“It will be devilish awkward, Lanny.”
“I know it, but what can I do? We don’t want to have any scenes and start a lot of hateful gossip.”
“No, surely not. And if you feel that way I suppose I’ll have to go to the Führer about it.”
“Don’t let it interfere with our friendship, I beg you. It’s just one of those things, and nobody’s fault.”
“I understand, Lanny.”
“Tell the Führer not to concern himself too much about it; I know he’s got his hands full right now, and this can’t really mean very much to him. Tell him that I understand perfectly—he had no means of knowing what kind of girl this was, and how she would behave.”
“The main thing, I feel sure, was that he hated to have the séances broken off.”
“I don’t doubt it, and I wish I could have arranged matters. But I couldn’t have got her here except on the promise of a prompt return. Ask the Führer to forgive me, and to forget the whole thing. The girl will be all right when she gets over her fright.”
So that was that; they shook hands—and then, as an afterthought, Lanny said: “By the way, Elvirita lost her luggage, and her passports were in it. I suppose she can get a carte d’identité in Switzerland; but we’ll both need some sort of exit permit.”
“That’s right.” The Deputy thought for a moment. “I’ll get Reichenau to give you a military pass. That’ll be good for anywhere in the southern district.”
“Will you want to wake him at this time in the morning?”
“He may not be asleep yet. If he is I’ll get his chief of staff to attend to it.”
“Shall I wait here?”
“I’ll bring it to your room.”
XV
So Lanny went back, and gave the three quick taps on the door and then three more. The chair was pulled away and the door opened. “Everything is all right,” he said, and put his finger to his lips.
He went methodically about putting his belongings into his bags. She, who had no belongings, sat gazing at the wall before her; thinking, no doubt, about the first-hand information she had obtained as to the Nazis, their manners and way of life. When there came a tap on the door, she started and looked her alarm. Lanny went to the door, opened it just enough to slip outside, and closed it behind him.
“Here you are,” said Rudi, and put a small piece of paper into his hand. “Reichenau’s light was still burning, so I had him make it out. I explained that you had stayed late to oblige me. I have ordered your car brought to the door.”
“Thanks ever so much, Rudi. And once more—don’t have any hard feelings.”
“Of course not—why should I? Take care of yourself, and I hope the girl will have no hard feelings either. As a medium she’s a wonder, and if you’ll bring her to Berlin, I can guarantee there won’t be any repetition of this mistake.”
“I’ll talk to her about it—a little later. I hope it doesn’t come to war, Rudi, but if it does, I’ll be coming in by way of Switzerland, no doubt.”
“Do, by all means. The information you bring us is most useful.”
They shook hands warmly and Hess went away. Lanny re-entered the room and said: “Everything O.K.” He picked up his two bags and his portable. “Are you steady again?”
“I could run,” she answered, regardless of discretion.
He made her put on his overcoat, over her light dress. Then they went down a side stairway, and out by the inconspicuous door through which she had entered. The car was already there, with an SS man standing beside it, regardless of the rain. “Heil Hitler!” said Lanny, and the salute was returned.
The man put the bags in, Lanny stepped into the driver’s seat, and the passenger into the seat beside him. He started the engine, and said: “Gute Nacht.” The car rolled across the drive, and the barrier was lifted before them. Everything on the Führer’s estate was automatic, including the men and women.
As they started down the slope of the mountain Lanny remarked: “So ends my fourth visit to the haunt of the wild witch Berchta.”
The response was: “Perhaps her ghost still walks.” There was a little catch in Laurel’s voice, and it turned into a weeping spell. He let her alone—for he had been brought up among women, and understood that this is something necessary.
21
Auf den Bergen 1st Freiheit
I
Motoring at night bears a certain resemblance to sitting in a motion-picture theater; on all sides are darkness and mystery, while a beam of light makes a small scene in front. If the road is straight and the hour after midnight, the show is apt to be monotonous; but if the car is winding down a mountain side, great stretches of landscape sweep before the driver’s eyes; chasms open up, and tree-covered slopes magically appear, loom closer, and then vanish into nothingness. It is fascinating, but also may be dangerous, and when it is raining the careful driver will shift into second gear, so as not to have to use his brakes on the curves. “Too bad if we got away from the Gestapo, only to go over a precipice!” remarked Lanny. He thought it better to get his passenger’s mind off past troubles, even by the contemplation of fresh ones.
They rolled down from the Obersalzberg, and into the town of Berchtesgaden, now fast asleep. “Here they make charming toys,” discoursed the driver. “Also they mine rock salt, and I have been told that these long-tunneled mines used to provide a route of escape from the Nazis; there were entrances in both Germany and Austria, and workers who did not like the swastika would smuggle their friends through. But now that is all over, since Germany and Austria are the same.”
The Anschluss, he went on to point out, was a convenient thing for them, since their pass was signed by General Walther von Reichenau, commander of the army forces in the southern district. “That now means Austria as well as Bavaria, so we can enter Switzerland by way of the Inn Valley—a short route, and one that takes us away from Munich and the principal Autobahnen. So it is safest for us.”
