The Return of Lanny Budd

by Sinclair, Upton;

  Lanny replied, ‘The Daily Worker will give him half a page before long, I have no doubt. He’ll become America’s greatest musician, as Paul Robeson is our greatest singer and Howard Fast our greatest novelist’.

  ‘And Hansi will be calling us Social Fascists! It’s the end of our friendship. Lanny, it’s one more example of the dreadful power of those Marxist theories’.

  ‘Dialectical materialism’, said Lanny. ‘“Diamat” is what they’re calling it now in Europe’.

  ‘It hypnotises people’s minds. It’s like that hypnotised hen we saw: the man pressed her beak down to a chalk line and she couldn’t move from that line’.

  ‘The party line’, said Lanny, permitting himself a smile. ‘The capitalists build up their power and fight to protect it. The rising proletariat opposes them, seizes the power, and takes it away from them, and out of the struggle the new society is born. Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis!’ He said it every now and then.

  ‘And out of it has come the blackest tyranny ever dreamed in modern times’, It was strophe and antistrophe with the pair.

  ‘It is too bad that the demonstration had to be made by the Russians’, he declared. ‘Marx feared Russian autocratic power. Also, he admitted that the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians might be able to get socialism by democratic means and without violence. In his old age he wrote that he was not a Marxist; so now the Soviets are the only simon-pure Marxists, and they are censoring his books and cutting out the unorthodox passages’.

  Laurel burst out, ‘Here we are—back again with Stalin!’ And she added, ‘He has stolen our best friend from us!’

  ‘It will be a great victory for him’, Lanny assented. ‘Let us hope to be like the British, who lose every battle except the last’. Then after a pause he said, ‘But remember, dear, you are under doctor’s orders not to get excited. Don’t forget that you are an internal dairy’.

  Laurel glanced at her wristwatch. ‘Go and bring me the baby’, said she.

  VI

  Sure enough, there appeared in the Sunday edition of the Daily Worker a half-page article celebrating the fact that Hansi Robin, America’s greatest musical genius, had announced himself a convert to the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist cause. There was a photograph of Hansi and an elaborate interview in which he told about the intellectual and moral struggles he had undergone before coming to his present conclusion—which was that the hammer and sickle was the signpost of the pathway to peace and freedom for the workers of the world. Incidentally it was announced that Hansi and his devoted wife Bess, a long-time party leader, would give a concert at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Assembly for Russian-American Friendship. Lanny and Laurel read that and said it was the finish; they would have to write the Hansibesses off their list of friends. Of course if one or both of them should propose a meeting, Lanny and Laurel would have to assent; but they would make no advances of their own.

  They swallowed their grief and put their minds on the Peace Programme. Laurel, nursing the baby, had put herself on a four-hour schedule. She would go to the office after breakfast and come back to the house at noon—it was only a few minutes’ drive. In the afternoon she would lie down and do her work in bed; then late in the afternoon she would receive callers or members of the staff who had ideas to discuss with her. When the weather permitted she and Lanny would walk to the office and back.

  Lanny, for his part, had the job of selecting the speakers, by and with the advice and consent of the group. He had the job of getting them to and from the station and discussing with them in advance what they were to say and the questions he would ask them. He had the job of meeting would-be speakers, promoters, and enthusiasts of world peace. Like everybody else, he put in the rest of his time reading mail and answering telephone calls; he learned that the world is full of many kinds of people and that it takes much patience and skill to deal with them.

  Was the group accomplishing anything? They were quite sure they were. They were causing some millions of people to listen once a week to a discussion of world problems by the best minds that were available in the country. University professors, diplomats, political figures, well-known writers, men and women, would come on request and say how they thought world peace could be promoted and answer the questions people were asking. The Peace Group knew what these questions were because they were reading hundreds of letters from all over the country and indeed from all over the world. The end result of such activity must be an informed body of opinion, ready to understand and deal with emergencies as they arose.

