by John Harris
They dined together at Lüchow’s on 14th Street.
‘German,’ Midwinter observed, gesturing about him. ‘I reckon, if you could investigate ’em all, you’d find the goddam place was full of German spies every night of the week.’ He glared about him savagely. ‘What’s wrong with ’em?’ he said. ‘They’re naturalised Americans. Isn’t that good enough for ’em? Jesus, I’m German! Born Gustav Midwinder in Hamburg. But I’m American now and getting all the benefits there are from being American. So why do all these bastards claim to be German? All I ever wanted to be was a Yankee Doodle Dandy.’
Midwinter had an appointment at the British Consulate and Horrocks was due to call at Cunard’s, the owners of the Lusitania. As they separated. Slattery walked down Broadway and studied the posters outside Moore’s Theatre.
‘Charles Frohman,’ the posters announced, ‘presents Magdalena Graf in Der Zigeunerbaron.’ They had Strauss’ name in large letters and had retained the German title instead of the English one, The Gypsy Baron. Below were the names of the most important members of the supporting cast. Below them still had been pasted strips announcing that officials of the German-American Bund would attend the opening night and that German anthems would be sung.
On an impulse, Slattery went into the theatre and, in exchange for a dollar bill, found Magdalena’s address. A house had been rented for her on Fifth Avenue and Jesús showed him in with a wide grin, only for him to be shooed away immediately by a horde of women, all of whom seemed to be holding dresses or bolts of cloth and have their mouths full of pins.
Then Magdalena saw him from the other side of the salon and pushed everybody aside to reach him. She was swathed in blue silk that trailed along the floor as she moved, followed on her knees by a woman with a tape measure and a pin cushion.
‘Fitz!’
As he put his arms round her it was like clutching a hedgehog and she gave a gurgle of laughter.
‘You’ve come at a bad time,’ she said. ‘I’m in the middle of fittings, and I’m too nervous to be normal. Frohman’s put everything he’s got into the show. It’s absolutely splendid.’
‘Have dinner with me.’
‘When we know whether it’ll be a success or not. I’m too much on edge at the moment. What are you doing here? Jesús has taken care of everything. He’s a very clever boy and so proud of his name now it’s the same as mine. I’ve made it official. After this show there’ll be another. Frohman told me so in his suite at the Knickerbocker Hotel. He’s gone to London to see what’s being put on, but when he comes back he’s going to start thinking about it straightaway.’
She pushed a book of newspaper cuttings at him. ‘Look what they’re saying about me,’ she said.
Stutzmann hadn’t hesitated to tell the press of the wound she had received at Veracruz and the newspapermen had made the most of it: ‘Singer’s Heroism’, ‘Yankee Diva’s Courage.’ Like the Mexicans, they had twisted her background to suit themselves and were making it appear she was American born and bred.
‘Things become more hysterical with every hour that passes,’ she was saying now. ‘You never think you’re going to be ready in time. But we open on May the twentieth even if I have to appear in my underwear. Hermann will be here two days from now to attend to everything. Frohman’s a wonderful man to work for. It’s a pity he’s gone to Europe but he had to see the latest Barrie show with music by a new man, Jerome Kern.’ She was chattering wildly, in a state of near-hysteria with excitement and tiredness. ‘We’ll go to see Daddy Long Legs together. It’s the longest-running show in town. Or The Celebrated Case. That’s a Frohman show, too.’
She gave him a quick kiss and pushed him to the door. ‘Now you must go, or I shall be in trouble and so will you.’
He paused in the hall and looked back at her. ‘Have you ever thought of giving up the stage, Magdalena?’ he asked.
Her reply was immediate, and in the same near-hysterical tone. ‘A singer can’t rest on her laurels. And I enjoy the smell of powder and paint, and the roses that appear in the dressing room, and all the–’ She stopped dead and looked steadily at him, all the enthusiasm suddenly gone. ‘I could give it up tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Never, Madame!’ The dresser, who was chasing her round the room on her knees, shook her head. ‘The great roles will come soon and you’ll remember them all your life.’
