Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels)
Page 68
“I don’t think the law will trouble itself, if no one complains. I am pretty sure I can find out who the thief is, and persuade him to get out of the country and stay out. The French law would be satisfied with that.”
“Mille grazie, Mister Budd. I will do my best—sans delai.”
“It will mean a trip to Paris for you—for I think it would be the part of wisdom not to put anything into writing. M. Bruget, I am sure, will be amenable; and if either of your other customers questions your good faith, you may tell him to call my mother’s home on the telephone, and either she or I will confirm your statements.”
V
So the matter was settled. Lanny drove back to Juan, where he found his brother-in-law on the porch, absorbed in the reading of a yellow-backed novel which he hurriedly shoved into his pocket on Lanny’s approach. Il Capitano Vittorio di San Girolamo had a taste for pornographic fiction which he knew his relative did not share. The latter said: “Be so good as to come down to the studio. I have a matter of importance to talk over with you.”
Lanny had had time to think over his procedure, and wasted no breath on preliminaries. He motioned Vittorio to a chair and took one himself, then opened up: “Your friend who calls himself Gigliotto has just told me his part of the story, so you might as well tell me yours.”
The Capitano had barely touched the chair; now he bounced out of it. “That is a lie!” he cried.
“Don’t waste words, Vittorio. I assure you I am in no mood for nonsense. You have one chance to keep out of jail, and that is to tell me the whole story frankly.”
“I haven’t the remotest idea what you are talking about.”
“All I want to know is, did you take any paintings except the ones that fellow sold to Agricoli?”
“It’s a God-damned lie. I never—”
“All right, Vittorio. If that’s your line, I’ll give the police a chance to handle the matter. They are better equipped for such cases than I am.” He got up and went to the telephone on his desk, and had got so far as to take down the receiver when the Capitano descended from the aristocratic perch on which he habitually sat. “Oh, all right, I’ll talk.” So Lanny hung up, and the other resumed his seat and said: “I took three paintings, no more. I was sick of seeing you holding back Marceline’s money.”
“I’m not going to discuss Marceline. But I point out to you that if you took more, I’ll find it out. It’s just a matter of checking against my records, which I haven’t yet had the time to do.”
“You can save yourself the trouble. I only took three. That was all I could carry at once. Marceline was broke and so was I.”
“Did she know what you were doing?”
“Of course not. And I hope you’re not going to tell her; it’ll only make her unhappy for nothing.”
“How much of the money have you left?”
“Not a sou.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I tried a new system, but I didn’t have enough. Just when I got, to the point where one more turn would have put me on the road to success, the money was gone.”
“It has happened that way ever since the roulette wheel was invented,” remarked Lanny. “Now let me inform you, I have arranged to pay Agricoli eighty thousand francs and he will get the paintings back for me. You, for your part, will give me your demand note for the amount.”
“What good will that do you?”
“I will put it away in a safe place, on the chance that you may ever have a claim against any member of my family.”
“Very clever of you!”
“I hope it is. The other request I have to make is that you will invent a telegram ordering you back to your duties in Spain. In that way you can avoid giving Marceline the information which, as you say, would only make her unhappy for nothing.”
“You are going to try to break up our marriage?”
“Just the opposite. If I tell Marceline the truth, it might well break things up; but on the basis I am proposing, she will be free to follow you to Spain if and when she wishes; that will be for you and her to settle. The one thing I have to make certain is that you do not ever come back into France.”
“Oh, so you pass a sentence of exile on me!”
“Italy is your native land, and Spain is going to be your colony. There ought to be glory and money enough for you there. I propose that you leave France for my mother and myself.”
“Very subtle indeed—but it seems pretty close to blackmail to me.”
“I don’t know the exact name for the method by which you have been getting your gambling money from my mother and her daughter, and I don’t want to bandy words with you. I simply tell you that unless you agree to take the night train to Marseille and a steamer for Cadiz, you will spend tonight in the Cannes jail.”
VI
Vittorio de San Girolamo was a young gentleman who thought extremely well of himself; it came naturally to him, and a fond mother had encouraged it. He had pale, well-cut features, and a little sharp-pointed black mustache of which he took great care. He had several medals and decorations which he wore on all occasions, and he had manners which made an impression upon the ladies. Of late he had been feeling himself master of Bienvenu, and had perhaps not been taking the trouble to manifest his best qualities. It occurred to him that now was a time for the quickest possible turning on of his charm.
“Lanny,” he began, humbly. “You are taking a very harsh attitude to me, and I beg you to stop and try to understand my position. I may have made a blunder; yes, I know I have, I admit it freely, and truly regret it—but you must realize that it wasn’t quite the same thing as a crime. Marceline has a claim on those paintings, much better than your own. She is Marcel’s daughter, his own blood; and when she tells me that she is being badly treated, am I not supposed to pay any attention to what she says?”
This was a subject which had been discussed in detail, and Lanny was tired of it. Said he: “Are you ready to give me your answer, or do you want time to think it over?”
