Presidential Agent Page 9

  “She’ll probably find it isn’t so romantic as she imagined. Do you think you’ll ever go back to her, Lanny?”

  “I’m quite sure that is finished. My mother is begging me to find the right sort of wife and stick by her. You know my habits; I’ve never stayed very long in one place in my life, and I’m afraid it would be hard to find a wife who could stand me.”

  A second red herring, brought into being by inspiration! It worked even better than the first. “Why don’t you let me try to find you a wife?” inquired his old sweetheart.

  “Bless your heart, dear, how could I stay here long enough? I have some picture business in Paris now, and after that I have to go to Germany.”

  It amused her very personal nature to talk about him, and the sort of woman who could make him happy. So long as it wasn’t a married woman, this was a safe topic while he was drinking his tea. When he was leaving she said: “I’ll let you know about the painting—and also about the wife!” Then she added: “You’d be conceited if you knew how much I think about you, Lanny. Come again soon!” It was always hard for her to face the idea of not getting what she wanted.

  XI

  Once every week while Lanny was on his travels he wrote a letter to his wife in Paris. She had had a number of names; just now she was Jeanne Weill, pronounced as the French pronounce it, Vay. She was supposed to be from Geneva, and Lanny had got her a book so that she could read up on that old city of watchmakers and moneychangers, not to mention the League of Nations, which was clinging feebly to life in a magnificent palace recently completed for it, which Rick in an article had called its mausoleum. Trudi occupied a small studio on Montmartre, and did sketches which were sold on commission by the proprietor of a tobacco shop near by; she lived on the proceeds, and talked about her work to the concierge and the tradespeople, thus maintaining an adequate camouflage.

  Lanny’s letters to her were always on cheap stationery, always addressed by hand, and with nothing distinctive about them; the contents were designed so that any agent of the Nazis in Paris might read them and learn nothing, save that a person named Paul was well, and that he had made so-and-so-many francs, and expected to be in Istanbul on such-and-such a date. The city on the Bosporus was code for Paris, and the francs were supposed to be multiplied by thirty; that is, they meant dollars, and Trudi would know from this what plans her underground friends were to make for the future. Lanny had never sent her a cablegram or even a telegram; he had never stopped his car near her place and never entered the building except after elaborate precautions. Nazi agents had found her once in Paris, and they weren’t going to find her again if he could help it. She no longer had any contacts with other refugees, except for the one man whom she met at night and to whom she turned over the money and her occasional writings.

  Trudi Schultz was one of those persons who, in the words of a German poem which Lanny had quoted, “belong to death.” When he left her, he could never know if he would see her again; when he received a note from her saying she was well, it couldn’t satisfy him completely for the reason that it was several days or weeks late, and he could never know what might have happened in the interim.

  How does a man love such a woman? The first thing to be said is that, unless he is extremely neglectful of his own interests and peace of mind, he doesn’t. Lanny had got into this position because of that weakness which his mother and father and all their friends so greatly deplored: a sentimental streak which made him oversorry for the underdog and overanxious concerning evils which have been in the world a long time and are beyond the power of any man to change. Hitler had seized Germany, and his nasty Nazis were beating and torturing poor Jews and others who opposed them. When you met some victim of that terror you were sorry for the poor devil and helped him to get on his feet again; but when it came to declaring a private war on the Hitlerites and setting out to overthrow them—well, Don Quixote tilting at the windmills was a sensible citizen in comparison with such a person.

  But this art expert had got himself in for it; he had gone and got married to an “underground” worker so that he could take her away to America—if only he could persuade her to come, which so far he hadn’t had the nerve to try! Did he really love her? Could any man really love a woman who led him such a life; who gave him only little snatches of joy, and no comfort or peace of mind whatever? Lanny hadn’t told a single one of his smart friends about it, but he could hear their comments just as well in his mind. “Good God, a man might as well fall in love with a buzzsaw!” A woman whom he couldn’t hold in his arms without the thought that a gang of bullies might break in the door and murder them both! Whom he couldn’t think of when he was away from her without seeing images of her stretched out naked on a table, being beaten with thin steel rods! It was indecent even to know about such things!

  Trudi had foreseen all this; she had warned him about it, over and over, in the plainest words. She hadn’t wanted to marry him, she hadn’t wanted even to live with him. She had insisted that the things she had seen and experienced made it impossible for her ever again to be a normal woman, ever to give happiness to a man. But he had thought that he could give happiness to her; he had argued that men going off to war clutch eagerly at the joys of love before they depart, and why could it not be the same with a woman soldier? Was it because men are naturally more selfish? Or was it because women are not meant to be soldiers, and are less able to bear the strain of belonging to death? Wir sind all’ des Todes Eigen!

  He had given her a lot of happiness, of that he could be sure. He had picked her up on obscure street corners by appointment and driven her out into the safe countryside; they had stayed in little inns and he had seen that she got substantial food. He had given her love, of mind and soul as well as body; he had kept the faith with her and helped to renew her courage. Yes, she had said sometimes that she couldn’t have gone on without him. But even while she said it, a cloud would darken her features and she would fall silent; he would know that she was thinking about her comrades who had fallen into the clutches of the German secret police, and about the horrors which even at this moment were being perpetrated upon them.