Magdalena nodded and smiled, then she looked at Slattery as he stood by the door. ‘Be there on the twentieth. I shall look for you in the front row of the stalls. Put on your evening dress. Look beautiful for me. Come and wish me luck.’
When Slattery returned to his hotel, he had a drink sent to his room and lay on the bed sipping it, his thoughts on Magdalena. It was long after midnight when he fell asleep, and at some point towards morning he began to dream that guns were firing. Abruptly, he sat up. The hammering came from his door, and outside he could hear Horrocks’ voice.
Stumbling across the room, still half-asleep in the early daylight, he found Horrocks fuming in the corridor. He had cut himself shaving and there was a piece of tissue paper stuck to his cheek. Without a word, he placed a hand on Slattery’s chest and shoved him back into the room.
‘Give me a cigarette,’ he said. ‘I’ve run out.’
Slattery tossed a pack across and Horrocks lit one. He drew the smoke down in an enormous gulp so that Slattery half expected it to come out of the bottoms of his trousers. His hand was shaking.
‘What in Christ’s name happened?’ Slattery asked. ‘Have the Germans won the war?’
‘They might have,’ Horrocks snapped. ‘They’ve sunk the Lusitania.’
Six
Midwinter was already in his office when they arrived. Horrocks tossed a signal to the desk. ‘From the Embassy,’ he said. ‘Picked up by the Royal Navy in Ireland. It’s from the Lusitania. “Come at once. Big list. Ten miles south of Old Head Kinsale.” Originated 2.14. p.m.’
‘Scheele?’
‘Even Scheele couldn’t sink something as big as the Lusitania.’
‘A submarine?’
‘There aren’t any submerged rocks round there.’ Horrocks tossed more signal forms to the desk. ‘That one’s from the wireless station at Valentia. “Lusitania in distress off Kinsale.”’
Midwinter scowled. ‘Well, the bastards warned everybody. They put an ad in the papers telling people not to travel in her.’ He tossed a newspaper across his desk. Beneath the advertisement for the Lusitania’s sailing there was a small black-edged inset notice. ‘Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies.’ It was signed ‘Imperial German Embassy, Washington, DC, 22 April 1915.’
‘The British Consul-General says the Cunard offices here are full of German spies,’ Horrocks pointed out.
Midwinter frowned. ‘He may be goddam right.’
Slattery spent the morning trying to find out more details at the Cunard office. Cunard were insisting that everybody had been saved but by afternoon they had learned that an estimated thousand dead were expected.
‘Jesus,’ Midwinter breathed.
No official announcement had still been made and the chief story from Europe was of the struggle against the Turks in the Dardanelles. When the specials finally appeared on the streets New York went into a frenzy of horror. As they saw the words flashed on the bulletin boards above the newspaper offices, numbed men and women began talking in the streets to total strangers, unable to believe it. The Lusitania was familiar to all New Yorkers and they had seen her come and go so many times it seemed impossible she could simply have vanished.
Queues formed at the Cunard offices, anxious relatives and friends storming the counters where harassed clerks were working overtime to answer hundreds of long-distance calls. By evening they had more details. A hundred and twenty-four Americans were among the dead and they included internationally-known names such as Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt,
the multi-millionaire sportsman. The casualty list seemed endless.
In Manhattan’s smart German club, German officers in the city on their country’s business were hailing the sinking as a masterstroke and toasting Der Tag, and when they went to Lüchow’s to eat they found it crowded with German-Americans singing ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’. A large noisy party had draped a red, white and black German naval ensign with its Iron Cross insignia alongside a blue flag with a yellow cross, over a palm near their table.
‘Swedes,’ Midwinter growled. ‘If I uncover any of ’em who had anything to do with this, I’ll have the bastards sent home.’
He had his men on the streets immediately, watching the German Consulate, the German clubs, German firms, the homes of German officials and German sympathisers. There was a great deal of activity to be seen, with cabs coming and going all the time, their occupants hurrying in swift strides across the pavements, clutching canes, gloves and homburgs, their faces wearing expressions of grim determination mixed with a sort of unholy glee.