  VII

  Joe Stalin kept breaking in on the procedure, of course. Joe Stalin, hidden in his huge fortress called the Kremlin, or in his winter fortress on the Black Sea, had his Politburo, the members of which took his orders and carried them out. He had his enormous apparat spread over the world, to hasten the capitalist system to its inevitable breakdown and arouse the proletariat to its inevitable triumph. ‘Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, arise, ye wretched of the earth; for justice thunders condemnation, a newer world’s in birth!’

  During the war when Stalin had of necessity accepted the aid of capitalist allies the rigidity of the party line had been relaxed; but within a month or two after the war’s ending this relaxation had been brought to an abrupt and painful end. All over the world there was ordered an immediate resumption of the class war—that is, war upon the allies who had been helping the Soviets to victory over Hitler’s so-called National Socialism. In all the Communist countries new purges were ordered of all those officials who had been so foolish as to believe in the temporary relaxation.

  The people of the United States had witnessed a curious phenomenon. The Communist party had a devoted secretary by the name of Earl Browder; and in an obscure Communist monthly in France there appeared an article by a man named Duclos, in which it was set forth that Browder had betrayed the workers and the cause of Marxist-Leninism. The article had been taken up and reprinted in the United States, and every Communist had instantly known that here was the voice of authority, here was the Kremlin speaking. Overnight ‘Browderism’ became ‘factional activity’, and Browder ‘a deserter to the side of the class enemy, American monopoly capitalism’. He was shoved out of the party and into the doghouse.

  And all over the world it was the same; the cold war was on. Vilification and abuse became the order of the day, and former allies became Social Fascists and class enemies. All the languages of the world were turned upside down. Democracy became tyranny and tyranny democracy; slavery became freedom and freedom slavery, and every Communist in the world set himself to the task of creating and repeating falsehoods, no matter how obvious and absurd. The class war being inevitable, every Communist set himself to the task of promoting it in the name of peace and abusing everybody who thought there might be peace before the class war had been won. Every Communist accepted the solemn duty to hate every class enemy; all but a few, who accepted a special duty, to pretend to love their class enemies and gain their friendship and worm out of them secrets that could be of help to the Communist Motherland.

  VIII

  So there came a peculiar incident in the office of the Peace Group, which had once been a factory for making fuses in wartime. There was a girl whose duty it was to sit all day at a table with a paper knife, slicing envelopes open. In the middle of one morning she came to Lanny’s small office and said, ‘Mr Budd, this envelope was marked “Personal” but I failed to notice it before I cut it. I did not take out the contents’.

  Lanny smiled pleasantly and said, ‘It’s all right; there’s probably nothing personal about it’. When the girl had left the room he took out the contents, a single sheet of paper folded several times. When he opened it he found a missive containing only six words, and those words had been put together by a method familiar to readers of crime stories in the newspapers. Someone had taken a pair of scissors and cut single letters out of advertisements in the papers, and with a mucilage pot had stuck the proper letters in order
to make words—words short and to the point in order to save time and trouble.

  There were six words, and Lanny read them at a glance; then he continued staring at the paper while his heart gave a series of uncomfortable leaps and the blood mounted into his cheeks and forehead. The words were:

  BESS IS COURIER FOR RUSS SPY

  There was no signature, and it is a rule of good sense never to pay attention to anonymous letters. But the rule is not always followed, and it was not in this case. The message of six words fitted too closely to ideas that had been haunting Lanny’s imagination for many months. Those mysterious trips which Bess had been taking in her car, disappearing from her home without notice or explanation, telling Hansi that she was going on party business, lecturing, organising, and meeting committees! But suppose—just suppose!—that she had become a strand in that spy net which the Soviets had spread all over the United States, gathering secrets which might be of help to them or of harm to America; photographing documents of all sorts, letters, blueprints, diagrams, formulas; maps of bridges, dams, power stations; every kind of information, diplomatic, military, scientific—and shipping it out through Mexico, or through Russian steamships harbouring in various ports, or through nests of spying and intrigue such as Amtorg and the consulates, where the Soviets had hundreds of their own people in Washington and New York.

