Lanny didn’t want to appear too mournful, so he refrained from repeating what the Führer had predicted, that the campaign would be over in one month, or in two at the outside. Instead, he remarked: “It may be that the Wehrmacht is prepared to fight in the winter. They have uncorked so many miracles.”
“We shall need them,” declared the German-American. “If anybody had told me that it would be possible to line up the British and the American governments in support of the Red terrorists, I should not have believed it.”
“Nor I, Forrest. But at least we have learned who our enemies are.”
“You are telling me! We won’t need much research when we are ready to compile a shooting list.”
Lanny went to Baldur Heinsch, and carefully dropped a hint, but the other failed to take it. Presently the P.A. ventured: “By the way, what about those important persons who were going to rid us of that worst enemy?”
“They seem to have all dived underground. I don’t hear anything of what they are doing.”
“It would seem that this is their time, if ever.”
“I agree with you. I was hoping that you might have news about it.”
Lanny was disappointed, but it wouldn’t do to pursue the subject. Could it be that the steamship man had become suspicious? Or had he made up his mind that the son of Budd-Erling wasn’t going to help anybody to kidnap the President of his country, but just chat about it amiably?
The way to meet such a situation was to give news, not to seek it. Lanny remarked: “By the way, Herr Heinsch, you know my father sometimes drops hints about the airplane industry. He knows I am not especially interested in the subject, but I hear him talking to others and what he says might be of value to you without doing any harm to him.”
“By all means tell me,” adjured the other. It was amusing to see how quickly the conversation came to life.
“It appears that several companies scattered over the country are working on projects for rockets that will carry bombs; also they are-designing planes that will fly by means of the rocket principle—‘jet propulsion,’ they call it. They are expected to attain unprecedented speeds.”
“Thank you, Lanny; that may be very important indeed.” The P.A. smiled inwardly, knowing that the Germans were working on such plans, and their men must know that the British and Americans were nor entirely asleep. But evidently a steamship man hadn’t been told!
IV
Next morning there were letters to be written, and a bank to be visited. Then came lunch in the dining-room of the Ritzy-Waldorf, and it turned out that Reverdy knew Alonzo Curtice—such an inconveniently small world it was! Reverdy was a Princeton man and knew about life there, including the fact that German-Jewish refugees were being harbored by this fashionable university; Reverdy considered it a somewhat unfortunate precedent. Usually the Baltimore capitalist was a tactful person, but this time he overlooked the fact that Robbie Budd’s only daughter was married to such a refugee!
He was greatly interested to hear that Lanny had been making a catalog of the Curtice collection, and asked if the expert would consider his own collection worthy of such an honor. Lanny took this as one more effort to lure him into Green Spring Valley. He remarked that the collection would make a rather small catalog; something which the collector was free to take as a hint if he chose. Let him commission a competent expert to find more old masters on his next trip!
The collector said: “I am starting my cruise the first of November. Don’t you want to come with us?” This was the third time he had made the same suggestion; both of them knew what he meant by it, and each knew that the other knew, which made it slightly awkward.
“It would be great pleasure,” replied the younger man, “but unfortunately I have made commitments. I may be flying to Britain any day now.”
“We are going to see a bit of the Orient. My wife has a friend, a woman physician, whom I have undertaken to deliver to her post in South China. Then we plan to spend a while at Bali, one of the loveliest spots in the world.”
“It sounds most tempting,” remarked the polite Lanny. “But aren’t you the least bit concerned about war conditions?”
“We didn’t have any trouble last winter. I have the American flag painted large on each side of the vessel, also on the deck, and I keep everything well lighted at night. The German raiders have been pretty well cleared out of the South Seas by now; and anyhow, they are not interested in a private yacht.”
“I’d hate to take a chance on it, Reverdy, if they happened to be short on food or fuel.”
“They’d leave us enough to get to the nearest port. If you ask me, Lanny, I’d say you are running more risk in flying to Britain.”
Lanny let it rest there. Courtesy required him to mention the family, so he asked: “Is Lizbeth going with you this time?”
“She hasn’t made up her mind,” replied the father. “If you’d go, she’d come; and I’d be happy to invite anybody you’d like to have along.”
“You are too kind, really. I can think of nothing I’d rather do, but I have engagements abroad that it wouldn’t be decent to break.”
His thought was, this persistence was in the worst of taste. It was a phenomenon he had noticed among the very rich, and especially the sons and daughters of the very rich; they were used to having what they wanted, and took it as a right; they gave up with extremely ill grace. It didn’t seem probable that Reverdy Holdenhurst himself admired Lanny Budd extravagantly; they were too different in tastes and activities. But Lizbeth wanted Lanny, and Reverdy wanted Lizbeth to have what she wanted; he bad to want it, because otherwise she would give him no peace—she wouldn’t even come on his yachting cruises! Lizbeth was a third generation of the very rich, and it was even harder for her to endure the outrage of not being able to satisfy her heart’s desires. Lanny decided that this family which thought itself so very elegant was in reality somewhat crude.
