. In neither place did he hear any tone of cordiality or have any information volunteered. He guessed that if the young people had fled abroad they would surely have sent a message to Bienvenu. If they were “sleeping out” in Germany, what would they be doing? Would they go about only at night, or would they be wearing some sort of disguise? He could be fairly sure they would be living among the workers; for they had never had much money, and without jobs would probably be dependent upon worker comrades.
VI
How to get underground! Lanny could park his car, but he couldn’t park his accent and manners and fashionable little brown mustache. And above all, his clothes! He had no old ones; and if he bought some in a secondhand place, how would he look going into a de luxe hotel? For him to become a slum-dweller would be almost as hard as for a slum-dweller to become a millionaire playboy.
He drove past the building where the workers’ school had been. There was now a big swastika banner hanging from a pole over the door; the Nazis had taken it for a district headquarters. No information to be got there! So Lanny drove on to the neighborhood where the Schultzes had lived. Six-story tenements, the least “slummy” workingclass quarter he had seen in Europe. The people still stayed indoors as much as they could. Frost had come, and the window-boxes with the flowers had been taken inside.
He drove past the house in which he had visited the Schultzes. Nothing to distinguish it from any other house, except the number. He drove round the block and came again, and on a sudden impulse stopped his car and got out and rang the Pförtner’s bell. He had already made one attempt to get something here, but perhaps he hadn’t tried hard enough.
This time he begged permission to come in and talk to the janitor’s wife, and it was grudgingly granted. Seated on a wooden stool in a kitchen very clean, but with a strong smell of pork and cabbage, he laid himself out to make friends with a suspicious woman of the people. He explained that he was an American art dealer who had met an artist of talent and had taken some of her work and sold it, and now he owed her money and was troubled because he was unable to find her. He knew that Trudi Schultz had been an active Socialist, and perhaps for that reason did not wish to be known; but he was an entirely non-political person, and neither Trudi nor her friends had anything to fear from him. He applied what psychology he possessed in an effort to win the woman’s confidence, but it was in vain. She didn’t know where the Schultzes had gone; she didn’t know anybody who might know. The apartment was now occupied by a laborer with a family of several children. “Nein,” and then again “Nein, mein Herr.”
Lanny gave up, and heard the door of the Pförtnerin close behind him. Then he saw coming down the stairway of the tenement a girl of eight or ten, in a much patched dress and a black woolen shawl about her head and shoulders. On an impulse he said, quickly: “Bitte, wo wohnt Frau Trudi Schultz?”
The child halted and stared. She had large dark eyes and a pale undernourished face; he thought she was Jewish, and perhaps that accounted for her startled look. Or perhaps it was because she had never seen his kind of person in or near her home. “I am an old friend of Frau Schultz,” he continued, following up his attack.
“I don’t know where she lives,” murmured the child.
“Can you think of anybody who would know? I owe her some money and she would be glad to have it.” He added, on an inspiration: “I am a comrade.”
“I know where she goes,” replied the little one. “It is the tailorshop of Arons
on, down that way, in the next block.”
“Danke schön,” said Lanny, and put a small coin into the frail hand of the hungry-looking little one.
He left his car where it stood and found the tailorshop, which had a sign in Yiddish as well as German. He walked by on the other side of the street, and again regretted his clothes, so conspicuous in this neighborhood. “Aronson” would probably be a Socialist; but maybe he wasn’t, and for Lanny to stroll in and ask for Trudi might set going some train of events which he could not imagine. On the other hand, he couldn’t walk up and down in front of the place without being noticed—and those inside the shop no doubt had reasons for keeping watch.
What he did was to walk down to the corner and buy a Bonbon-Tüte and come back and sit on a step across the street from the shop but farther on so that he was partly hidden by a railing. Sitting down made him less tall, and holding a bag of candy and nibbling it certainly made him less fashionable. Also it made him interesting to three children of the tenement; when he shared his treasure, which they called Bom-bom, they were glad to have him there, and when he asked their names, where they went to school, what games they played, they made shy answers. Meanwhile he kept his eyes on the door of Aronson’s tailorshop.
Presently he ventured to ask his three proletarian friends if they knew Trudi Schultz. They had never heard of her, and he wondered if he was on a wild-goose chase. Perhaps it would be more sensible to go away and write a note; not giving his name, just a hint: “The friend who sold your drawings in Paris.” He would add: “Take a walk in front of the enormous white marble Karl der Dicke (the Stout), in the Siegesallée at twenty-two o’clock Sunday.” With one-third of his mind he debated this program, with another he distributed Leckereien to a growing throng, and with the remaining third he watched the door of “Aronson: Schneiderei, Reparatur.”
Dragon's Teeth Page 53
