Wide Is the Gate Page 14

  A mystery complicated enough to make the plot of a melodrama for Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, if that fastidious highbrow would condescend to anything so far down in the dramatic scale. Was the Air Kommandant using Lanny as a preliminary to doing business with Lanny’s father? Or did he have his eye on Irma’s fortune, planning to get Lanny into a serious scrape and then plunder Lanny’s wife as he had plundered Johannes Robin? Was he expecting to use him as a decoy, to draw members of the underground movement into the Gestapo’s net? Trudi had vouched for Monck; but suppose Monck was fooling Trudi and getting ready to meet Lanny’s friends and probe his secrets? All these were possibilities, and seemed more probable than the idea that this vain and cruel man was really enjoying the company of the grandson of Budd’s.

  Maybe they were following him here in Berlin! That at least was something he could make sure about; he drove his car around a block, and every time he turned a corner he watched in his little mirror to see if any other car made the same turn. None did; so he decided that he wasn’t imperiling Trudi at present. He drove up the street which she had named, timing himself to pass the corner exactly at noon. There she was, also on the dot; walking on the right side of the street, and carrying a small package in the crook of her left arm, in plain sight as he drove up behind her. He passed her, going slowly, and in the next block drew up by the curb and waited until she came along and stepped in. They drove on, and again he turned a corner and watched carefully; but there was no pursuit.

  XI

  “I didn’t know where to get a feather,” said Lanny; “but I got the job with the General.”

  He told her about the luncheon in the official residence, and to the woman it was a sort of ogre-story, a visit to Bluebeard’s castle. “How could you swallow his food?” she exclaimed.

  “I ate too much,” he replied. “It was part of the job. If I go there often, you may see me looking like him.”

  “Gott behute! What on earth do you talk about to such a man?”

  “Mostly you listen to him talk. You find that it has to do with himself and his prowess, and of course with the army and especially with the air force he is building. He has a strong ego, and his aim in life is to compel other persons to submit to his will. He is much better company than some of the other Nazis, because he does not bore you with their jargon; he talks like a man of the world who is interested in power and assumes that you are sensible enough to understand that.”

  “It does not disturb his sleep that he has killed tens of thousands of persons and is having a hundred thousand tortured in prisons?”

  “I am sure he sleeps as soundly as any other fat man. You must understand that he does not have our conception of human brotherhood. He is a professional killer of other men; he has been trained for it since youth, and during the World War it became the most exciting of games, in which he staked his life upon his skill. Frau Magda Goebbels called my attention to the fact that so many of the Nazi leaders have been airmen. It was a school for the making of initiative and daring, and for the eliminating of the scrupulous. I am sure that Goring would hesitate no more over eliminating you than you would over a bedbug.”

  “I am put in my place,” said Trudi, managing a wry smile.

  “Now this wholesale killer is conducting a school for young Nazis, teaching them initiative and daring. Incidentally, and indirectly, he is teaching the same thing to young working-class leaders. It is a harsh school.”

  She thought about that before she spoke again. “Tell me, Lanny, suppose you had a chance to address the workers of Germany—only one chance—just what would you say to them?”

  The car rolled on for a block before he answered. “I believe I would point out to them that the increase in employment of which the Nazis boast is based entirely upon the manufacture of armaments; also, it depends upon the piling up of debts, and so it cannot go on indefinitely. It can have but one end, another slaughtering of the workers.”

  “Suppose you had a chance to bring them some sort of message from the outside world, what would it be?”

  “That the workers of France and England and America are of a pacifist disposition; they do not want to rearm their countries and they have succeeded in cutting down military budgets to a great extent. But of course if Germany goes on rearming, that will automatically force the neighboring countries to follow suit. It is obvious that when a nation turns its whole substance into war materials, as Germany is doing now, the time will come when that nation has to go to war—it can do nothing else because it is equipped for nothing else; and it must use its armaments or else be suffocated under their weight.”

  “We do not get the Socialist papers from abroad any more, Lanny. Can you tell me of some foreign statesman who has said that, and who might be quoted?”

  “Leon Blum has been saying it over and over; both in his speeches and in Le Populaire.”

  “Very well,” said the woman. “We will attribute it to him. The next time you come into Germany, bring us some clippings like that; they will be useful.”

  “O.K.,” said Lanny, somewhat offhand and without realizing that he was taking one more step toward trouble. Or maybe he knew but didn’t wish to admit it to himself. Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and it is a common observation that when you have taken the first step through that gate and along that way, it becomes easier to take the second and the third.

  XII

  When Lanny got back to his hotel there was a cablegram, always an interesting event in the life of an art expert. Among Irma’s Long Island acquaintances was a young matron known as “the princess of pickles”; she had inherited a block of stock in a great industry having to do with the canning and processing of foods. Two or three years ago Lanny had cabled her from Vienna about a Blessed Virgin by Jan van Eyck, and she had promptly forwarded the price. In due course she had discovered, as most of his clients did, that it was a beautiful thing and that owning it was a source of rare distinction. So, immediately upon receiving the quotation from the Baroninwitwe, Lanny had cabled this same client that she had an opportunity to obtain a Blessed Virgin by the elder brother of Jan and thus be unique among American collectors so far as Lanny’s knowledge went. Now came a reply that a hundred and twenty-five thousand marks had been placed to his account in one of the great banks of Berlin, but that he would be expected to get his commission out of this sum.

