XI
Darkness had fallen, and Lanny said: “It might be a good idea if you would curl up on that seat and get a good sleep.”
She answered: “I feel as if I can never sleep again until I am out of Germany.”
“I understand your nervousness, but you may need all your faculties by and by. There are psychological exercises to put yourself to sleep.”
“You mean counting sheep?”
“I have never been interested in sheep. I discovered that recalling poetry was a good sedative for me—I suppose because I learned to love it while I was young. Sleep comes from the subconscious, and the deeper you go the better. The most lasting impressions are those we got in childhood, and the verses we learned then are those that mean peace and happiness to us. Did you learn to say ‘Now I lay me’? If so, say it now, over and over—and not mechanically, or like a modern sophisticate. Be a child, and go to sleep as a child.”
“Very interesting,” she said; “but let me wait until later in the evening.”
They had come to the Teutoburger Wald, which lies in the center of western Germany; a chain of mountains, not high, but densely wooded. They skirted along the foothills, and Lanny said: “There should be ghosts about us tonight, for these are the mountains from which the Teuton hordes poured and destroyed the Roman army under Varus about the time of Christ. You may remember from your school books the cry of the Emperor Augustus: ‘Varus, give me back my legions!’ I am told that this victory is to be counted as one of the causes of the late World War, and of the next that is coming. The Franks became a latinized and civilized people, whereas the Teutons remained barbarians in their dark forests, and still cherish their belief in the holiness of bloodshed.”
The same old Lanny Budd, delivering scholarly discourses, whether it was on the music, art, literature, or history of this old continent on which he had been born!
XII
They came to a glade in the forest, and some distance from the road they saw a fire burning and heard the sound of singing. Lanny stopped the engine and they listened to words of the Horst Wessel Lied: “Die Strasse frei den braunen Bataillonen!” Lanny said: “This will be an encampment of the Hitlerjugend, or perhaps of the Jungvolk, the organization of the younger boys. In the summer they go on walking tours and camp in the open. Three or four years ago the Nazis conscripted all children from the age of ten, and they have their semi-military organizations for youth training. These sound like young voices, so probably it is the Jungvolk.”
“You seem to know everything about them,” commented the woman.
“From boyhood I had a friend in Stubendorf who grew up to become one of their high-up officials, and every time I come to Berlin he fills me with more details which I have to get correct or it would deeply hurt his feelings. Fifteen boys constitute a Jungenschaft; three of these groups make a Feldzug, and three of these a Fähnlein. Four Fähnlein make a Stamm, and five of these a Jungbann. That gets you up to about three thousand, and I have to confess that my memory fails me from there up to the millions of the total. It appears that the minds of German children are especially malleable, and my friend is confident that there is not a single one among these millions who is not eager to shed his last drop of blood for the Führer.”
Laurel Creston made no comment and Lanny waited until the singing had died away. Then he said: “This may provide us with a solution of the problem of sleep.”
“How do you mean?”
“It is a place where we might find lodgings without a police register. At any rate, it can do no harm to try. It will be necessary for you to have another name. Will Miss Jones be satisfactory?”
She assented, and he turned into the narrow lane which led toward the encampment. When they were near, two boys of sixteen or so stepped out of the shadows and held up their hands in warning. Lanny stopped his car and engine and said, politely: “Zwei amerikanische Gäste wollen Ihr Lager besuchen.” The reply was: “Bitte warten Sie, mein Herr.”
They sat and listened to another song, until one of the lads returned and said: “Bitte, kommen Sie mit.” He led them up the road to a place where a couple of other cars were parked, and when they got out he led them to the campfire. A youngish man in uniform met them, and Lanny said: “Herr Budd und Miss Jones; wir sind amerikanische Touristen.” The man replied, in good English: “It is a pleasure to have you with us,” and placed two camp stools for them.
