Keeping Secrets

by Suzanne Morris

  When I reported the incident to Edwin, he could make nothing of it, but encouraged me to keep watching her. Later in the month I managed to chat with her when by coincidence we met at the train station. She may have been a little nervous, but otherwise seemed her normal self. She’d come with a group to meet the influx of soldiers being moved to Fort Sam and Camp Wilson and offer them refreshment. I was there awaiting Mother’s arrival for a short visit. During a temporary lull I sidled over and began with lines designed to lead her into a trap. We spoke of Lyla Stuttgart, who sat in a corner looking ill. “Funny name, Stuttgart, some German city, isn’t it? Wonder what her name was before.”

  “I don’t know,” said Electra.

  “Mother and I get into conversations sometimes about the fact a woman gives up her name when she marries, often to something far less pleasant. Seems unfair, don’t you think? I sort of like my name now … I hope I marry a man with an equally distinguished name.”

  She laughed, and shook her head. Oh, how easy it was to play the game of silly young maiden girl to my advantage. “Well, you can laugh,” I said. “Look what you wound up with. Cabot. That’s a strong, powerful name.”

  “Well it certainly beats Weems,” she said, then closed her mouth abruptly. Now almost an expert at diverting conversations, I was speaking of something across the station even as I noted her sudden silence. I wanted her to believe I hadn’t really been paying attention to her last remark, and I am fairly certain she did. Since we had never disproven she was once married to a man named Dexter, I assumed Weems was her maiden name. However, I realized as she walked away the name might be spelled any number of ways.…

  I stood around for a while, keeping an eye out for Mother and now and then glancing toward Electra’s group, still busy serving the soldiers. How simple life used to be, I thought. It seemed as though now we all existed in layers. Before I got mixed up with the BNA, I was always candid and forthright, living on the first layer and assuming everyone I knew lived the same, at least to a reasonable degree.

  If not for that day Michael Stobalt knocked on Mother’s door, I would have an important job as the secretary to a bank owner named Adolph Tetzel, not knowing he was anything other than what he appeared to be on the outside—a hardworking, prosperous businessman, inclined to be generous toward me in return for my capabilities, my sincere eagerness to serve him, and my loyalty.

  I would probably be acquainted with both Electra and Emory Cabot somewhat by now, believing them to be nothing more than an extraordinary couple with money, good looks, a place in society—all things normally to be admired if not envied. I might even have chanced to be courted once or twice by their quiet and modest employee Nathan Hope.

  I would know nothing of the layer just beneath the surface of the lives of all these people that was built of betrayal, secrecy, hidden motives.… And I’d be awaiting my mother today, believing that the life I’d made for myself in this city would go on until I decided to change it, for some normal, everyday reason. Watching Electra smile and hand out cups of beverage like any young matron anxious to aid a good cause, I could almost imagine that if I wished hard enough and shut my eyes, there might be but one layer after all, and everything underneath that would be the product of a bad dream from which I would soon awaken.

  When Mother got off her train, I found the sight of her cheery face unusually refreshing. She’d been in Missouri for a meeting, and was curtailing all other activity until September, when she had to be in Atlantic City. In between, she’d manage a visit with each of us kids. We went directly to my apartment, and sat down to talk.

  Right away she observed me carefully and concluded, “You look a little tired, and definitely thinner.”

  “You’re looking a little tired yourself.”

  “But not any thinner. I go to too many luncheons,” she said with a laugh, then paused before continuing. “Something’s bothering you very much, isn’t it? I can always tell. You’re less bubbly.”

  “It’s only that … well … I went into this thing believing people were either all bad or all good. I’m beginning to see it isn’t quite so simple.”

  “That’s a good lesson to learn, my dear, though sometimes a hard one.”

  “We keep digging away. Some of the people we’re working on are not going to prove to be involved in anything wrong—at least too wrong, anyway, I don’t think—and somehow it makes me feel bad. Dirty, underhanded. Yet I have to admit that when I’m sniffing someone out, my curiosity is pitiless. Sometimes I despise myself.…”

  “I wonder if I didn’t do you a terrible injustice by introducing you to that group,” she said.

  “I’ve been giving some thought to that myself. Remember, I was going to prove Tetzel was a knight in shining armor.”

  “Instead you keep finding more tarnish.”

  “Yes. But you know, I still find I can’t dislike him, or even fear him. I’ve never admitted that to my contact here, but it’s the truth. Funny, isn’t it.”

  She smoothed the hair back from my forehead and said, “You’re growing up, honey,” then she took me in her arms and we held each other for a long time. I wonder if she could ever imagine what those moments between us meant to me, how much support I felt in her embrace. Certainly it was a gesture that helped to bolster me through the next few crucial months.

  One afternoon in mid-August I returned from an errand to hear Cabot’s voice in Tetzel’s office. I rushed to the storeroom, turned on the machine just in case, and put my ear to the wall. Cabot was incensed. Barrista had backed out altogether.

  “He’s got no more sense than that fool Madero,” he told Tetzel, who listened silently. “He thinks Carranza will be reasonable enough that in time he can get a cabinet seat, then when his turn comes around, he can run for President. He wants to drop the Plan de Pacifica Reforma altogether.”

  “Perhaps you push too hard; give him time.”

  “He’s had too much time. He has been listening to his brothers—especially Carlos—who never wanted into this thing anyway. I’ve been marooned up here with no control over what was going on.

  “It looks like we’re finished. I’ll have to pay you back the notes as best I can.”