V
These thoughts led his mind to Laurel Creston, who had to make her own way in the world and was doing it. Surely it wouldn’t be a sin to have another drive with her, before departing on a dangerous errand. Lanny called her on the telephone, saying: “I am going on a journey, and I wonder if I might have a chance to say good-by.”
“By all means,” she replied cordially.
“I have a peculiar proposal. I have a client who lives up the Hudson, a two or three hours’ drive. He has asked me to be there at nine this evening. He usually keeps me a couple of hours, and then I drive back to New York. The place is near a town, and it has occurred to me that you might take the drive with me, and spend the interim in a picture show. One can always learn something from a movie, even if it’s only how bad the movies can be.”
“It’s a date,” she said. “When and where shall we meet?”
“The usual place,” he said. “We’ll leave early and have dinner on the way. Say five o’clock? And bring something to read, so that if the show is too bad you can sit in a hotel lobby.”
VI
Having a couple of hours to spare, Lanny telephoned his Uncle Jesse. They met in the usual way, and drove up Madison Avenue and into Central Park. Inevitably they talked about the Soviet Union; the older man was not above saying: “I told you so!” He was extremely proud of the show his adopted Fatherland was putting up. “You see, they fall back, but they do not run away.”
“You are right, Uncle Jesse.” Lanny knew what pleasure it gives people to hear that. “I hope they will be able to keep it up.”
“What is to prevent them? The farther they retreat the shorter their lines grow, while the farther the Germans advance the greater their difficulties. They have to change the gauge of the railroads and they will surely not be able to do it before winter.”
“I agree with all that, Uncle Jesse.”
“Also, you notice that the Soviet staff work is not so incompetent as you feared. There’s a reason which I pointed out to you long ago. You were shocked by the purges, but now you see what th
ey meant. There are no Quislings in the Red Armies, and no traitor groups among politicians and journalists at home. Compare that with France!”
“I must admit the totalitarian system is more convenient for war, Uncle Jesse. But I am one of those tender-minded fellows who don’t like to see people killed.”
“It has been going on for a long time in the world,” said the tough-minded one, “and never faster than now.”
“Well, you may join me in grief for all the young Russians who are dying.”
“It has been happening on those vast steppes for many centuries, Lanny. It will not matter in the end, for they have not yet lost the courage to breed—as has been the case with the French for the last century, and nowadays in this classic land of capitalism. I observe that my nephew has reached the age of forty, and has contributed only one little girl to posterity.”
Lanny broke into a laugh. “And how about my Red uncle? Has he got some posterity hidden away?”
“I am a freak, Lanny; one of those fanatics who dream of changing the world, and I cannot do a double duty.”
“Don’t worry, Uncle Jesse. Your nephew also has a duty, and some day he may have the pleasure of telling you about it. How long do you expect to stay here?”
“Not more than a few weeks. Then my address will be the Kremlin.”
“So, you are going back! Are you expecting to join the fight?”
“Old men for counsel, young men for war. The Soviet authorities think I can give them advice about the building of the underground in France, and also in their dealings with their new ally, the U.S.A.”
“I find it encouraging,” ventured the P.A., “how this country has rallied to the support of the Soviet Union in peril. In future it will not be so easy for our journalists to lie about the Reds.”
“It is like spring sunshine after a long winter,” agreed the ex-deputy. “But don’t let it fool you. Capitalism will always find ways to lie, for that is its nature. When it has no enemies abroad it lies about itself and the members of its own family. Every manufacturer lies about his product, every salesman about his sales. The whole system of competitive commercialism is built on falsehood and couldn’t survive without it.”
“I see the old phonograph records haven’t been cracked by the war!” Lanny smiled. “Are you certain that nobody ever lies in the Soviet Union?”
“Come and see!” challenged the other.
“Do you suppose they would let me in? A bourgeois person who lives by selling the products of other men’s genius?”
“Joking aside,” declared the other, “you ought to get some idea of what the new world is going to be like. I’ll vouch for you and get you a permit.”
“Joking aside, Uncle Jesse, that’s very kind. But I have a job to do, and some day you’ll admit that it was worth doing. Meantime, don’t mention me to anybody. Good luck to you and your Red Army!”
VII
The place agreed upon with Laurel Creston was a street near her apartment house. She took seriously Lanny’s desire not to be known as a friend of “Mary Morrow,” and walked around the block to make sure that no one was trailing her. It was a cloudy afternoon, with a touch of autumn in the air, and her cheeks were flushed, whether from the exercise or from the pleasure of seeing him. When she had stepped into the car and they had exchanged greetings she said: “I hope it is not too dangerous a mission you are going on.”
“Not especially so,” he replied. “I shall probably be flying to Britain.”
She told him: “I have another short story coming out next week.”
