IV
The dinner was served in the drawing-room of Robbie’s suite, in order that the four men might be able to talk privately. Denis was a hard-headed person, and it wasn’t necessary to use finesse with him. As soon as the waiter had departed Robbie said: “I have a project which I think will be of interest to you.” The other replied: “Tell me about it, by all means.”
Robbie launched on his “spiel,” an exposition to which he had given as much care and study as Daniel Webster or Jean Jaures would have devoted to an oration. He had practiced it many times, varying it to fit the audience. It wasn’t necessary to point out the importance of aviation in the modern world, for the Frenchman had more than once expressed himself on the subject; indeed, Robbie tactfully indicated that Denis’s opinion had been one of the factors causing him to take up this project. He had come to France because he knew how deep was his friend’s anxiety over the inadequacy of the country’s air defenses and what Lanny had told him of the rearmament campaign of General Goring, Commander of the German Air Force.
Said Robbie: “One thing you can be sure of, there will never be war between your country and mine; so, if I should succeed in building the world’s best airplane factory in a part of the world where Goring cannot get at it, that would be a good thing for la patrie as well as for the individual investors. It is possible that I could go to the Germans with my proposition; but you know my feelings for France and how much I would prefer helping her to helping her enemies.”
Robbie didn’t say what he would do in the event that French capitalists didn’t back him. On the other hand he didn’t say that he wouldn’t under any circumstances go to Germany; that would have seemed to him sentimental, out of keeping with the character of a business man—and besides, Denis wouldn’t have believed him. Business men talked on the basis of the open market, which modern techniques had broadened to include the world. Budd-Erling—that was to be the name of the new concern—would make planes for the world market, and no favorites played. We have our price and our terms of payment, and the rule is, first come, first served; your money is as good as the next fellow’s, and we don’t ask about your nationality or your politics or your religion, the color of your flag or of your skin.
The owner of Paris taxicabs said it seemed to him that Robbie had a sound proposition. He asked many questions and Robbie answered them fully. The American had the whole set-up in a folder, and the Frenchman said to leave it with him and he’d study it and decide what he could do. He offered to put it before some friends, and Robbie said he’d come back to Paris after he had got through in London. So everything was all right, and they went to talking politics—where a great many things were far from right.
The killing of Barthou had thrown French affairs into turmoil. The Foreign Minister had been one of the few real patriots left in the country, and who was going to take his place? Conferences were under way and wires were being pulled; Denis explained that he would have to leave early because he had to do his share of the pulling. It was a time of real peril for France—the mad Hitler was rearming his country rapidly, and his agents were busy intriguing and stirring up revolts in every nation, big and little. Meanwhile France was torn by domestic strife, and where among politicians would she find a friend and protector?
Once more Lanny Budd gazed down into the boiling pit of la haute politique; once more he smelled the rather nauseous odors which rose from it. Alas, Marianne, la douce, la belle, no longer seemed to Lanny the shining, romantic creature he had imagined in his happy boyhood; then he had loved her, and all her children, rich and poor, on that lovely Azure Coast where stood his home. But now Marianne was taking on an aspect somewhat drab; her honor was sold in the market-place, and the clamor of the traffickers spoiled the day and the night. French politicians were creatures of the Comite des Forges, of the great banks, of the deux cents familles; the head of one of these ruling families poured out details as to what prices had been paid and what services were being rendered. He was full of bitterness against upstarts and demagogues—save those whom he himself had hired.
Denis reported that the talk was of Pierre Laval as Barthou’s successor, and apparently this was a politician with whom de Bruyne had had experience. Like most of the pack, the innkeeper’s son had started far to the left, and as soon as he got power had set out to line his pockets. When he was in danger of being exposed in one of the ever-recurrent scandals, he had saved himself by turning informer on his fellows. He had purchased a chain of papers all over France, and now was getting radio stations, useful in support of his financial and political intrigues. He had become as conservative as even Denis could have wished; indeed, so eager to preserve his property that he was an easy mark for the Nazi blackmailers. A man so wealthy could no longer think about France, but only about his own fortune.
Having told all this, and gone into detail about it, de Bruyne added: “I have to excuse myself now; I have an appointment with that fripon mongol”—that Mongolian rascal.
V
Next morning Beauty Budd arrived on the night train from Calais and Lanny went to meet her at the Gare du Nord; he was a dutiful son, and adored his full-blooming mother, even while he laughed at her foibles. There she was, descending from a wagon-lit; pink and gold fluffiness in a gray traveling-dress with fur boa to match. When he kissed her she said: “Don’t muss me any worse—I look a fright.” But Lanny, unfrightened, replied: “You are the eternal rose, and not one petal out of place.”
Don’t ask how old she was—it would be too unkind. She was the mother of a son who would be thirty-five next month and she discouraged the celebration of these recurrent calamities. She was gradually reducing in her own mind the age at which she had borne him, and she had been cheered by reading in the newspapers about an Indian girl in Peru who had produced a son at the age of five. When you have been so beautiful that you have been named for it; when you have seen all the men in restaurants and hotel lobbies turn to stare at you; when you have been many times immortalized by the most celebrated painters—when you have enjoyed all these glories too long, you look into your mirror in the morning and the tears come into your eyes and you begin to work frantically with the tools of the cosmetician.