“I see that you are hopelessly prejudiced against me, Lanny. How am I to get the money to travel?”
“If you let me know early enough, I will have my friend Jerry Pendleton meet you at the Cannes station and put into your hands a railroad ticket to Marseille, a steamer ticket to Cadiz, and a thousand francs so that you can eat on the way, and travel to Seville. The army, I am sure, will welcome you.”
The deflated ex-aviator sat staring in front of him, occasionally biting his lip. He looked like a surly and greatly vexed Fascist, and Lanny thought: “May there be more of them in that state!” Always he saw this brother-in-law in the role of which the brother-in-law was proudest—of dropping bombs upon undefended Abyssinian villages, and mustard gas upon roads where barefooted natives walked.
“You are giving me a rotten deal, Lanny. You must know that Marceline loves me, and wouldn’t want this to happen.”
“You are at liberty to tell Marceline about it, if you think it will help you; but that won’t change my attitude. I am offering you a chance to keep your name clear, and to start life over again, if you have it in you.”
“But what in God’s name is Marceline to do—and the baby?”
“Marceline is a free agent, and the choice will be hers. If she wants to go with you tonight, I will give her the money. If she wants to stay here and come later, I will give it to her then.”
“But sooner or later Marceline will want to come back to visit her mother; and what excuse can I give for not coming with her?”
“I suppose you can plead your military duties. Marceline will be welcome to her mother’s home, but you will never come here so long as I live. There is no statute of limitation on felonies, and there will be none on my determination. These paintings have been safe in their storeroom for more than twenty years, and I want to know they will be here the next time I come back.”
“You won’t accept my word that I am truly sorry, and will never again touch them?”
“Do you want to know what I think about your behavior, Lanny? You’re still a Red in your heart. I’ve believed it ever since you came into Spain to help that God-damned snake Alfy.”
“You can believe whatever you please, Vittorio, but don’t make the mistake of talking about it. Remember that you took money to do your part in freeing that snake.”
“I took the money, but I never did anything. I went to watch you, and make certain that you didn’t do any hurt to our cause.”
“That’s your story; but don’t fail to realize what a weak one it is. Your camp is full of spies and traitors, and if you once get that tar on your fingers you’ll have a hard time rubbing it off. I’ll tell you about myself—I have seen so much of the crookedness of politicians in all the camps that I have decided to attend to my own affairs and let them alone. So far as you and I are concerned, I think it’s a fair bargain for me to say nothing of what I know about you, and you to say nothing of what you guess about me. Do you want to give me your decision?”
“Oh, I’ll go, of course—what else can I do? I don’t want to bring disgrace on my wife, or to handicap my son’s future. But I’m telling you, I’ll come back to France some day—and on my own terms.”
“Perhaps you’ll come at the head of an army. If so, I’ll hope to get out before the bombs fall.”
Lanny seated himself at his desk and wrote: “On demand I promise to pay to Lanny Budd the sum of eighty thousand francs for value received.” He dated this, and the Capitano signed it and stalked out.
VII
In the village he took the tram to Cannes, and from there telephoned his wife, saying that he had received at the Italian consulate a telegram ordering him to return to Seville at once; he had made a mistake and overstayed his leave.
Marceline, of course, was greatly upset. What was she to do? Surely she couldn’t take a young baby on that long trip, and stay in war-torn Spain, with the midsummer heat coming so soon. “I’ll have to wait a while, Vittorio; and perhaps wean the baby and leave him here.”
“Oh, Lanny, what have you done!” exclaimed the softhearted mother, in the privacy of her boudoir. “Don’t you know how she loves him?”
“It’s her hard luck that she made a bad guess,” replied the tougher-minded son. “She made her own bed—and she doesn’t have to lie in it one night longer than she chooses.”
“In Southern Spain, that ghastly climate—and all the mosquitoes! You shouldn’t have done it, Lanny! It was too drastic!”
“Hold your horses, old dear,” he replied—a phrase he had learned in the rude land of the Yankees. He didn’t tell her just how “drastic” he had been, leaving her to guess that the young husband was departing because of his painful embarrassment.
Vittorio explained to Marceline that he had a lot of business to attend to in Cannes, and asked her to pack up his belongings and drive in and meet him. Also, would Lanny be kind enough to have the travel bureau attend to the matter of his accommodations?
Lanny was happy to oblige; he called up his old friend Jerry and promised to mail a check on receipt of bill. He gave Marceline a thousand francs in an envelope, and that was the end of the matter for him. He was glad he didn’t have to be a witness of the parting, and persuaded his mother to send her farewells by proxy. Let the young couple have their last hours together and work out their problems in their own way. Lanny himself had no tears to shed; he had always loved his mother’s home, but had lost interest in it since a Fascist ex-aviator had been free to spread his ego there. Now Lanny would stay awhile, and go fishing with Jerry, and play tennis, and swim, and let a little of the joy of life seep back into his heart.