“Too bad that I shall miss it.”
“I have a carbon copy with me. You may read it, if you have time, and then destroy it. I shall have no use for it when it is out.”
“Keep it until this trip is over,” he replied. “I’ll read it in my hotel room and then make a little bonfire.”
They were driving on upper Broadway, once the old Albany Post Road; they crossed a bridge and passed through a village with the odd name of Spuyten Duyvil. Laurel was answering his questions about her novel; she had not started it yet, but she had some ideas and told them. The subject had become dim in his memory after two months of nuclear physics, but it came back quickly and he was interested again. He remembered suggestions which had occurred to him before the atomic bomb had exploded in his mind.
Later he told her that he had had lunch with her Uncle Reverdy, and she said: “I am to lunch with him tomorrow. It will seem strange not to mention this drive, but I think it will be better so.”
“Have you told him that you are Mary Morrow?”
“I don’t think he would be interested in my stories; I’m not sure that he approves of women writing at all, and certainly not of their finding fault with the social order. You know how conservative he is.”
“Indeed, yes. I think he has the general idea that it is dangerous to find fault with any government anywhere, because the Reds might profit from it.”
“My Uncle Reverdy is a strange man. Underneath his reserve he is extremely unhappy, and his mind is a mass of frustrations. Do you know the sad story of his marital misfortune?”
“Yes, my mother told me.”
“It was your mother who told me, also. I had to go to the free-spoken Riviera in order to find out about my own family.”
Laurel herself was by no means freespoken, in spite of her best efforts. She did not put into words anything about the “misfortune” of a man whose wife had found him in the embrace of a maidservant; she just said: “Aunt Millicent cannot forgive him, and he cannot forgive her for not forgiving him; so they go through life with the doors of their hearts locked, never speaking a word of their real thoughts. I cannot imagine anything more destructive to the human soul; I sometimes think that Uncle Reverdy cannot forgive society for having let him be born, or God for having made him what he is.”
“Tell me what you think of Lizbeth,” ventured the man.
“Lizbeth is a child, and will remain that so long as she is sheltered from all experience and handed everything she wants on a silver platter. What chance is there for her to develop any of her faculties? I sometimes think that the child of indulgent parents is more unfortunate than an orphan. They ought to be taken away from their parents and raised in communities where other children have a chance to give them social discipline.”
Lanny added: “It seems to me especially bad where two parents are competing for a child’s favor.”
“Exactly so! Uncle Reverdy and Aunt Millicent have done their best to keep Lizbeth from knowing about the disharmony between them, but of course she must be aware of it. When she decides to go on a yacht cruise or to stay at home, she is taking part in a family war. It would have ruined any child who wasn’t naturally so gentle and kind.”
Lanny said: “Some day you should write a story about such a family!”
VIII
In the city of Poughkeepsie they found a motion-picture theater with a hotel near by. Lanny told her where to sit in the theater so that he could find her; if she was not there he would come to the hotel. Then he drove a short distance, parked his car, and promptly on the minute strolled past the corner appointed. A car halted at the curb, and Lanny stepped in. As a rule there were two men in the car, but this time Baker was alone. He flashed a torch upon Lanny, and then the car sped northward up the river road.
They did not enter the Krum Elbow estate by the main drive with the sentry box in front; they went in by a lane through a grove of trees ready for the Christmas market. A sentry stopped them, but Baker had the entrée and they approached the house by a rear door. Here was another sentry—Lanny would have been happier if there had been half a dozen, but he knew that America wasn’t used to war and didn’t yet realize that it was at war. American destroyers were being attacked by German submarines, but the American public hadn’t been told.
The visitor was escorted by a rear stairway, and into the comfortable bedroom with the chintz curtains and the grate fire; it was a
chilly evening and the Boss had on his blue crew-necked sweater. But there was nothing chilly about his mood; he welcomed his caller with a grin, and when the door was closed he said: “Hi, old atom smasher!” He would always have some fancy greeting like that; he would carry with laughter the most crushing burdens of state. A P.A. would be invited to recite the formula for the production of plutonium—not because F.D. would recognize it, but because it was fun to pretend to.
But don’t imagine that he wouldn’t get down to real business. It wasn’t more than a minute before he was saying that this was the most important errand upon which he had ever sent a man, and that P.A. 103 might count it a compliment. “The task will call for all the discretion you possess, Lanny; and if you bring home this piece of bacon you can have pretty nearly anything you ask for.”
“All I’ll ask is another assignment, Governor. I’m not planning anything else until we have knocked the Nazis out.”
“You won’t let me put up your expenses for this trip?”
“I have just sold a bunch of my former stepfather’s paintings and I am flush. What troubles me is how I’m going to get into Britain without making myself known as your agent.”
“You won’t need to be in England more than a day or two, and I am having Baker provide you with a passport under an assumed name.”
“But, Governor! The photograph and the fingerprints!”
A World to Win Page 52