The news began to come in thick and fast. The Lusitania had sunk within sight of the Irish coast and already the illustrated magazines were appearing with dramatic drawings of men in the sea trying desperately to support drowning women and children. Information arrived that the Germans were talking of striking medals, of the sinking being applauded in Sweden, and of children in Germany being granted a holiday from school. With a thousand dead civilians, many of them women and children, it all seemed in incredibly bad taste, and the German ambassador, who had arrived in New York from Washington, had become a virtual prisoner in his suite and had deemed it wiser to stay away from a special performance of Die Fledermaus at the Opera House on behalf of the German Red Cross. Fearing trouble, the management had detectives in the theatre and the German flags, which had been decorating the boxes, had disappeared abruptly with the announcements about the singing of ‘Deutschland Über Alles’.
The headlines were unanimous about the disaster:
World Aghast At Germany’s Atrocity
Huns’ Most Cowardly Crime
The British were lying low, doing their best to appear as innocent as possible, and as the fury came to the surface, German sympathisers were being insulted and attacked, and the German attaché, who had taken the place of the German ambassador at the Opera House, was jostled and pushed in the foyer. One other unexpected result appeared as Slattery was driving down Broadway in a cab. As usual, he glanced at Moore’s Theatre for the progress of Der Zigeunerbaron and immediately spotted the red-lettered strips pasted over the new posters – CANCELLED.
Pushing his way into the theatre, he found the cast and orchestra sitting in the stalls in groups. They looked stunned and Magdalena’s expression was shocked.
‘It’s been withdrawn because it was written by Strauss,’ she said.
‘Strauss was a Viennese.’
‘In New York that’s the same as a Berliner.’ She gave Slattery an agonised look. ‘It’s really because Charles Frohman’s one of the dead from the Lusitania. Nobody knows what to do.’
‘It’ll be all right, Magdalena,’ he said. ‘Something will be sorted out.’
‘Will it?’ Enormous eyes stared at him. ‘On my door last night when I got home there was a notice. It said “Hun”. That’s all. “Hun”.’
‘Then it’s up to you to issue a statement to say you’re American. If I send a bunch of newspapermen round, will you do that?’
‘I couldn’t face them.’
‘Magdalena–’ He gestured at the singers and musicians and the group of frightened chorus girls. ‘Think of these people. If you say firmly you’re American, somebody might think again about the show. And take the train to Philadelphia on Sunday. There’s to be a meeting there, of newly-naturalised Americans. The President’s going to address it. Let yourself be seen there – being American.’
‘Will you come with me?’
‘I have to stay in New York.’
The flash of anger was abrupt but it soon died. ‘I’ll get Hermann to take me,’ she said. ‘He’s due in New York. He’ll be glad to.’ She sniffed. ‘He’d like to marry me, you know. He once asked me.’
Despite her doubts, she did as she was told and the story appeared the following day: Graf Denies German Sympathy. Grieves For Bereaved. I’m an American and Nothing Else, She Says.
It was a timely appearance because, with the revulsion that was being shown, after their first gleeful celebrations the Germans were now keeping very quiet and everybody was wondering what America would do. Even German-Americans had come round to the thought that the disaster might precipitate America’s entry into the war, and suddenly Horrocks began to cheer up.
‘Wilson hasn’t uttered a word,’ Slattery reminded him sharply.
Midwinter snorted. ‘There won’t be one,’ he growled. ‘They want the German Mid-West vote for 1916.’
Two days later, Hermann Stutzmann turned up at Slattery’s hotel. He was understandably nervous.
‘What are you up to?’ Slattery demanded at once.
‘Nichts. Nichts.’ The tenor put his hands to his face, his splayed fingers pushing the flesh out between them in folds. ‘I come to look after Magdalena and I discover there is nothing to look after.’
‘Where’s Fausto Graf, Hermann?’
‘Himmelherrgott, I don’t know.’
‘You’ve seen him often enough.’
