Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  Irma said: “Lanny, you can’t do it! You can’t, you can’t!” And he replied: “Darling, I have to! If I didn’t I couldn’t bear to live!”

  So much had been said already that there was nothing to gain by going over it. But that is the way with lovers’ quarrels; each thinks that if he says it one time more, the idea will penetrate, it will make the impression which it so obviously ought to make, which it has somehow incomprehensibly failed to make on previous occasions.

  Irma protested: “Your wife and child mean nothing to you?”

  Lanny answered: “You know they do, dear. I have tried honestly to be a good husband and father. I have given up many things that I thought were right for me, when I found they were wrong for you. But I can’t give up Freddi to the Nazis.”

  “A man is free to take up a notion like that—and then all his family duties become nothing?”

  “A man takes up a notion like that when there’s a cause involved; something that is more precious to him than his own life.”

  “You’re going to sacrifice Frances and me for Freddi!”

  “That’s rather exaggerated, darling. You and Frances can stay quite comfortably here while I go in and do what I can.”

  “You’re not asking me to go with you?”

  “It’s a job for someone who believes in it, and certainly not for anyone who feels as you do. I have no right to ask it of you, and that’s why I don’t.”

  “What do you suppose will be my state of mind while you are in there risking your life with those dreadful men?”

  “It will be a mistake to exaggerate the danger. I don’t think they’ll do serious harm to an American.”

  “You know they have done shocking things to Americans. You have talked about it often.”

  “What happened in those cases was accidental; they were mix-ups in street crowds and public places. You and I have connections in Germany, and I don’t think the authorities will do me any harm on purpose.”

  “Even if they catch you breaking their laws?”

  “I think they’ll give me a good scare and put me out.”

  “You know you don’t believe that, Lanny! You’re only trying to quiet me down. You will be in perfectly frightful danger, and I will be in torment.”

  She broke down and began to weep. It was the first time he had seen her do that, and he was a soft-hearted man. But he had been thinking it over for a year, and had made up his mind that this would be the test of his soul. “If I funk this, I’m no good; I’m the waster and parasite I’ve always been called.”

  There was no way to end the argument. He couldn’t make her realize the importance of the matter to him; the duty he owed to what he called “the cause.” He had made Freddi Robin into a Socialist; had taught him the ideal of human brotherhood and equality, what he called “social justice.” But Irma hated all these high-sounding words; she had heard them spoken by so many disagreeable persons, mostly trying to get money, that the words had become poison to her. She didn’t believe in this “cause”; she believed that brotherhood was rather repulsive, that equality was another name for envy, and social justice an excuse for outrageous income and inheritance taxes. So her tears dried quickly, and she grew angry with herself for having shed them, and with him for making her shed them.

  She said: “Lanny, I warn you; you are ruining our love. You are doing something I shall never be able to forgive you for.”

  All he could answer was: “I am sorry, darling; but if you made me give up what I believe is my duty, I should never be able to forgive either you or myself.”

  II

  The airmail letter from Juan arrived. Freddi’s message had been written in pencil on a small piece of flimsy paper, crumpled up as if someone had hidden it in his mouth or other bodily orifice. It was faded, but Rahel had smoothed it out and pasted the corners to a sheet of white paper so that it could be read. It was addressed to Lanny and written in English. “I am in a bad way. I have written to you but had no reply. They are trying to make me tell about other people and I will not. But I cannot stand any more. Do one thing for me, try to get some poison to me. Do not believe anything they say about me. Tell our friends I have been true.”

  There was no signature; Freddi knew that Lanny would know his handwriting, shaky and uncertain as it was. The envelope was plain, and had been mailed in Munich; the handwriting of the address was not known to Lanny, and Rahel in her letter said that she didn’t know it either.

