Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  VI

  This was a busy, hard-driving man, and Lanny wouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that he was interested in a tea-party chat. Said the visitor: “I have something on my mind that might be of use to you. My business does not permit me to take an active part in politics, but sometimes I come upon an item of information which seems important, and then it is a pleasure to pass it on. This may be something you know about, and if so, don’t feel it necessary to comment. I am not fishing for information, but offering some.”

  “I appreciate your kindness, Herr Budd.”

  “I assume that you know Baron Schneider; but it may be that you haven’t had contact with him lately. It happens that he is in a frame of mind to be of use to you and your cause. I won’t need to say more, for you know what influence he has. Remember, he is not merely Schneider-Creusot, but also Skoda.”

  “Quite so, Herr Budd.”

  “I took a message from him to Kurt Meissner several weeks ago, and it may be that Kurt has acted upon it—he hasn’t told me. Kurt is one of my dearest friends, my boyhood hero and exemplar; but I have an idea that his unhappy experiences have disturbed his judgment, so that he finds it hard to trust any person of the French race. You doubtless know that he was a confidential agent of the Reichswehr here during the Peace Conference.”

  “I have heard something about it, Herr Budd, and we Germans are in your debt.”

  “Forgive me if I explain myself, for I want you really to understand me. I am a man of peace, both by profession and practice. My parents are American, I was born in Switzerland, lived most of my life in France, and had my holidays in England and Germany. In the last war my stepfather was killed fighting for the French and my best friend was nearly killed fighting for the Germans. I don’t want to live through such sorrows again, and I believe there can and should be a genuine reconciliation between France and Germany. Kurt taught me that ideal as a boy, and he still accepts it in theory—but when it comes to a concrete case, I have the idea that his reason does not dominate his attitude; instinctively, he simply cannot help disliking Frenchmen. I am mentioning the matter to you with the thought that this may be less true of you.”

  “It isn’t true of me at all, Herr Budd. I respect the French as a great people with a great tradition, and I am deeply obliged for your confidence. I would be glad indeed if I might have a chat with you about these and other matters.”

  “Certainly,” replied the art expert; “whenever you desire.”

  “I have an apartment in town where my friends come occasionally. I will give you my telephone number, if you like.”

  “With pleasure,” said Lanny—and inside himself he was saying: “Damn!” He got out his notebook and put down the number, acceding to Seine Hochgeboren’s request that he consider it confidential. Then he remarked: “I had the pleasure of visiting your château not long ago and looking at the paintings.”

  “I heard about it. I hope you found them worth while.”

  “I had the thought that you could hardly enjoy the daily confrontation with French military glory.”

  “Oh, well, one can’t afford to forget history entirely, even while dreaming of a happier future.”

  So they played with each other, as two urbane men of the world; and on the drive home Beauty said to her son: “Did you really mean what you told him about your attitude to Germany?”

  “Sometimes I think I do,” replied the son. “I would almost be willing to turn into a Nazi if it would prevent another war between France and Germany.”

  “You are a strange fellow,” said the fellow’s mother. She was not very clear on the subject of the new ideologies, but had read somewhere that the Red dictatorship and the Brown were not far apart in theory and practice. All she could say now was: “If you were going to change your mind, why on earth didn’t you do it before you broke up with Irma?”

  VII

  Lanny was one step nearer to his goal; but the steps were so many, and the time between them irksome! He could call up his new Nazi friend and ask for another view of those paintings, and by imparting information about French affairs and promising to get more, he could gain a position of intimacy with the whole Embassy staff. But would he ever get invited to spend a night at the château? Must he not rather assume that this was something out of the question; against policy, possibly even against orders?

  He talked it over with his fellow conspirators. Should he drive to Belcour and there put his car out of commission and claim that it wouldn’t run? But they undoubtedly had a well-equipped garage, with a mechanic who would quickly find the trouble—and possibly be suspicious as to its origin. Could he go as a visitor and fall seriously ill? Well, they would call a good German physician, and have a nurse to attend him, or perhaps an ambulance to rush him to Paris. Hardly would they leave him free to be sick by himself, and to wander about the grounds at night as a measure of convalescence!

  Monck, alias Branting, had got himself an SS uniform. He was a Hauptmann, the rank he was used to in Spain, and the one befitting his age and solidity of frame. He had got the outfit from a tailor in one of the faubourgs, near to a motion-picture studio; he had said he was aspiring to a role, and the tailor, generously rewarded, had entered into the spirit of the undertaking and turned him out complete with all accouterments, according to a magazine illustration which Lanny had obtained. Now he strutted up and down his hotel room, halted, clicked his heels, threw up his right arm and heiled Hitler. Both his two associates had had opportunities to watch the Nazis in action, and they criticized his behavior, and finally pronounced him able to paralyze the will of any German nightwatchman. But what about the dogs? Rörich had told Lanny that they knew the German smell; but could Monck count upon that? Perhaps he had lost his in exile—and even acquired a Spanish smell!