For one thing, you have to choose between embonpoint and wrinkles; and fate had chosen for Beauty Budd. The cream-pitcher remained her worst enemy; while a million women in London and Paris strove in vain to get enough food, she failed mournfully in her efforts not to get too much. She was always trying new diets, but the trouble was they left her dizzy, and she had to have a few chocolates in between meals of one lamb chop with pear and cucumber salad minus dressing. She told about it, and then asked about the funeral. She had to reach for her delicate mouchoir, for Mama and Rahel had been her dear friends and yachting-companions, and she was the kindest of souls; if she had ever done harm to any human being it was because the social system was too complicated for her to understand the consequences of her actions.
Robbie Budd had supported her upon a lavish scale, ever since he had fallen in love with her as a very young artist’s model in this city of pleasure. He had acknowledged her son, in spite of the opposition of his Puritan family. So how could she fail to do everything she could for him? By her combination of beauty, kindness, and social charm she had won the friendship of rich and important persons; and if Robbie wanted to meet them and make deals with them, why shouldn’t she lend her aid? Robbie never cheated anybody; what he sold was what they wanted to buy. If it was guns and ammunition, how could he help that? If now it was going to be planes, well, he would give them their choice, for peace or for war. Nobody could hate death and destruction more than Lanny’s mother; she had spoken boldly and had made enemies by it, but had not been able to change the destiny of this old Continent.
Robbie was a married man, and a grandfather several times over. Beauty was a married woman, and a grandmother once, which was enough. She had her separate suite in the hotel, and when she met Robbie they shook hands a
s old friends and behaved with such propriety that the gossips had long ago lost interest in them. Beauty would have herself made presentable, and then she would get busy on the telephone, and soon would be in a round of events. Wives of retired capitalists and widows of elderly bankers would learn that Robbie Budd, the American munitions man, was in Paris, planning a new enterprise which might be of vital importance to French defense and incidentally might be paying dividends of twenty or thirty per cent in a year or two.
VI
Meanwhile, Lanny was motoring his father to the Chateau de Balincourt, once the home of King Leopold, misruler of the Belgians, and now the retreat of Sir Basil Zaharoff, retired munitions king of Europe and not retired Knight Commander of the Bath of England and Grand Officer de la Legion d’Honneur de France. The old gentleman was in his middle eighties, and saw very few people, but Lanny Budd possessed the key to his castle and his heart. Not merely had he known the noble Spanish lady who had been the old man’s wife, but he had received her messages from the spirit world through a Polish medium whom he had discovered. Sir Basil would be most happy to see Mr. Budd and his son, so the secretary had said over the telephone; would they be able to bring Madame Zyszynski along with them?
Robbie talked about the strategy of approach to one of the most wary of men. “Talk to him about the duquesa,” said the father. “Can’t you recall something that will get him warmed up?”
“Beauty has been getting some interesting messages purporting to come from the Caillards,” replied the son.
“Fine! Tell him about them; and if you can say that the spirits are riding in airplanes, that would really fetch him!” Robbie said that with a grin. He didn’t exactly ask that his son should make up some story about Zaharoff’s dead wife in the other world, yet if Lanny had proposed doing that, his father wouldn’t have objected. It is all right to have scruples, but they should be used with discretion, and not while dealing with an old spider, an old wolf, an old devil, who for more than a generation had played with the nations of Europe as casually as other men play with chessmen on a board.
The lodgekeeper came out and looked them over; evidently he had his orders, and the gates swung back, and they drove up a broad driveway to the stone chateau—two stories, rather squat, but with wide-spreading wings. A turbaned Hindu servant admitted them; all the servants were from Madras. It was a damp and chilly day, and the master, wearing a green smoking-jacket, sat before the fireplace in his very grand library, which went up the two stories and had a balcony with heavy bronze railings. All those books, at which Lanny gazed hungrily; he doubted if half a dozen of them were opened in the course of a year. The old man no longer had any hair on the top of his head, but still had the white imperial below it; his skin was drawn and yellowish brown like old parchment. He did not rise from his seat or offer one of his palsied hands, but put cordiality into his tone as he told them to take the seats which had been placed for them.
“Sir Basil,” said Lanny, at once, “have you heard that ‘Birdie’ is coming through?”
“Nobody troubles to tell me anything any more,” was the sad reply.
“My mother wishes me to tell you about it.” Beauty Budd and the Knight Commander of the Bath had both been guests of Lady Caillard in London not long before she had “passed over.” She had been an ardent spiritualist and had made the usual promises to communicate with her friends from the other side. She had lived surrounded by mediums, and of course it was inevitable that these would begin getting messages from her. “Birdie,” as she was known, had been strong on emotions but weak on brains; and it was to be expected that her words from the spirit world should bear that same character. “Vinnie” was Sir Vincent Caillard, who had been Zaharoff’s business partner in Vickers-Armstrong and had been no fool, even if he had thought himself a maker of music as well as of munitions. Zaharoff knew his mind and thousands of things that had been in it. Now he listened attentively while Lanny told what he could remember of the seances.