XIII
It was a clearing in the dark forest, with tall, straight fir trees enclosing it like walls. The fire was in the center, and about it on the needle-carpeted ground sat a throng of lads from the ages of ten to sixteen. There were about fifty, so Lanny judged that it was a Feldzug. They wore khaki uniforms with knickers and sandals, and bandana handkerchiefs about their necks. Bright eager faces, eyes blue or gray, all turned with curiosity upon the visitors; mouths open, singing Die Lorelei—ignorant of the fact that the words had been written by a Jew. Presently it was Tannenbaum, O, Tannenbaum, which would sound like home to “Miss Jones,” because its tune had been adopted for Maryland, My Maryland.
The leader sat next to the guests; and after an interval Lanny took out his billfold and extracted a precious document which he used for all sorts of diplomatic purposes. It was a clipping from the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten of some five years ago, telling about the Detaze exhibition in that city, and recording how the stepson of the famous painter, scion of the American munitions factory, Budd Gunmakers, had taken one of the paintings to the Braune Haus to show it to the Führer, and what the Führer had said about his love of true and worthy French art. The clipping included a portrait of Lanny Budd’s unmistakably Aryan features, and he had pasted it carefully upon a thin strip of parchment which could be folded and unfolded without breaking.
No Nazi could resist this magic document; it was at once an Identifikationskarte and a Billet of admission to the inner shrines of the new religion. He had tried it scores of times, and knew approximately what the reading time was, and at precisely what point the reader would come to the statement that Lanny was an old friend of the Führer, and also of Kurt Meissner, the Komponist, and of Heinrich Jung, the high-up director of the Hitlerjugend. The humble leader of this Feldzug sat reading by the light of his little electric torch, and when he came to this place he could no longer retain his excitement. “Ach, herrlich! Ein persönlicher Freund des Führers!”
Immediately he wanted to know if Lanny would talk to the boys and tell them about this marvelous friendship. Lanny said it would be a pleasure; so the leader arose and introduced the American gentleman, telling what splendid news he had to communicate. There were cries of eager delight, and when the visitor started talking they sat like so many stone images, some with hands clasped tightly. Fifty pairs of blue and gray eyes were riveted upon Lanny’s face, while he told how he had visited Schloss Stubendorf as a boy and had met both Kurt and Heinrich, and how in later years, after the war, Heinrich had told him about the new movement called NSDAP, and how Heinrich had visited the Führer in prison in the fortress of Landsberg.
The narrator went on to tell how he had been taken to meet Herr Hitler in his humble Berlin apartment, and had found him playing with the two children of his housekeeper. After the Führer had taken power it had been Lanny’s privilege to visit him many times; he had purchased half a dozen of the paintings of Lanny’s stepfather and had put them in the guest house at the Berghof; he had done this, so he said, as a sign of his desire for friendship between France and Germany. Also he had commissioned an American Kunstsachverständiger to purchase a couple of works by Defregger, an Austrian painter who had painted the peasants of the Führer’s homeland. The American had been a guest for weeks at a time at Berchtesgaden, and told about the life there, including the retreat on the Kehlstein. Lanny knew of only one other foreigner who had ever been taken to that mountain top, and that was the French diplomatic representative, M. François-Poncet.
To these lads a tunnel into a mountainside and a
n elevator shaft that went up seven hundred feet through solid granite made the most wonderful fairy tale in the world; the structure on the top, with its view of all the Austrian Alps, was heaven, the true Teutonic dwelling place of deity. When the visitor got through with his narrative they sat hushed and awe-stricken; when the leader asked with deference whether Herr Budd would do them the honor to shake hands with each of them, they came forward in a line—no pushing or crowding—and each clicked the heels of his sandals, made a stiff little bow from the waist, and solemnly shook the hand which had shaken the hand of the Führer. Fifty times and a few extra Lanny heard “Danke schön, Herr Budd,” and fifty times he bowed and smiled in return.