  That was the kind of thing which made Irma Barnes so furious with the rich; she called it “jewing down,” and she said, what was five thousand dollars to Brenda Spratt? Lanny grinned and said that if you counted it in the form of canned pork and beans it might amount to a carload. He was used to all sorts of counter-proposals, and had seen one of his clients give up a priceless painting rather than pay the extra ten per cent; he added one of his father’s favorite anecdotes, about a lady in Newcastle who had desired to sell her mansion but had refused because the purchaser insisted upon the curtains being included in the deal.

  It would mean another trip to the Neumark, and one of those bargaining-duels which Lanny had learned to enjoy. He performed a mathematical operation to determine the purchase price with his commission added. It worked out at one hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred and thirty-six marks and thirty-six pfennigs. It would sound better if he renounced his claim to the pfennigs and offered the Prussian lady an extra mark. He phoned to his victim and made an appointment to see her after lunch the following day; also he phoned Zoltan about the deal, and told Irma that he had fixed it up with his colleague, who was supposed to have a client desiring the picture but unwilling to pay so high a price.

  XIII

  Lanny got a large bundle of crisp new notes from the bank and stowed them in an inside pocket; he didn’t have to worry about hold-ups, because in Germany the only kind was official, and if you possessed an American passport you were immune. They drove on a day of rain which turned to light snow before they got to their destination. The potato-fields were a vast magical
blanket, suggesting a world where there had never been any suffering; but it was an illusion, for if you had known how many thousands of human bodies had fertilized those fields through the centuries it would have ruined your appetite for “earth-apples,” as the Germans call them.

  In the drawing-room of the elderly stout aristocrat, overcrowded with things old enough to be valuable even though they were ugly, Lanny played the game which had become his substitute for war. A poet had told the world that the colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady were sisters under the skin; Lanny had never bought pictures from either of this pair, but he had bought them from members of the French, Spanish, German, Austrian, Polish, and Russian ruling classes, and had proved that their manners and morals were not even skin-deep when immense quantities of their country’s currency were dangled before their eyes.

  The Baroninwitwe von Wiesenschmetterling became indignant when she learned that this young American upstart had presumed to make an appointment and expect her to waste her time haggling over a few marks. She had set her price, and had written him a second note—not yet mailed—granting him an option. Why had he not told her over the telephone that he wished to try to force a reduction in her offer? Lanny said he was sorry. He had not understood that it would be an offense to make a counterproposal; and after all, a hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred and thirty-seven marks was not a sum to be sneezed out of the room. He said it with his amiable grin, and added that he would be glad if he could leave the package behind him, because it was so heavy it had stretched his coat out of shape. He dragged it forth, and saw the Baroninwitwe’s eyes grow larger—it was hardly likely that she had ever seen such an amount of cash in all her baronial life.

  It was a struggle to the death of the noble lady’s temper and very nearly of Lanny’s endurance. “This is really an immense sum of money, gnadige Baronin; it cost a lot to cable so much to Germany and I’ll hate to have to send it back. My client’s statement is positive, and I know from previous experience that she will not change. Please be so kind as to read the cablegram.” She refused, but when he put it into her hands, her curiosity got the better of her; this showed that she could change her mind and that she was not such a forbidding personality as she endeavored to appear.

  There was a table near her chair, and he unwrapped the package on it. “I want you to realize that this is not stage money,” he said. “This, as you will see, is the bank’s own label—in this bundle are fifty one-thousand-mark notes, and here is another of the same; and this smaller collection makes the complete sum. In my ten years’ experience as a Kunstsachverstandiger it has rarely happened that I have handled so large an amount of money—”

  “Aber—never before have you had a Hubert van Eyck!” She almost screamed it.

  “I have purchased a Blessed Virgin by Jan van Eyck from a relative of yours—and for a much smaller sum.”

  “I know, I know, but that is not the same! You realize it as well as I do.”

  They argued the merits of the two Flemish brothers and the comparative rarity of their works. Here was a treasure unknown to the art world, a family possession for three hundred years, and he came and tried to shop for it as if he were buying the old clothes of her major-domo! When she said that, Lanny decided to resort to the last extreme. He put the bundles of money together and said, with dignity: “I am sorry, gnadige Baronin, that I have wasted so much of your time.” Irma, who had been sitting motionless, a statue of silent contempt, arose, and the two of them started to take their leave. “I shall be leaving for England tomorrow,” he said.

  Lanny had known men who could stand that, but never a woman whom it had not broken down. “Gut denn!” said the noble widow, torn between greed and rage. “I’ll meet you half-way. I’ll split the commission with you. You may have five per cent and pay me the balance.”