  They had their rendezvous, their car, their maps and blueprints, everything ready; they had figured out the last details of time and place. Their plans were at the stage of an army general staff which receives the order to invade a certain country and has only to reach into a pigeonhole and take out Plan 147B. But alas, all their plans, of whatever number, were timed for 0130, the military way of saying one-thirty in the morning. All depended upon Lanny’s being inside the château at that hour, and being there as a guest, not as a burglar. Night after night passed, and he still spent them all in Paris.

  VIII

  The solution of their problem, when it came, was arranged by a kindly fate without any prodding; it was due to a development in French politics which none of them could have foreseen. A Corsican of Fascist sympathies, Due Pozzo di Borgo, had fallen out with Colonel de la Rocque, tough leader of the Croix de Feu, and was waging ideological war upon him because of his “legalistic” tendencies, so offensive to the Cagoulards. The once-fiery Colonel had got nine million francs from Pierre Laval and had purchased Le Petit Journal, a newspaper of Paris with several hundred thousand readers; this had caused him to make peace with the government and promise to obey the laws. In short, he had become just another politician. The Duc had published the charge that the Colonel had received money from the French Foreign Office to build up his organization; the Colonel had replied with a suit for libel, and now the issue was being fought out in the courts—to the profit of the French public, which read newspapers of all political hues and agreed on only one thing—a delight in scandalous revelations concerning its statesmen, whom it called cochons, in English the short and ugly word “pigs.”

  And now to the witness stand came André Tardieu, recently Foreign Minister of the French republic, and testified that he had indeed paid public funds to Colonel de la Rocque for the upbuilding of the Croix de Feu, and that Pierre Laval, recently Foreign Minister and then Premier, had done the same. An immense sensation and, of course, fury among the “legalistic” sons of the Cross of Fire. Shortly thereafter the French Socialist Marx Dormoy received a visit from a mysterious black-clad gentleman who placed in his hands a heavy portfolio and departed without explanation
. Dormoy, Minister of the Interior, was charged with the duty of protecting the republic from its enemies at home; and upon opening the portfolio he found that it contained full details of the doings of the Hooded Men and their plot to overthrow the government; the sources of their funds, and what amounts they had spent for guns in Germany and explosives in Italy; where these supplies were stored in several hundred secret places throughout France, and exactly when and how they were to be used.

  Dormoy put all this before the Cabinet, and there resulted one of those seismic disturbances which go on day after day, shock after shock, until people in the neighborhood begin to wonder whether it may not be the end of the world, so often predicted by the prophets of the Christian religion. The Socialists, of course, clamored for exposure of the conspiracy and arrest of all the conspirators; but the conservatives pointed out that the plot involved some five hundred officers of the French army, many of them among the highest—and after such a housecleaning, how much army would France have left?

  The Socialists, who had been on the point of overthrowing the Chautemps government, decided to stay on and fight within the Cabinet. Dormoy, blackbearded friend of the people, destined to be murdered by the Nazis in a few years, may have foreseen his fate and resolved to make the most of his time, warning the workers and peasants of the peril in which their Third Republic stood. Rumors began to appear in the papers, and little groups of men to meet and argue on street corners and in wineshops, as they do in democratic countries, to the distress of those who desire the world to stay as it is, and believe that the less the excitable masses know about public affairs, the fewer chances there are of tumults and increases in the income tax.

  IX

  It was Lanny’s birthday, which came in the middle of November. He wasn’t having any celebration, or even mentioning the event, out of consideration for his mother who couldn’t bear the sight or sound or even the thought of the figure 38. Lanny got up as usual, ordered his orange juice and toast, and looked over his mail and his half-dozen Paris newspapers. Those of the left were full of dark hints of treason and sedition; knowing what it was all about, Lanny thought: “It may break at any moment; and what will it do to my plans?” He knew that Jesse Blackless had his ammunition ready and his guns primed; his speech would attribute the conspiracy to the Nazis, and would frighten those master-intriguers and make them cautious. The nephew had said: “Give me two or three days more.”

  He was going to send Monck out to the mill that morning. Jean had been told to find out where the Germans got the meat that was fed to their dogs. It would be necessary to poison them; an unpleasant thing to think of, but a human life was at stake. This happening would alarm the Nazis even more, and probably cause them to double their guard; therefore the burglary would have to be committed before the poisoning was discovered, and that meant a difficult job of timing.

  A knock upon Lanny’s door: a cablegram, which proved to be from Robbie. “Sailing Normandie tomorrow arrive Paris proceeding Berlin hope for your company.” There had been a time, long ago, when such a message would have been the happiest event in Lanny’s life. Now it was a nuisance, and one reason more for rushing things.

  He shaved and dressed, and was about to leave for Monck’s hotel, when the telephone rang. A woman’s voice, which at first he failed to recognize; a woman in great agitation, breathless, as if she had been running and was barely able to gasp out a word or two; a woman speaking English with a French accent: “No names—terrible—police arresting—friend—best friend—mustn’t say names—place in country-pillbox—you understand?”

  The word “pillbox” told him; he knew of only one such. The speaker was Annette, wife of the younger Denis de Bruyne. “I ran to neighbors—for God’s sake—help us!” She began whispering—as if that would protect the dread secret over the telephone.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Find the others! Warn them—keep out of way. You also! They are taking private papers—reading everything.”