“Tell me,” said his companion, “did Hess tell Hitler that I was about to leave?”
“Oh, of course—he would have to. Hess wouldn’t dream of doing anything that might displease his Führer. But I don’t think there is any; chance that Hitler will change his mind—if that’s what is worrying you. He knows you are my friend.” He did not tell her of the phrase he had used, “my woman.” That item of scandal, along with the others, would be shed when Miss Elvirita Jones crossed the border of Naziland. It wouldn’t injure Lanny Budd in the eyes of any Nazi, and it would preclude the possibility of Adi’s attempting to hold an American medium against her will.
Lanny had had a nap, he told her, and was ready for any amount of driving; she, for her part, wanted just one thing in the world, to get out of the Führer’s domain. Their road wound through Alpine foothills, sometimes turning away from their goal. Rain continued to fall, but he could see clearly, and was used to driving in all sorts of weather. She didn’t want to sleep, she said, but just to sit and watch the car lights playing over curtains of gray mist.
II
When daylight came they were in the valley of the Inn, which winds its way northward and eastward to the Danube, and on its way passes the village of Braunau, in which the son of Alois Schicklgruber had been brought into a world that he hated. But Lanny’s course lay the other way, to the west and southward, up to the sources of the river in the high Engadine. They stopped in a village and bought food, and she handed it to him while he drove.
After that, feeling more cheerful, she turned on the radio in front of her—a Swiss station, from which they learned that Britain had signed a pact with Poland, pledging military action in the event of attack. Then they listened to a Munich station, denouncing this act of provocation, almost of war. The commentator went on to scold Prime Minister Chamberlain for statements made in the House of Commons. Then a French station—some commentator whose name Lanny didn’t know, discussing what imperiled Poland would do in the event that Hitler should declare an Anschluss wi
th Danzig. A strange use mankind was making of these newly contrived vibrations in a medium still unknown; all over the earth they were sent with the speed of light, carrying menaces and scoldings in a score or two of languages. The various wave lengths did not interfere with one another, but the men who used them had not learned an equal amount of tolerance.
“Anyhow, war hasn’t begun,” said Lanny. “Rudi told me in so many words that the army had been ordered to march at midnight; so you and I carry a weighty secret in our bosoms—we managed to postpone the slaughter for a few hours, and it may even be for a few days! This is something over which the historians may be racking their brains in years to come.”
He saw that his passenger had recovered her self-control, so he added: “I wonder if it would be too painful to tell me what happened at the séance. Hess told me it was a success.”
“You have a right to know,” she declared. “Perhaps it was my fault that I made it too great a success. I gave them Dietrich Eckart, and they swallowed him in gulps. I suppose anything is fair against the Nazis, but really it seemed inhuman to play such a scene. Evidently Hitler adored the old orator, and he plied Uncle Cicero with questions—through Hess, of course; he would ask several questions at once, but Hess would repeat only one at a time.”
“What questions?”
“First, who else was there—the names of this one and that. I was afraid it might be a trap, asking me about people who were still living. I evaded answering unless I was sure. I gave them the ones I was sure of—Heinzelmann again, and Hitler’s father. I made Eckart say that old Alois was greatly honored here because he was the Führer’s father. That made Hitler purr, of course.”
“Too good!” was Lanny’s verdict. “No wonder you got into trouble.”
“I found the temptation difficult to resist. Why not say something that you knew was right, and that they would swallow? Hitler wanted to know what the spirits did, and Eckart said they talked on exalted subjects; he gave a few samples, all having to do with National Socialism. Hitler wanted to know if there were any Jews there, and of course after Otto Kahn I couldn’t say No; I said there were none allowed where Eckart was. I gave all the personal details that you had provided, and I’m pretty sure both Hitler and Hess were completely satisfied.”
“You managed not to go into a real trance?”
“I had my hands clasped together in such a way that my little finger was curled up, and whenever I had an impulse to feel sleepy I pressed on it until it hurt. It is still sore from the treatment.”
“What did you say about the war?”
“I had Eckart and Heinzelmann discussing it. I had them agree that Germany had too many enemies and that they saw great danger ahead. Heinzelmann asked: ‘What could Stalin have in mind from a deal except to get Germany into a war with the West, so that he would have Europe at his mercy?’ At the end I had Eclcart talk as I imagined a Bavarian poet might, giving Hitler a warning. It must have been quite impressive.”
“No wonder he couldn’t bear to let you go,” commented Lanny. “You must understand that from his point of view he was doing you a favor, and he must have been greatly surprised by your behavior.”
Laurel made no comment.
III
The scenery of the Inn Valley is beautiful, even when rain is falling and the heights are veiled in mist. But this pair saw little of it, for Lanny had to keep his eyes fixed on the winding road before him, and his passenger still couldn’t believe that there was such a thing as security in the world. Even in these Alps there were portents of war; horns would blow behind them and Lanny would draw up on the shoulder of the road while military traffic roared by. “Surely they don’t plan to go to war with Switzerland!” exclaimed the woman. He answered: “They may fear that France might invade through Switzerland—or they may pretend to fear it. You can be sure the Swiss will be taking no chances.”