“Oh, God, how I wish I could believe it!” exclaimed the lonely old man. His beard waggled as he talked, and he leaned forward, thrusting his hooked beak forward as if he thought he could smell the younger man’s real thoughts. Lanny knew the one idea that was in his mind: was he ever going to see his beloved duquesa, the only person for whom he had really cared in a long life? He wanted so to believe it—and yet he hated so to be fooled! He wanted to hear that Lanny believed it; and yet, even if he heard it, he wouldn’t be sure whether Lanny was being honest with him. When one had been outwitting other people for three-quarters of a century, how can one believe that anybody is being straightforward?
They sat close together, and their eyes met in a long stare. It was as near as they could ever come to intimacy. “Tell me, Sir Basil,” asked the younger man, “have you any religion?”
“None, I fear,” was the reply. “I have wished that I might. But how can a God permit what I have seen in this world?”
“A God might be leaving men to work out their own destiny.”
“A God who made them what they are?”
“You believe, then, that you are an accident?”
“That seems to me the politest supposition I can make about the universe.” It might have been humor, and it might have been tragedy; Lanny guessed that it was some of each.
VII
Not for a large amount of money would Robbie Budd have interrupted this conversation. He listened and watched and thought, like the practical psychologist he was. He was interested not in the question of where Sir Basil was going to spend his future years, but only in what he was going to leave behind him. Anyone who didn’t like Robbie would have said that his motive was greed, but Robbie would have treated such a person with quiet contempt; he had his answer, which Lanny had known by heart from his earliest days: Robbie wanted to get things done, and money was the means of doing it.
An engagement was made for Madame Zyszynski, the medium, to come to Balincourt for another visit, so that Sir Basil might find out if “Birdie” wished to talk to him. After which the old man must have realized that he wasn’t being quite polite to the older of his guests; he turned, saying: “Well, Mr. Budd, what are you doing these days?”
It was an opening, and Robbie was prompt to take it. He replied: “I have come to ask for advice, Sir Basil.” His host said that he would give it if he could, and Robbie went on: “I have been studying the world situation, on the basis of the best data I can get, and have come to the conclusion that the industry of the future is aviation. I believe it will be for the next generation what the automobile was for the last.”
The older man listened and nodded now and then as Robbie elaborated this thesis. Yes, it was true; he wasn’t going to be here to see it, but it was bound to happen; any nation that didn’t take to the air might as well give up before the next war started. If Mr. Budd knew sound aviation shares, those were the things to buy.
“That is not exactly what I am thinking of, Sir Basil.” Robbie went on to tell about his dream of a perfect place for a perfect fabricating plant. “Airplane factories have been scratch affairs so far, and their techniques are based on small-scale operations. What I have in mind is to apply the principles of mass production to this new job; I want to put airplanes on a belt.”
“That is a pretty large order, Mr. Budd.”
“Of course; but if the industry is to be large, the order must be the same. Sooner or later somebody is going to become the Henry Ford of the air. He tried it himself, but has given up—just when success had become possible.”
It was Lanny’s turn to listen and watch and think; he, too, was something of a psychologist, though hardly a “practical” one. This aged plutocrat took on suddenly the aspect of a white-bearded gnome, sitting on a heap of treasure and watching with fear-stricken eyes every creature that came near. He had by now made sure that Robbie Budd wanted his money, and a lot of it, and he had lost every trace of that expansiveness which conversation about Vinnie and Birdie had
produced. This was danger!
But still he couldn’t quite bear to break off the interview. The visitor was talking about profits, dividends of old-time magnificence. The Knight Commander and Grand Officer had known Robbie Budd for thirty years, and judged him a solid and capable fellow; no speculator, no fly-by-night promoter, but one who put money to work and himself to work with it. At the Genoa Conference, where Robbie had been Zaharoff’s agent, he had acted with competence; later, when Zaharoff had gone in on New England-Arabian Oil, he had got the better of Robbie—but not enough so that he would look on his associate with contempt.
“You couldn’t ignore what a man like that was telling you. You couldn’t help but be aroused, even if only by the memories which his voice and manner recalled. Those had been the days, and Zacharias Basileos Sahar or Zahar, who had been born of Greek parents in a peasant hut in Turkey and had become the real behind-the-scenes master of Europe, he was one who could say with the ancient Greek hero that much had he seen and known: cities of men, and manners, climates, councils, governments; himself not least, but honored of them all. If he couldn’t exactly say that he had drunk delight of battle with his peers far on the ringing plains of windy Troy, at least he could claim to have sent a hundred thousand other men to drink that dubious delight. Those windy plains were near to the village of Mugla, where Zacharias Basileos had started his career, and also to the scene where twelve years ago his personally financed Greek army had been slaughtered by the Turks.
Dragon's Teeth Page 71