VIII
But he couldn’t keep out of politics. He had to get in touch with Julie Palma, and take her for a drive, and read the letters that had come from her husband. The government had been moved to Barcelona, and Raoul was there, being bombed almost every day; a strange thing, you got used to it—apparently human beings could get used to anything. You heard the whistle of the bomb, and you closed your eyes for a moment or two—that was automatic; then came the explosion, and the house across the street might be turned to rubble in a fraction of a second. Hundreds of people were being killed in a single day, or worse yet, maimed and pinned under wreckage which might take fire. There wasn’t a pane of glass intact for blocks around Raoul. Yet people stayed on and did their jobs, women refusing to leave their men.
Raoul might easily have come out, but he, too, refused. His little wife closed her eyes and the lids quivered as she said: “I won’t ask him to come. It’s his duty, and I won’t be the one to break him down. It’s the people’s war; it’s freedom, it’s everything we believe in. We asked for it and we have to stick by it.”
Lanny gave her some money and then went back to his home, deeply moved, and troubled in his conscience because he was taking a holiday in a terrible time like this. It was the Trudi-ghost, still working in his soul and giving him no peace. It wanted Lanny to become a fanatic like itself. It filled him with rage at the hypocrisy in high places, at the spectacle of class interest masquerading as patriotism, as piety, as love of peace. He knew how quickly these peace-lovers would start a fight, the moment their own privileges were threatened. You could see that in Spain and hear it talked in smart society on the Côte d’Azur, where the wealthy Spaniards were waiting for their homeland to be made safe again, and where the rest of smart Europe expressed its hearty sympathy.
The farce of “Non-Intervention” went on all that summer, and so, also, did the seeking and finding of pleasure. The French Riviera was now fully established as a summer resort; villas were leased for the year around and hotels and rooming houses were filled to the last garret. The drums thumped and the stopped trumpets blared all night across the Golfe Juan; all day the women lolled in the sunshine with two narrow strips of cloth around them, and the men strolled by and looked them over and took their pick. Day or night it was hard to get near the gaming tables for the crowds, and the dancing floors were so packed that, as the disgusted Sophie put it, you had to learn to dance on a sou.
She was one of those who had bought a luxurious villa on the Cap d’Antibes, planning to spend a life of mild enjoyment, and now resented the invasion of vulgar hordes. The only thing to do was to stay away from public places; entertain your own little group of friends; eat in one another’s dining rooms and dance in one another’s drawing-rooms, or outside on the loggias. Along the shore were quiet spots with white or pink villas perched upon the rocks, and other villas dotting the slopes of the hills, many of them with extensive and beautiful grounds. The residents divided up into sets according to their wealth and the mysterious thing called “social position,” and kept others out in spite of no end of heart-burning. Many who had been considered “fast” when they were young had become pillars of conservatism in their later years, and were now shocked by the doings of the younger set.
Sophie, Baroness de la Tourette, had been a wild one, with henna hair and a loud voice; now she had let the hair turn gray, her laughter was subdued, and her principal diversion was playing bridge for money which she didn’t need. Beauty Budd was one of her cronies, and it was a misfortune that Beauty’s husband wouldn’t learn to play cards. They would try their best to rope Lanny in, and failing in this, would take Marceline. All Lanny wanted was to sit in a corner with a book, or to wander down to his studio and pound on the piano; but this was contrary to the ladies’ idea of a social life, and every time they got him here, even for a few days, they would start scheming to interest him in some member of their sex. They wouldn’t say “wife,” because that had a terrifying sound; but some girl to sit out with on lovely summer nights, and to take sailing on da
rk blue water whose millions of wavelets sparkled like silver in the moonlight and like gold in the sun.
Just now it was a visiting grand-niece of Sophie’s, a lissome young thing just out of finishing school in Mobile. She was a dream made out of the different varieties of roses—cream and pink and red, with the almost black kind for her hair; she had the loveliest soft drawl, if you had time to listen to it, and ran the consonant of one word into the vowel of the next just as if she were French—only the French did it in half the time. Sophie was determined that this was going to be a match, and the bunch of roses was apparently willing to be plucked. Lanny would be invited over to dinner, and then left to stroll in the garden, and he did—but after they had talked about the people they knew and the things they were doing and the places they had been to, what on earth was left?
IX
A funny thing happened. Sophie and her husband, the dignified Mr. Armitage, were in the card room finishing their second rubber with Beauty and Marceline, having won several dollars from their guests. Lanny was sitting outside on the terrace, listening to Lucy Cotton’s account of her home on Mobile bay, where the magnolias were now in bloom and the mocking birds singing the whole night long. There came a sound of motorcars and a flashing of lights; two cars stopped under the porte-cochere—it was the fashion to drop in, most any time before dawn, for the nights were delightful, while the afternoons were hot, so you took a long siesta. In the evening, after you had danced, or gambled, or been to a show, you would drop in on friends, and sit for a while sipping iced drinks, and gossiping about the people you knew: She has scads of money—They say her grandfather was a miner—She said this and I said that—And have you heard about Dickie, he’s drunk again and Pudzi is threatening to leave him—I have a date with my couturier tomorrow, and what are you going to do?