  Lanny studied the document carefully. The envelope was of the sort of which millions are sold in post offices every day. The paper was off a pad which you could buy in any five-and-ten-cent store. The letters were out of any newspaper. The addressing of the envelope had been done in capital letters with a ruler and a pencil, thus avoiding any characteristics of handwriting—‘Lanny Budd, Edgemere, N. J.’—and the word ‘Personal’ in the corner. Evidently the person had wanted to do as little writing as possible. There was only one clue, the letter ‘n’ had been wrongly, written the diagonal line starting at the bottom of the first vertical stroke instead of at the top. Evidently an ignorant person and probably a foreigner, but a person careful not to give any clue, a person who was afraid. The letter had been mailed at the main post office in New York, so there wasn’t much clue in that.

  Lanny thought about the different persons who knew Bess. It might be a servant in her home; it might be a member of her own group who hated her or was jealous of her. It would not be a counterspy, for such a person would be reporting to the authorities, not writing anonymous letters.

  Lanny went into Laurel’s office, dismissed her secretary, and put the letter into her hands. He watched her face as she read it and saw the horror write itself upon her features. Her first words were characteristic, ‘Oh, poor Hansi!’ Then, ‘Do you suppose he knows it?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Lanny answered. ‘Of course he will find it out before long if he stays with the party’.

  He pointed out to her the features of the letter and the speculations that had come to his mind. ‘It may not be true, Lanny!’ she exclaimed, and he answered, ‘Of course not, but it fits into all the circumstances, and obviously it has to be investigated’.

  ‘What will you do with it?’

  ‘It is my plain duty to take it to the F.B.I.’

  ‘Oh, Lanny, how dreadful! Could you bear to do it?’

  ‘Bess herself has given me the authority. You heard her say, “The individual doesn’t matter, only the cause matters”. You and I have a cause, darling. Are we going to say it’s less worthy than hers—that she can carry on secret war against us, and we have to lie down and take whatever comes to us?’

  Laurel was thinking about him. ‘If you report her, will you ever have any peace of mind again?’

  ‘Will I ever have it if I don’t report her? I leave a set of conspirators free to betray our military secrets to our deadly enemy. If it should come to a war, I would know that I had been sacrificing the lives of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of American boys. How would they weigh in the balance against one person who happens to be a member of my family?’

  There was no answer to that, and Laurel didn’t try to find one. But she couldn’t repress her horror. ‘It is a terrible thing to have to hate your own sister, Lanny!’

  ‘I don’t hate her, I pity her, because she has surrendered her mind to a set of fanatical ideas. They are cruel, and they have made her cruel, a menace to our free world. You know how I have tried to save her, how I have argued and pleaded with her, all in vain. What more could I have done?’

  ‘Couldn’t you investigate the matter yourself?’

  ‘What way could you suggest? She knows me, and all her associates know me. I am the last person they would trust—unless it’s you. And if they got the faintest hint that I was watching or suspecting them, don’t you see that I’d have given the whole thing away? The gang would scatter, and a new set of people would be set to getting the information they want. Bess would go back to playing the piano and making Communist speeches under the protection of the Bill of Rights. No, the F.B.I. are the people who know how to do this job, and it is the plain duty of every citizen to take them every scrap of information he may possess. To say that we must spare our own blood relatives is simply to yield to a superstition and in effect to deny our cause’.

  ‘But if it isn’t true, Lanny!’

  ‘Then there will be no harm done. You may be sure that Edgar Hoover’s men are not doing any framing. If Bess isn’t doing anything they won’t find anything’.

  ‘Lanny, it would be a dreadful blow to your father!’

  ‘I know, but he will face it. Trust him for that. He’s an old Roman’.

  ‘You ought to give him a chance to say! You ought to take him this letter’.

  ‘All right, I’ll do that’, he said.

  They wasted no more time discussing it. Lanny went to the ’phone and when he got Robbie’s secretary in Newcastle he learned that Robbie was in New York. He said, ‘I have to see my father about something very urgent. Please do everything in your power to locate him in New York and tell him to call me at once’.