Stutzmann sighed. ‘He says I don’t do enough for Germany and I must work with him. Herr Paddy, I am scared of him.’
‘Stay that way, Hermann,’ Slattery advised. ‘It’s safer. What’s going to happen to Magdalena?’
‘I came to ask you that, Herr Paddy. It’s expensive in New York and she can’t afford to stay here without work.’
By this time, the figures for the Lusitania’s casualties were being accepted as complete. One thousand one hundred and fifty passengers had had to be assumed dead and British soldiers were digging huge graves at Queenstown in Ireland. President Wilson had been expected to express the outrage of the United States by declaring war at the meeting of the newly-naturalised Americans but it had proved a damp squib.
‘He talked of peace!’ Midwinter looked shocked. ‘Said there was such a thing as being too proud to fight. When I was at school that meant the guy was scared.’
Wilson’s stance had started a new round of infuriated charges in New York, with the British, American and German port officials each accusing the others. In a shaded corner of Cunard’s main office a table had been spread with photographs of the bodies that had been recovered, in the hope that they might be identified. It was a grisly business, because they included children, a mother clasping her dead baby in her arms. Groups of people stared endlessly at them.
A huge reward had been offered for the recovery of the body of the millionaire, Alfred Vanderbilt, and last tributes were paid to Frohman at crowded ceremonies in different cities. The cast of Der Zigeunerbaron had been told nothing and, with no apparent future, were on the point of splitting up. The statement in the paper insisting Magdalena was American seemed to have done little good, while nobody seemed to have noticed her at the meeting in Philadelphia. They ate a gloomy supper at the house she had rented. She was angry with Slattery for not going with her to Philadelphia but he suspected her anger wasn’t genuine, and the conversation was one-sided, with Slattery doing all the talking and Magdalena’s mind far away.
Then the telephone rang and Jesús appeared in the doorway. As Magdalena headed for the hall where the instrument was situated, there was a long silence then Slattery heard a shriek.
‘What! María, Madre de Dios!’ There was a shout of amazement and delight, a few babbled words in German he couldn’t catch, then she reappeared and flung her arms round him.
‘Fitz! Fitz!’ Her happiness swept him along. ‘That was Hermann! It’s happened! Telegrams have been sent to everybody in the show! It’s on again.’
He was on his feet, as delighted and excited
as she was. ‘No, no! Not The Gypsy Baron. Another one. Auber’s Bohemian Girl, Charles Frohman’s brother’s forming a company to manage his brother’s stars, but they feel Strauss isn’t the thing just now. They feel it’s best to have someone who isn’t German. Auber was Irish, so that should please everybody. It’s going to be nothing but rehearsals from now on. I shall get corns on my vocal cords. How marvellous it is!’
As she flung herself at Slattery again, he whirled her round, her feet off the floor.
‘We’ve all got to be at the theatre tomorrow! Hermann will be there. So will Daniel Frohman. He’s going to explain everything. He wants his brother’s name to be remembered, and he says this is to show the world what he would have done. And they want me! They saw that statement in the paper, and someone saw me in Philadelphia.’
She kissed him enthusiastically and waltzed away, calling for Jesús, for her dresser, for everybody in the house to come and help. For a long time, Slattery stood near the abandoned meal, watched by the housemaid who had appeared to clear the dishes, then he shrugged, picked up his hat and headed for the door.
Seven
With the excitement over the sinking of the Lusitania, they had almost forgotten Huerta. But he was still in New York, closely attended by German agents and just as closely watched by allied undercover men.
‘Rintelen’s called a meeting about him,’ Midwinter reported. ‘Manhattan Hotel. We’ve got the number of the suite and we’ve hired the one next door. We’ll install bugs.’
The following day they found clear proof of Scheele’s activities. ‘Tramp steamer, Kirk Oswald,’ Horrocks said. ‘On her way to Europe with arms for the Russians. Diverted to Marseilles, which is a shorter trip, and when they unloaded they found one of Scheele’s cigars in her hold waiting to go off. A docker who must have been brighter than most took it to his boss.’