  So there it was. Irma broke down again; it was worse than she had imagined, and she knew now that she couldn’t keep Lanny from going. She stopped arguing with him about political questions, and tried only to convince him of the futility of whatever efforts he might make. The Nazis owned Germany, and it was madness to imagine that he could thwart their will inside their own country. She offered to put up money, any amount of money, even if she had to withdraw from social life. “Go and see Göring,” she pleaded. “Offer him cash, straight out.”

  But Rick—oh, how she hated him all of a sudden!—Rick had persuaded Lanny that this was not to be done. Lanny wouldn’t go near Göring, or any of the other Nazis, not even Kurt, not even Heinrich. They wouldn’t help, and might report him and have him watched. Göring or Goebbels would be sure to take such measures. Lanny said flatly: “I’m going to help Freddi to escape from Dachau.”

  “Fly over the walls, I suppose?” inquired Irma, with bitterness.

  “There are many different ways of getting out of prison. There are people in France right now who have managed to do it. Sometimes they dig under the walls; sometimes they hide in delivery wagons, or are carried out in coffins. I’ll find somebody to help me for a price.”

  “Just walk up to somebody on the street and say: ‘How much will you charge to help me get a friend out of Dachau?’”

  “It’s no good quarreling, dear. I have to put my mind on what I mean to do. I don’t want to delay, because if I do, Freddi may be dead, and then I’d blame myself until I was dead, too.”

  So Irma had to give up. She had told him what was in her heart, and even though she would break down and weep, she wouldn’t change; on the contrary, she would hold it against him that he had made her behave in that undignified fashion. In her heart she knew that she hated the Robin family, all of them; they were alien to her, strangers to her soul. If she could have had her way she would never have been intimate with them; she would have had her own yacht and her own palace and the right sort of friends in it. But this Socialism business had made Lanny promiscuous, willing to meet anybody, an easy victim for any sort of pretender, any slick, canting “idealist”—how she loathed that word! She had been forced to make pretenses and be polite; but now this false “cause” was going to deprive her of her husband and her happiness, and she knew that she heartily despised it.

  It wasn’t just love of herself. It was love of Lanny, too. She wanted to help him, she wanted to take care of him; but this “class struggle” stepped in between and made it impossible; tore him away from her, and sent him to face danger, mutilation, death. Things that Irma and her class were supposed to be immune from! That was what your money meant; it kept you safe, it gave you privilege and security. But Lanny wanted to throw it all away. He had got the crazy notion that you had no right to money; that having got it, you must look down upon it, spurn it, and thwart the very purposes for which it existed, the reasons why your forefathers had worked so hard! If that was not madness, who could find anything that deserved the name?

  III

  All social engagements were called off while this duel was fought out. Irma said that she had a bad headache; but as this affliction had not been known to trouble her hitherto, the rumor spread that the Irma Barneses were having a quarrel; everybody tried to guess what it could be about, but nobody succeeded. Only three persons were taken into the secret; Rick, and the mothers of the two quarrelers. Rick said: “I wish I could help you, old chap; but you know I’m a marked man in Germany; I have written articles.” L
anny said: “Of course.”

  As for Fanny Barnes, she considered it her duty to give Lanny a lecture on the wrongness of deserting his family on account of any Jew or all of them. Lanny, in turn, considered it his duty to hear politely all that his mother-in-law had to say. He knew it wasn’t any good talking to her about “causes”; he just said: “I’m sorry, Mother, but I feel that I have incurred obligations, and I have to repay them. Do what you can to keep Irma cheerful until I get back.” It was a rather solemn occasion; he might not come back, and he had a feeling that his mother-in-law would find that a not altogether intolerable solution of the problem.

  As for Beauty, she wasn’t much good in this crisis; the sheer horridness of it seemed to paralyze her will. She knew her boy’s feeling for the Robin boys, and that it couldn’t be overcome. She knew also that he suspected her concern about Irma’s happiness as being not altogether disinterested. The mother dared not say what was in the deeps of her heart, her fear that Lanny might lose his ultra-precious wife if he neglected her and opposed her so recklessly. And of all places to leave her—on the doorstep of Lord Wickthorpe! Beauty developed a crise des nerfs, with a real headache, and this didn’t diminish the gossip and speculation.