  IX

  The ’phone rang, and it was Robbie Budd. He was at the New York office, and Lanny said, ‘Can you wait for me until I drive in? I have something most important to see you about’.

  Robbie said that he would wait, and Lanny hopped into his car and sped away. All the way into the crowded city he thought about Bess. His mind went back to that lovely sweet child whom he had so admired and captivated; to the ardent student of music, doing a world tour with her mother and hearing Hansi Robin for the first time, playing in Emily Chattersworth’s drawing room in Paris; to the young bride swept away in an ecstasy of joy. And now this truly grim tragedy was hanging over her head!

  Something told Lanny that she was guilty—she was just that sort of person, determined and afraid of nothing; mistress of her own time and having a car, she could drive to factory towns and other places and bring back bundles of microfilm and deliver them to some Soviet agent in New York. Lanny took it as a hard duty, and he wavered more than once on that drive; but the car did not waver.

  He came through the Holland Tunnel into New York, put his car into a garage, and stepped into a taxi. At the office of Budd-Erling Aircraft he met Johannes Robin, but he wasn’t going to take him into that secret. They chatted for a few moments as old friends, then Robbie sent for Lanny. In the private office of the president Lanny said, ‘This came just now’, and put the letter into Robbie’s hands.

  The father studied it with a pained face. Lanny knew what he must be suffering; but neither of them would speak of it. ‘Do you know anything more about this?’ asked Robbie at last.

  ‘Not a thing’, Lanny said.

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘I came to ask you about it. So far as I am concerned, I think it is my plain duty to take it to Wilbur C. Post at the F.B.I.’

  Robbie’s reaction was what Lanny had said it would be. ‘I’m glad you see it the right way’, he declared. ‘It is unquestionably your duty. The security of the
country comes first.’

  ‘It may mean a nasty scandal’, Lanny warned.

  ‘Whatever comes we will have to face it. Bess is incorrigible, and all our friends know what my attitude is. I can do nothing. Have you told Laurel about it?’

  ‘Yes, and she agrees with me. I shan’t tell anybody else, and I think it would be a good idea not to tell Esther. The charge may not be true, and she would have a lot of worry all for nothing’.

  ‘I agree’, answered Robbie and added, ‘I think you should have a promise from this man Post that there will be no publicity unless they get real evidence’.

  ‘I don’t think he would have any hesitation in giving that promise, Robbie. They are not in the business of hunting headlines’.

  ‘I wonder if Hansi knows anything about all this’. Robbie knew, of course, about Hansi’s conversion to the Reds.

  ‘I doubt it very much’, Lanny answered. ‘I don’t expect to find out, because we are not seeing either of them’.

  The long-suffering father couldn’t forbear to add, ‘You must know, Lanny, you bear a good deal of responsibility for all this. It was you who put these notions into Bess’s head’.

  ‘We could have a long argument about that’, replied the son. ‘If Bess misunderstood my words and misapplied my ideas that was something I could not foresee or avoid’. Then, knowing well that his father once started on an argument would stick to it for a long time, he added hastily, ‘I’ll come and see you and we’ll thresh it out. Right now I want to deliver this letter. I’ll ’phone you the results. We must have a code; Bess will be Isabella’. Lanny’s mind was a bit prankish even in the midst of this painful entanglement. Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand, and at last an Isabella!

  X

  It was not far from the New York office of Budd-Erling to the building in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation was housed. Lanny walked, pushing his way through the swarming crowds of this busy city. Everyone was in a hurry, bent upon his own affairs. It might have been compared to a hive full of bees; but bees would all be working for the hive, whereas each of these human bees was working for himself. This was a state of affairs which they glorified, calling it the American way. Learned professors of economics had established the doctrine that if every individual were left absolutely free to seek his own interests it would somehow magically come out that everything would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But somehow that magic didn’t always work; there would come mass calamities such as panics, depressions, and wars, and it would suddenly be discovered that it was necessary for some bees at least to think about the hive.