XIV
The campfire was dying, and it was time to retire. Lanny said: “What a grand spot you have here!” Rows of tents were visible by the waning firelight, and the leader explained that they moved on in the morning and a new Feldzug would arrive in the late afternoon. Lanny said: “I wonder if it would be agreeable if we were to camp with you tonight.” The suggestion caused a wave of excitement. Der persönlicher Freund des Führers und seine Dame wollen übernachten! Two tents? Yes, surely, they had an abundance of tents, for on pleasant nights like this most of the Kameraden preferred to spread their blankets on the pine needles.
So the two visitors were escorted to adjoining tents, furnished each with a canvas cot, a blanket, and a little stand with wash basin and pitcher. Soon all was quiet, and Lanny stretched out—but he didn’t start saying “Now I lay me”! For hours he lay still, going over in his mind the various mad schemes which he had outlined to Laurel Creston during their drive. In the silence and darkness they seemed madder than ever, and when he got through Lanny was just about ready to pray the Lord his soul to take!
18
Grasp the Nettle
I
After a breakfast of bread and butter and hot cocoa, the Touristen were speeded on their way with cheers. They started west; but soon Lanny decided that it was not the part of wisdom to get nearer to the French border, so they swung toward the south. The scenery was varied and beautiful but they failed to appreciate it; it was German scenery, and they wanted to look at any other kind of earth. It was the morning of the 22nd of August, and Lanny turned on the radio of his car, keeping it low, and heard the official announcement of the German government that a mission headed by Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop was on the point of flying to Moscow for the purpose of concluding a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.
He had known that this was coming, and had found that most of the people of the “great world” with whom he talked had heard the rumors; but the non-Germans hadn’t wanted to believe it, so they hadn’t, and now even Lanny was shocked when he heard it published to the world. He knew that it meant war—in three days, if the statement of “Monck was correct. It was the “green light” for the Nazis to take what they wanted from Poland, and to fight Britain and France if these nations chose to interfere. Lanny explained this to his companion, and they listened to the radio from foreign stations, turning it off when they were passing anyone on the road.
“This will make it very hard for you and me,” Lanny said. “Precautions at the border will be doubled, and there will be no planes flying into Germany unchallenged, and no motorboats approaching the shore.” The truth was, he was just about in despair as to the next step, but he didn’t put it so bluntly to his companion.
“Mr. Budd,” she responded, “you have been kind beyond belief, but there is a limit to my right to impose upon you. I think you ought to put me down at the next town and leave me.”
“To do what?”
“Go back to Berlin and put myself under the guidance of the Embassy, and take whatever comes to me.”
“I am not prepared to do anything like that—not if we have to spend a month rolling about the country camping out with the Jungvolk.”
“Tell me frankly,” persisted the woman. “What were you planning to do if you had not got my call for help?”
“I was going to Munich to attend to some picture business, not especially urgent; then I was going to telephone Rudolf Hess and offer to visit him at Berchtesgaden.”
“That is really important to you, is it not?”
“It might be and might not. You saw what I was able to do last night, just by being in position to talk about these powerful persons; and it is so everywhere I go, in Europe and America. Everybody wants to hear about Hitler, Göring, Hess, Schacht—all the Nazi great ones. It is good for a meal in any multimillionaire’s home in any capital in the world; incidentally I talk about paintings, and it may happen that people like Mrs. Henry Ford, or her son Edsel, realize that I offer them a chance to purchase paintings without making themselves ridiculous. One thing grows out of another, and nobody can foresee what may be the consequence of a casual conversation.”
Lanny had not forgotten that this lady from Baltimore was supposed to be spying upon him, and he thought it might be an act of kindness to put her mind at rest. “You should really understand my position,” he continued. “I am a lover of art, of peace and humanity. I stare that fact wherever I go, and am accepted on that basis. I travel about as a sort of international errand boy, a messenger of the gods. Herr Hitler says: ‘Tell your friends that this is my attitude’—and he goes on to explain how he desires understanding between Germany, France and Britain. When I go to these countries, and men of affairs ask me: ‘What does Hitler want?’ I reply: ‘He has told me to say thus and so.’”
“But does he mean what he says, Mr. Budd?”