  Meanwhile, Lanny went ahead with his preparations. He wrote Rahel to have a photograph of Freddi reduced to that small size which is used on passports, and to airmail it to him at once; he had a reason for that, which she was at liberty to guess. He wrote Jerry Pendleton to hold himself in readiness for a call to bring a camion to Germany and return the Detaze paintings to their home. That would be no hardship, because the tourist season was over and Cerise could run the office.

  Lanny gave his friend Zoltan a check covering a good part of the money he had in the Hellstein banks in Berlin and Munich; Zoltan would transfer the money to his own account, and thus the Nazis wouldn’t be able to confiscate it. In case Lanny needed the money, he could telegraph and Zoltan could airmail him a check. The ever discreet friend asked no questions, and thus would be able to say that he knew nothing about the matter. Lanny talked about a picture deal which he thought he could put through in Munich, and Zoltan gave him advice on this. Having been pondering all these matters for more than a year, Lanny was thoroughly prepared.

  When it came to the parting, Lanny’s young wife and Lanny’s would-be-young mother both broke down. Both offered to go with him; but he said No. Neither approved his mission, and neither’s heart would be in the disagreeable task. He didn’t tell the plain truth, which was that he was sick of arguments and excitements; it is one of the painful facts about marital disputes that they cause each of the disputants to grow weary of the sound of the other’s voice, and to count quiet and the freedom to have one’s own way as the greatest of life’s blessings. Lanny believed that he could do this job himself, and could think better if he didn’t have opposition. He said: “No, dear,” and “No, darling; I’m going to be very careful, and it won’t take long.”

  IV

  So, bright and early one morning, Margy Petries’s servants deposited his bags in his car, and not without some moisture in his eyes and some sinkings in his inside, he set out for the ferry to Calais, whose name Queen Mary had said was written on her heart, and which surely existed as some sort of scar on Lanny’s. He went by way of Metz and Strasbourg, for the fewer countries one entered in unhappy Europe, the less bother with visas and customs declarations. How glorious the country seemed in the last days of June; and how pitiful by contrast that Missgeburt of nature which had developed the frontal lobes of its brain so enormously, in order to create new and more dreadful ways of destroying millions of other members of its own species! “Nature’s insurgent son” had cast off chain-mail and dropped lances and battle-axes, only to take up bombing-planes and Nazi propaganda.

  The blood of millions of Frenchmen and Germans had fertilized this soil and made it so green and pleasant to Lanny’s eyes. He knew that in all these copses and valleys were hidden the direful secrets of the Maginot Line, that series of complicated and enormously expensive fortifications by which France was counting upon preventing another German invasion. Safe behind this barricade, Frenchmen could use their leisure to maim and mangle other Frenchmen with iron railings torn from a beautiful park. Where Lanny crossed the Rhine was where the child Marie Antoinette had come with her train of two or three hundred vehicles, on her long journey from Vienna to marry the Dauphin of France. All sorts of history around here, but the traveler had no time to think about it; his mind was occupied with the history he was going to make.

  Skirting the edge of the Alps, with snow-clad peaks always, in view, he came to the city of Munich on its little river Isar. He put up at a second-class hotel, for he didn’t want newspaper reporters after him, and wanted to be able to put on the suit of old clothes which he had brought, and be able to walk about the city, and perhaps the town of Dachau, without attracting any special attention. At the Polizeiwache he reported himself as coming for the purpose of purchasing works of art; his first act after that was to call upon a certain Baron von Zinszollern whom he had met at the Detaze show and who had many paintings in his home. This gentleman was an avowed Nazi sympathizer, and Lanny planned to use him as his “brown herring,” so to speak. In case of exposure this might sow doubts and confusion in Nazi minds, which would be so much to the good.