  XII

  Did Lanny Budd really love Trudi Schultz, alias Mueller, alias Kornmahler, alias Corning, alias Weill, et aliae, or was he just sorry for her and full of respect for her intelligence and integrity of character? It was a question he asked himself, a problem he wrestled with in his own soul. He could never love her completely, for she was a creature of the hard rocks and the rare cold atmosphere, while he had been playing in the warm soft ocean of pleasure. Trudi could never give him what Rosemary had given, or Marie de Bruyne, or Irma Barnes. All these had been “ladies”; they had known how to dress and how to dance, how to talk and how to behave in the fashionable world; they had known how to “charm” their man. Trudi, while she had come out of the German middle class, had voluntarily joined the workers in order to help them; her very names were commonplace—Schultz, while it meant a village magistrate, had become the name for a butcher or a grocer, while Trudi was a name for a serving maid.

  Lanny’s Trudi had been an art student of great talent, and had worked hard to develop it; all Germans worked hard, whether it was in the cause of God or the devil, and Trudi had lived a Spartan life from the time that Lanny had first met her in Berlin. She had been severe in her moral judgments, even of the Social-Democratic movement to which she belonged. She had not glorified self-sacrifice as an ideal, but had accepted it as a necessity of her time and circumstances. The workers were not going to get freedom and justice without heavy sacrifices, and those who aspired to guide them must be prepared to think wholly about their cause and not at all about their pleasures.

  Somewhere inside Lanny Budd a bell rang whenever he thought these thoughts; a great gong with quivering tones which sent shivers all over him. Yes, that was the way to speak, that was the way to live; that was honest and decent, fair to one’s fellow humans; that was the way to pay the debt you owed for
being a civilized man, an heir to culture, instead of a savage, dirty and diseased, living in a hut with pigs and chickens. Lanny had felt that high regard for Trudi from the very first hour; she had renewed his distrust of the fashionable world and all its beliefs and practices. Lanny had said: “Yes, I know; I am a parasite; we are all parasites. I ought to get out of it and get something useful to do.”

  But the trouble was, circumstances wouldn’t let Lanny get out. Time after time, something had turned up that he could do for the cause, but only by staying on in the leisure-class world, keeping the role of playboy, art expert, moneymaker. It had taken both money and social intrigue to get Freddi Robin out of a Nazi dungeon, and again to get Alfy out of a Franco dungeon. Even Trudi hadn’t wanted Lanny to break with his family and his wealthy friends; no, for the underground had to have money for paper and printing and radio tubes and what not, and had even been willing for Lanny to sell General Göring’s paintings in order to keep them in funds.

  So while other people were tortured in prisons or starved in concentration camps, it was Lanny Budd’s agreeable duty to travel first-class on steamships or airplanes, to stop at de luxe hotels, to put his feet under the dinner tables of the richest and most exalted persons. Boredom was the worst of hardships he had to endure—unless you counted that of having to make the greater part of his life into an elaborate lie, to watch every word and every facial expression for fear of revealing his real sentiments. Whatever you did in that haut monde you must always be smiling and insouciant, and you must always agree that disturbers of so perfect a social order had to be put down with a firm hand.

  XIII

  Lanny put all doubts and disharmonies away in a cupboard of his mind and locked them with a secret key. He was on the way to his beloved; he ached for her presence and his thoughts were of the interesting things he would have to tell her. She rarely had much news for him, but he was a messenger of the gods, who came from Mount Olympus and their other haunts, laden with the latest installments of international mythology.

  He took a taxi to his customary hotel and deposited his belongings. He got his car out of the garage where it was stored, and drove to a spot three or four blocks from his wife’s humble lodgings. The concierge who opened the door for him knew him, and had received her proper tip now and then. “Mr. Harris” was the name he had given, so he was “Monsieur Arreece.” Now the woman looked at him with concern and shook her head. “Hélas, monsieur, mademoiselle est partie.”

  “Partie!” exclaimed Lanny. “When?”

  “I do not know, monsieur. She must have gone out, and she has not returned. It has been nearly a week now.”

  “Her door is locked?”

  “It was locked, monsieur; but yesterday I became alarmed and notified the police. They brought a locksmith and opened the door, but there is no sign of her. Apparently nothing has been disturbed.”

  “They have no trace of her?”

  “No, monsieur; they nor anyone.”

  Lanny couldn’t say that he was surprised, for he had talked about this contingency many times with Trudi. She had said: “Go away. Do not involve yourself. If I am alive I will get word to you.” She had his mother’s address at Juan-les-Pins, his father’s address in Connecticut, his best friend’s address in England. He had no way to find her, but she could always find him.

  “What did the police say?” he inquired.

  “They asked many questions, monsieur. I told them there was an American gentleman who sometimes came to visit mademoiselle. They told me if you came again, I was to notify them.”

  “It would do no good to do that. I have not heard from mademoiselle and there is nothing I could tell them.”

  “Mais, Monsieur Arreece! It would be a serious matter for me not to obey the police.”