  “I understand. Is that all?”

  “Be quick! Others must not come home—you understand?”

  “Perfectly. I will do what I can.”

  “Good-by.”

  So, the government had made up its mind to strike! They must indeed mean business, when they were raiding a home of such prominence as the Château de Bruyne. They would see the pillbox in the garden, and would soon find the cache of munitions; they would read whatever papers they could find in the home. They had caught Denis fils, but the father and younger son must be elsewhere, and it was up to Lanny to warn them. He called the elder Denis’s office; the secretary had just come in, the employer had not. Lanny guessed that when a man is doing such work as overthrowing a government, his private secretary must have some idea of it. He said: “Ask no questions. M. de Bruyne is in very grave danger. It is necessary that you find him at once and warn him to disappear.” The secretary replied promptly that he understood and would do his best.

  Lanny repeated the procedure for Charlot. He too had not arrived, but the secretary, a woman, promised to find him. There was a club where the young man sometimes kept appointments, and Lanny called there, but without success. There was nothing more he could do; he couldn’t be expected to go out and search the streets of Paris for those two. Knowing French politics as he did, he didn’t think they were in serious danger, except of publicity and inconvenience—and possibly of blackmail.

  Was Lanny himself taking any risks? When he gave his name over the telephone and helped seditious conspirators to escape arrest, he was making himself an accessory after the fact, and making it appear probable that he was an accessory before it. When the police went through those papers at the château, would they find the name of Lanny Budd as one who was carrying messages for the Cagoulards? If they searched the papers of Baron Schneider, they would be very apt to find memoranda concerning a message carried to an agent of the Reichswehr. Annette had said: “You also!”—and no doubt she had something like this in her mind. Lanny had caused her to believe that he was one of the Hooded Men at least in spirit, and the servants must have got the same impression. One of the first acts of the police would be to get the names of visitors from the servants. “M. Budd comes often, and he had dinner here with Baron Schneider!”

  A blaze of lightning flashed in Lanny’s mind. “By heck, I’ve got it! I’m a fugitive from justice!” He delayed just long enough to step into the adjoining suite and tell Hofman to get ready, they were going at once to see Branting, the problem had solved itself. He darted back to his own suite and threw a few articles of necessity into a small bag, including a book which he might try to read during a time of great stress. He wrote a note for his mother: “Gone a couple of days. Picture business.” Then he and the locksmith bolted to the car.

  X

  Monck was awaiting them, and the son of Budd-Erling announced: “God has tempered the wind to the shorn Lanny!” He was in a lively mood, tempted to slap the two men on the back and invite them to dance the farandole. “No poison, no trouble at all! I walk right in and stay as long as I please! I have the right of asylum!”

  He told them of the telephone warning, which had made him into a fugitive from justice. He had been working in the Nazi cause, and the Nazis knew it, and now, when he was in peril of his life, could they refuse him shelter? “Let them try it! I’ll telephone the Führer, if necessary!”

  The other two agreed that this did the trick, and they opened the cabinet of the general staff and took out Plan 147B. They had been over every detail a number of times, and now all Lanny had to say was: “Tomorrow morning, if you see the signal, and if not, then the next morning. Good luck, and thank you both with all my heart.” They shook hands, making it a rather solemn moment, and Lanny took his departure. Monck was to drive out to the mill and see if Jean had picked up any additional information. Hofman had nothing to do all day, except perhaps to have another séance and see if Ludi or Tecumseh or Claribel had any suggestions to offer.<
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  On the way Lanny stopped to purchase a couple of small bottles of cognac, which he put away in his bag. Then he drove to the Château de Belcour. To the gatekeeper, who knew him by now, he said: “Tell Leutnant Rörich I must see him at once. It is very urgent. Ohne Aufschub!” There was a telephone in the lodge, of course, and in a minute or so the gates swung open. Leaving his keys in the car but carrying his bag, Lanny went up the steps of the building two at a time, holding out his arm and saying his “Heil Hitler!” Then he grasped the hand of his Nazi friend. “Come inside,” he said. “Something terrible has happened. Take me where we can talk privately.”

  “Everything is private here, Herr Budd,” replied the other.

  “I know; but this may be a matter of life and death.”

  He was escorted into what had once been the steward’s office and the door was closed. In low tones the secret agent of the Hooded Men broke the news that his conspiracy had been discovered by the French police and that he and all the other conspirators were on the run. Lanny didn’t have to depart from the truth very much. The charming Annette de Bruyne, whose hospitality Rörich had accepted, had telephoned the news that their home was in process of being raided and their papers searched and read. Lanny, at gravest risk, had got word to the other members of the family, and likewise to those persons who constituted his immediate contacts with the organization. It appeared that the whole conspiracy was being blown open; if the government had learned what was going on at the de Bruynes’, it was to be assumed that they would know about hundreds of other places where arms were concealed, and would be making such raids all over France. “Being a foreigner,” Lanny said, “I am in an especially dangerous position, and I could think of no place to seek shelter but here.”