  Lanny went to this art patron’s fine home and looked at his collection, and brought up in his tactful way whether any of the works could be bought; he intimated that the prices asked were rather high, but promised to cable abroad and see what he could do. He did cable to Zoltan, and to a couple of customers in America, and these messages would be a part of his defense in case of trouble. All through his stay in Munich he would be stimulating the hopes of a somewhat impoverished German aristocrat, and diminishing the prices of his good paintings.

  V

  Upon entering Germany the conspirator had telephoned to Hugo Behr in Berlin, inviting that young Nazi to take the night train to Munich. Lanny was here on account of pictures, he said, and would show his friend some fine specimens. Hugo had understood, and it hadn’t been necessary to add, “expenses paid.” The young sports director had doubtless found some use for the money which Lanny had paid him, and would be pleased to render further services.

  He arrived next morning, going to a different hotel, as Lanny had directed. He telephoned, and Lanny drove and picked him up on the street. A handsome young Pomeranian, alert and with springy step, apple-cheeked and with wavy golden hair, Hugo was a walking advertisement of the pure Nordic ideal. In his trim Brownshirt uniform, with the insignia indicating his important function, he received a salute from all other Nazis, and from many civilians wishing to keep on the safe side. It was extremely reassuring to be with such a man in Germany—although the “Heil Hitlers” became a bit monotonous after awhile.

  Lanny drove his guest out into the country, where they could be quiet and talk freely. He encouraged the guest to assume that the invitation was purely out of friendship; rich men can indulge their whims like that, and they do so. Lanny was deeply interested to know how Hugo’s movement for the reforming of the Nazi party was coming along, and as the reformer wanted to talk about nothing else, they drove for a long time through the valleys of the Alpine foothills. The trees were in full splendor, as yet untouched by any signs of wear. A beautiful land, and Lanny’s head was full of poetry about it. Die Fenster auf, die Herzen auf! Geschwinde, geschwinde!

  But Hugo’s thoughts had no trace of poetic cheerfulness. His figure of a young Hermes was slumped in the car seat, and his one was bitter as he said: “Our Nazi revolution is kaput. We haven’t accomplished a thing. The Führer has put himself completely in the hands of the reactionaries. They tell him what to do—it’s no longer certain that he could carry out his own program, even if he wanted to. He doesn’t see his old friends any more, he doesn’t trust them. The Reichswehr crowd are plotting to get rid of the Stormtroopers altogether.”

  “Yo
u don’t really mean all that, Hugo!” Lanny was much distressed.

  “Haven’t you heard about our vacation?”

  “I only entered Germany yesterday.”

  “All the S.A. have been ordered to take a vacation during the month of July. They say we’ve been overworked and have earned a rest. That sounds fine; but we’re not permitted to wear our uniforms, or to carry our arms. And what are they going to do while we’re disarmed? What are we going to find when we come back?”

  “That looks serious, I admit.”

  “It seems to me the meaning is plain. We, the rank and file, have done our job and they’re through with us. We have all been hoping to be taken into the Reichswehr; but no, we’re not good enough for that. Those officers are Junkers, they’re real gentlemen, while we’re common trash; we’re too many, two million of us, and they can’t afford to feed us or to train us, so we have to be turned off—and go to begging on the streets, perhaps.”

  “You know, Hugo, Germany is supposed to have only a hundred thousand in its regular army. Mayn’t it be that the Führer doesn’t feel strong enough to challenge France and Britain on that issue?”

  “What was our revolution for, but to set us free from their control? And how can we ever become strong, if we reject the services of the very men who have made National Socialism? We put these leaders in power—and now they’re getting themselves expensive villas and big motor-cars, and they’re afraid to let us of the rank and file even wear our uniforms! They talk of disbanding us, because the Reich can’t afford our magnificent salaries of forty-two pfennigs a day.”

  “Is that what you get?”