  “No one will know that I have been here,” replied the visitor. He took out a hundred-franc note, which he judged the right size for the cure of such anxiety. “You say nothing and I’ll say nothing and it will be O.K.”—the French all knew those two letters.

  “Mais sa propriété, monsieur; ses articles!”

  Lanny knew that Trudi didn’t have many articles; a few sticks of furniture, a few pieces of clothing suitable to the poorest. She never kept a letter or any scrap of paper; when she wrote something for the underground, she took it away or mailed it at once. The only things she might have were a few sketches, and Lanny would have liked to have these, but he dared not take the risk. He would not trust the French police in any matter having to do with leftwing refugees; also, they had records of his own distant past which he wouldn’t care to have dug up.

  He took out another note and handed it to the concierge. “Keep her property for a while,” he said. “If she comes back she will pay you. Merci et bonjour.” He turned away and got out of that neighborhood, never to return.

  4

  Plus Triste Que les Nuits

  I

  Lanny’s first step was to get his mother on the telephone. Had there come any letter from his friend? The word in English carries no connotation of sex, but Beauty knew whom he meant; her sharp eyes had not failed to observe the weekly letters, which she dutifully forwarded as directed. She had questioned Lanny and succeeded in getting a few details, but not all that she wanted. Now she told him there was no letter. He tried to keep anxiety out of his voice; no use worrying her. “If a letter comes, please phone me to the hotel at once.”

  He called Rick, with the same results; nothing there. He hadn’t expected it, for he had told Trudi that he was on his way to “Istanbul.” To Rick he could say: “She has disappeared. I fear the worst.” Nothing more over the phone.

  Rick was full of concern; he knew what anguish of mind this meant to his friend. “If there’s anything we can do, let us know and we’ll come at once.” But of course there wasn’t. “God bless you, old fellow!” the Englishman exclaimed. He didn’t really believe in God, at least not that he knew of; but he had to say something different from the ordinary.

  Lanny and Trudi had talked this problem over in advance. She had asked, and he had promised, that in the event of her disappearance he would stay quiet for a while, to give her a chance to communicate with him if she could; also, that he would never do anything that might reveal his connection with her, and thus imperil his ability to serve the cause. He had assented to her stern formula that this was a war in which the cause was everything and the individual nothing. That was the Nazis’ own law, and the anti-Nazis would have to match them in firmness of purpose.

  The husband went over again and again in his mind the circumstances which governed this case. The Nazis were on the aggressive, all over Europe; they were intriguing and deceiving, seducing and corrupting; undermining the power of their opponents and building up that of their supporters, and no law of God or man meant anything to them, only the question of results. When they approached persons of social standing, they sent a fine musician like Kurt Meissner, able to play Beethoven and even to compose Beethoven, and to speak the exalted language of international cultural solidarity. When it was a question of leading bankers and industrialists, they sent a financial wizard like Hjalmar Schacht to show how Germany had solved the problem of unemployment and crisis; how German big business was thriving as none other had ever thriven, even in America in its boom days; how there were no more unions and no more strikes, no more class war, no more political demagogues levying blackmail. When it was a question of the newspapers of France, always for sale to the highest bidder, they sent Otto Abetz with an unlimited expense account and a briefcase full of plausible editorials in the most highly polished Parisian, setting forth the advantages of permanent friendship between France and Germany, and the treason to European culture involved in the alliance with Bolshevism.

  Paris was full of refugees from both Germany and Italy; Jews especially, but also Socialists, Communists, democrats, liberals, pacifists, every sort of idealist; all quarreling among themselves as they had done at home; all insisting that thei
r way was the only way to fight Fascism-Nazism. These refugees smuggled news out of Germany and Italy and smuggled in what they called their “literature”: newspapers, pamphlets, leaflets. And of course their enemies were fighting back with fury; the Hitlerites had their little Gestapo in Paris, and Mussolini his little OVRA; Dr. Goebbels had his Personal Department B, and the SS had their Braune Haus. German agents came under every sort of disguise: scientists and journalists, teachers of music and languages, students, traveling salesmen, importers, laborers, even refugees. Agents would be trained to pose as leftists; they would be sent to concentration camps in Germany and beaten there, so that the other prisoners would see them and word would go out to the underground that they were all right; then they could “escape” to Paris, and be welcomed by the anti-Nazi groups, and be in position to collect names and addresses of the “comrades” both at home and abroad. The former would be shot, and the latter would be intimidated and silenced by whatever measures it took.

  II

  What would be the attitude of the French police toward this foreign civil war going on under their noses? The French police represented property, as police are apt to do all over the world. There were Frenchmen who held the same ideas and behaved in the same manner as the refugees, and the police regarded them as public nuisances and potential criminals; if they got any protection, it was because they had strong influence with labor and commanded numbers of votes. The head of the Paris police, the notorious Chiappe, was to all intents a Fascist, in open sympathy with the Croix de Feu and other native organizations, and perhaps with the Cagoulards, the “Hooded Men,” whose murder gangs were patterned on the Blackshirts and the Schutzstaffel. The Nazis were helping to subsidize these groups in France and would not fail to have their friends and secret representatives in the Sûreté Générale and the Deuxième Bureau.