“The statesmen invariably ask that, and I answer: ‘I am not a psychologist, and I do not read his mind. This is what he said to me, and you may take it for what it is worth.’ Then, when I go back to Germany, Hitler and Göring and Hess ask me about this one and that, and I repeat what I have been told. Both sides profess to desire peace above all things, and I do what I can to encourage the idea. At this moment, you can guess that I am not very proud of what I have accomplished. I see myself as a well-meaning but somewhat futile dilettante.”
II
They drove for a while, listening to the bewildered comments of the British and French newscasters at the communique from the Wilhelmstrasse. Der Führer had “put one over on them,” of that there could be no question. It would take them several days to realize the implications of the act, and perhaps years to observe its consequences.
“There might be something you could do about this in Berchtesgaden!” exclaimed the woman, suddenly. “Tell me about it frankly, I beg you.”
He thought for a while: “I will tell you what I had in mind, if you promise to consider it confidential, and take the promise very seriously.”
“Indeed, you may count upon that.”
“You must understand that right now the Führer and his entourage are making the most important decision of their careers, perhaps the most important in the history of their country. I imagine them in a state of great confusion; statesmen and generals coming and going, and steps being taken which can never be recalled. At such a time, some of them long for supernormal counsel, and Hess is one of these. I was going to offer to bring Madame Zyszynski from Juan, and see what the spirits might have to say about the future of the Fatherland.”
“You really mean that he would consider such things in a crisis like this?”
“I can assure you that he takes them with the utmost seriousness.”
“And do you do the same, by any chance?”
“I should have to deliver quite a discourse on that, dear lady. I was brought up, as you were, to think of such things as superstition and fraud; but I have been reading modern science—you remember what I told you about Jeans and Eddington. There is now a group of the most qualified physicists who tell us that time is not the fixed and absolute thing it seems to us. It is perfectly possible that what has ever been exists always, and that what is going to be has likewise existed always. So I decided to take a new attitude of mind; I am ready to believ
e anything if I get enough evidence, and I hesitate before I say that anything is impossible. I read a book by an Englishman, J. W. Dunne, who keeps a careful record of his dreams and finds that many of them are prophetic. I haven’t had the time to try it, but I am surely not going to say that the statement is absurd.”
“Such ideas would turn all my thinking upside down,” declared the woman.
“Certainly, and we don’t like that; we have resented it all the way from Copernicus and Galileo down to Einstein. As it happens, right now in this crisis I wasn’t thinking of psychic research, but rather of international affairs. I have observed that Tecumseh and the other controls whom our elderly Polish medium brings with her are always on the side of peace and humanity. I don’t know whether that is because of her nature, or whether my stepfather and I exert some influence on the communications—anyhow, they advise against war, and I had the wild thought that they might say something especially significant, and so have an influence upon Hess and others with whom he is in consultation.”
“And you are failing to try it on my account!” exclaimed Laurel Creston. “That is certainly not fair!”
“Do not let it trouble you,” he pleaded. “It was a rather crazy idea, and a hundred different things might have kept it from being tried out. It may be too late now, and it may have been too late then—even before you called upon me.”
III
Ideas came into Lanny Budd’s mind in different ways. Sometimes they came like a flash of lightning, making him start and cry out; sometimes they came in a stately way, a procession with banners and music; sometimes they came stealing quietly, like a little mouse into a room. Lanny was thinking about trance mediums and their strange ways; their personalities, the real ones and those which they brought into being when they lay back and closed their eyes. Madame was a tired old woman, and she had got a fright at the Berghof, and wouldn’t like to go back there; she wasn’t well, and mightn’t be able to travel—certainly not alone. Lanny had been to see Pröfenik, with the idea of using him. He had visited a couple of other mediums that he had heard of, but had got nothing worth while. It would be almost impossible to do anything with any German, because of the political implications, the temptations, the atmosphere of intrigue and terror which surrounded the Führer’s mountain retreat. No one who hoped to get anything, or who feared to lose anything from the Nazi Nummer Eins or Nummer Drei, would be of any use whatever in this situation.
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