  “I have brought no more with me than I have shown you, and I am not in a position to change my offer. I have to divide my commission with my associate—”

  “But what have I to do with that?”

  “If he has assisted me, he has earned his share.”

  “But what have you yourself done in the matter? You have made two trips here, you have written me one letter and sent one cablegram to your client—that is all!”

  “Verehrte Gnadige, you overlook the most important detail: I have spent a matter of ten years learning to do these things. I have not merely learned the names and addresses of persons who are willing to take my word for paintings, but I have established a character so that they trust me. Do you think you could find, anywhere on this earth, a person who would cable you one hundred and twenty-five thousand marks to buy a painting which the person had never seen or even heard of until your message arrived?”

  They had an argument standing on their feet. Irma was disgusted, and started to go out to the car, and that was good.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do—my last offer! I’ll allow you ten thousand marks, and you pay a hundred and fifteen thousand. Einverstanden?”

  This was cheese-paring, and she must have known it. But don’t make the mistake of being impolite, for she might become really mad! “Verehrte Baronin,” said Lanny, in the kindest tone he had in his repertoire, “you have a lovely and rare painting and I have not tried to conceal my admiration for it. I have offered you a very high price, and I think I have done well for you. I also think that I have earned my proper share. I have never in my life cut my own commission, because I know that the work I do is honest and is worth the price. If you accept my offer you will count this large sum of money, and then sign the bill of sale in triplicate, after which I will hand you the money with one hand and you hand me the picture with the other, and we will both be better off than we are now.”

  He had to walk all the way to the front door of the mansion and had begun to be seriously worried; but finally she said: “Also gut—kommen Sie zuruck!” She sat down and counted every one of the notes, stopping to wet her fingers for every two or three. She signed the documents, and Lanny wrapped the Blessed Virgin in a piece of oilcloth which he had brought. He was about to take his departure when she became suddenly human and invited the young couple to a Teegesellschaft. But Irma had gone out to the car, and he was afraid she would refuse to come back; she wasn’t very well, he said, and they desired to get back to Berlin before dark.

  XIV

  “Oh, that odious woman!” exclaimed the heiress, whose money had come so easily.

  “I have met worse,” said Lanny, well content.

  The wife would have liked to say: “I can’t comprehend why you insist upon going through such scenes, for the small sums you get out of it.” But Emily Chattersworth had urged her to forgo these criticisms and let Lanny play the game which he had mastered. Instead she remarked: “I really can’t see why you should pay anything to Zoltan. He hasn’t helped with this deal, has he?”

  Lanny didn’t wish to tell what Zoltan’s help had really been. He said: “I’ll offer to pay him, but I know he won’t take it.”

  “Another thing,” added Irma. “You’ve got your money into Germany, and how will you get it out?”

  “It can stay for a while,” he replied. “Sooner or later I’ll see a painting that I want.”

  There was no need to say more, for Irma would have forgotten about it in a few hours. He drove next morning and drew ten thousand marks from the bank and went to the rendezvous with Trudi Schultz, omitting no precautions. He staggered her when he put this sum into her hands. “It’ll save my having to come again so soon.”

  “But, Lanny, how am I to keep so much money?”

  “Find some hiding-place in your room—one where the Gestapo won’t think to look.”

  “But suppose the house should burn down.”

  “If that happens,” he smiled, “be sure you get out, and don’t bother about the money. I can get more—but I can’t get another Frau Mueller!”

  7

  SPIRITS OF JUST MEN

  I


  Christmas at Wickthorpe Lodge was a delightful occasion, with friends coming and going, messengers bringing gifts, surprises being planned, a rushing here and there with artificially created excitement. Bright fires blazed in every room and the house was warm, the way Irma liked it. It meant servants coming with full coal-scuttles and going with empty ones; but that was no trouble in this delightful land where prompt cheerful attendants could be had at ridiculous wages. Lanny, the economic determinist, said it was the English land system, which excluded the country people from their birthright; but he had learned not to make “grouchy” remarks in the presence of his wife, and especially not at the season when peace and good will were supposed to prevail.

  Beauty came from London with her husband. She and her daughter-in-law got along famously, the older deferring to the younger and doing everything to turn the spotlight upon her; it was according to her code that the world existed for the young, especially of the female sex—they were entitled to their turn. As for Beauty’s husband, that gray-haired and rosy cherub wouldn’t ever be in the way of anybody; for who can object to being loved, especially in a quiet and non-invasive way? Parsifal Dingle had healed little Frances of a mild cold; at least, he had treated her by his method of prayer and meditation, and the trouble had disappeared. He didn’t make any claims, but left it for you to draw your own conclusions. He was just the person to have around the house at Yuletide, a sort of Santa without whiskers. At this season everybody practiced what Parsifal preached—and if only they had been willing to live the rest of the year in the same spirit, what a different world it might have been!