Now and then she would turn on the radio, dialing as he suggested. They would listen to news, and to commentators in the near-by capitals. Nobody appeared to know that Wehrmacht orders to march had been issued and then canceled; but the food rationing and the restrictions on travel went into effect, and all the world took it for granted that this meant war or the threat of war—the problem was, which? A gigantic hand of international poker was being played, and sooner or later somebody would “call,” and the hands would be laid on the table, and what would be found in them? The son of Budd-Erling remarked: “Some day historians will look back and observe how the fate of the world hung upon the processes of one psychopathic mind, and will contemplate with horror the idea that such a situation should have been permitted to exist.”
“I don’t have to wait for historians,” replied Laurel Creston. “I contemplate it with horror now. I am wondering if it wasn’t my duty to stay and try to control the man at any cost.”
“You couldn’t have stayed,” was the other’s response. “I would never have consented to leave you in Hitler’s house.”
“Not to prevent a war?”
“Sooner or later they would have discovered your real name, and then you would no longer have had any power. Also, I would have lost the power to go back into Germany, which is important to me.”
“I have a tendency to forget that,” she replied. “It is not very considerate of me.”
“You are one of those idealistic temperaments that cannot resist the desire to save the world. I honor you for it, but at the same time I fear for your happiness. Take my advice, Miss Creston, and consider that you have done your best, and allow yourself the rest which you have earned.” He said this with a smile of grandfatherly benevolence, and ventured to turn his eyes from the highway long enough for a glance at her serious, troubled face.
“My friends call me Laurel,” she replied. “Don’t you think that you have proved yourself a good friend?”
“My friends call me Lanny,” he answered, promptly. “I hope you will be one of them from now on.”
“From now on, Lanny; and I’ll try to prove it. I don’t know what you are doing and don’t intend to ask, but I am certain in my heart that you hate those evil men we have just parted from. This is a bond between us, and I’ll be prepared to stand by as a comrade.”
“Well, Laurel,” he smiled, “you promised that everything you saw and learned in the Berghof would be locked up in your own heart forever. I must ask you to consider my attitude toward those evil men as a part of the secret, and indeed the most important part of all. I will say this much and no more: I am under a solemn pledge, and I have to put you under the same.”
“I think I understand, and you may count upon me not to hint at the subject again.”
“I have to ask more than that. When you speak of me to others, do so on the basis that we have not met since that evening in the home of Sophie, Baroness de la Tourette, when you called me a troglodyte. That was helpful to me in a fashionable company, and it may be in others.”
IV
A long drive through the valley of the Upper Inn, retracing the course of a swift mountain stream, still in rain and heavy mist. Lanny drove slowly, saying: “Darkness will help us at the border.” When they were approaching this goal of all their thoughts, he told his friend to get into the back seat and be asleep. So he drove up to the guard station, and stepped out under the shelter, saying his “Heil Hitler”—always so useful—and presenting his military pass. Nothing could have been more regular, or more effective. “Die Dame schlaft,” he remarked, and a rain-coated guard contented himself with flashing the torchlight through the rear window of the car, without troubling to open the door. “Eine schlechte Nacht, mein Herr,” he remarked. “Fahren Sie vorsichtig.” The barrier was raised and the car went on.
At the Swiss station it was a different matter. Elvirita Jones had been transformed into Laurel Creston, and had no passport or papers. Refugees from Naziland were continually escaping into Switzerland, and the Swiss were lenient with them; when an American said that his traveling companion had
had her bags stolen, the lady was advised to report to the Fremdenpolizei of the district, after which she would travel to Bern and obtain a substitute passport from the American Embassy. “Leider, meine Dame!” said the official who made out the card. He referred to her as a “schriftenloser Ausländer,” but that was not meant to be impolite; it just meant a “foreigner without papers.” It seemed strange to meet a man in authority who spoke German, yet was not a Nazi and an agent of terror.
Tourists had been pouring into this mountain republic by every pass and tunnel, expecting war to break out at any hour. Lanny drove, and inquired at half a dozen inns before he found rooms. When he saw his friend to her room he said: “Now you are safe, and can put all this nightmare out of your mind.”
“I have no words to tell you my gratitude!” she exclaimed.
“You don’t need any words,” he answered. “I have had an interesting experience and it was worth while. To crown it, I found a medium, and I’d been wondering for a long time how to manage that.”
Locked in his own room, Lanny set up the little portable. That was always his first duty, and it had been delayed too long. He wrote what he had learned in the Berghof concerning the secret clauses in the Russo-Soviet treaty. He wrote that the army had been ordered to move at midnight of the twenty-fifth, but that Hitler had consulted the spirits, who had unsettled his mind, and no one could be sure how long it would take to get settled again. He wrote about Sir Nevile’s visit, and the efforts which Britain and France were making to hold Poland back. It was a long report, with items picked up in Berlin as well as the Berghof. Lanny double-sealed it as usual, put the envelope under his pillow, and slept the sleep of a good and faithful P.A.
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