  “Slow down a bit. If you aren’t one of the most impetuous men I have ever known. Don’t we both know how hungry Carranza is for power? He did not hang on this long with any idea of letting go easily. Let me see what I can do about bringing about the truth a little early. Leave it to me, eh?”

  “You know you can’t get to that stubborn son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Ah, but the press is a powerful tool … we are as anxious to get him out of office as you are. Let me work on it. Barrista will see.”

  “And what if he doesn’t?”

  “Don’t borrow trouble. I will extend your notes if need be. But Germany is more than ever in need of big imports of copper. We have other sources, as you know, both here and below the border. But try and eke out as much as you can and let me worry about the rest.”

  “If we could get Barrista back on the track, I could be prepared to take up arms within a few weeks.”

  “Just don’t go off half cocked.”

  “How do you convince the people on your end to have the same amount of patience as you?”

  “It isn’t easy. Von Eckhardt in Mexico is in favor of negotiating an alliance with Carranza. Even he cannot see that would be futile.”

  It was the word, “alliance,” that sent chills up my spine. When I got back into my office Tetzel was waiting for me. “Get Giddeon Sparks to bring down Mr. Cabot’s file, and leave it on my desk. I’ll be back shortly,” he said, pulling on his coat.

  I felt sure Tetzel was about to send a wire that would incriminate a whole group of agents involved in this affair, so I started to phone Edwin to send him to the telegraph office. Then I remembered it was too early for him to be at home. I called Giddy and ordered the file, then waited for her to appear with it, afraid to follow Tetzel myself for fear of bei
ng seen.

  At least I did get a look at the Cabot accounts. In rough figures he had been lent seven hundred thousand dollars in the past year. I had no idea that much money had been transferred. No wonder the man was nearly mad with worry.

  That night I reached Edwin by phone. After I blurted out everything, winding up with the part about the negotiation between Mexico and Germany, he said, “Holy Moses.”

  We knew then that the German Foreign Office was still a house divided. While von Eckhardt favored an alliance with Carranza, someone apparently was pushing to continue the old routine of stirring up border troubles, courtesy of Pancho Villa. We did not know who Tetzel was working with, or whether the “third party” felt by him to lack “industry” had been brought in. However, it occurred to me then the third party might refer to Cabot himself because it now seemed clear he was not aware of the full extent of his copper consignments—that much of it had been kept here in the States for the making of explosives, rather than exported to Germany. Yet Cabot would never have been thought of as someone not industrious, though he might well be considered untrustworthy.

  Then all at once the truth appeared obvious: “third party” referred to someone below the border—maybe von Eckhardt, whom Tetzel apparently disliked or at least whose wisdom he doubted; maybe someone else, charged with sabotaging Carranza through the Mexican press; maybe even Carlos Barrista, being aided by someone to stage a separate revolt.…

  Since the possibilities seemed endless, I’d let it go at that and gotten busy with some banking work, when I ran across the name of Arnold Stuttgart, Stuttgart Printing. One thing we had learned about him was his employment of Mexicans. He had a Mexican typesetter who was renowned for his speed and skill. Currency for revolutionary governments … papers for smearing the reputation of Carranza … printed over here and circulated below the border. Carranza could not then control what was being said of him before at least a good percentage of Mexicans who could read got their hands on the material. Perfect!

  I’d have to allow some time for the ball to roll—perhaps a week or more—then I’d pay a visit to Stuttgart’s office one night. The word “industry” continued to bother me for a while. Then I remembered something overheard one day when Tetzel was trying to reach Stuttgart over the phone about some problems with his account. It was during the hottest part of the summer and Stuttgart was out of town at his house in the hills. Disgruntled—I assumed at the time more from the heat than anything else—Tetzel had wiped his brow and remarked, “Every time I need him he’s off on holiday in the country.” Then he’d mumbled some German word I didn’t understand, and closed his office door.

  When I told Edwin of my plan, he didn’t seem convinced I was barking up the right tree, but offered to do the snooping for me. As it turned out, he was right. “All I found was a copy of Fatherland in a desk drawer.”

  “What’s that?”

  “German propaganda sheet. But it doesn’t mean anything. It might be headed for the trash in the morning.”

  He was interested in recent events concerning Electra and asked whether I’d seen her since the day we met at the train station.

  “No. Is someone checking out the name Weems?”

  “Yes, but no news yet. Well, keep your eyes and ears open. I’ll check on Stuttgart again. We may have acted too hastily … or not quickly enough. It’s hard to tell. And as soon as I have the chance I’m going to get inside Cabot’s office. Maybe right now with tax time nowhere near, Hope won’t be working late so much.”

  18

  One day shortly after, Cabot paid a visit to our office. Tetzel had someone with him at the time, so he was obliged to wait outside in my office for a few minutes. I have never seen such a remarkable change in anyone, and was itching to get into the storeroom and listen in on what brought about the congenial mood he’d acquired. He sat in a chair, rather than pacing, and even had the courtesy to inquire whether his cigar smoke bothered me—if so, he’d put it out. “My wife says the smell gets into all the furniture cushions and in the draperies. Every time I leave town she airs out the house for a week,” he remarked, smiling.

  “It doesn’t bother me,” I assured him.

  He leaned back then and told me he’d wrecked his Cole Six, and had ordered a new Overland. He detailed its luxurious features from end to end. I tried to appear all wide-eyed and impressed, as he would have expected; yet I wondered how a man so deeply in debt could get excited about having to spend still more money for a new car.

  When he got inside with Tetzel, the reason for his ebullient frame of mind became clear: plans for the revolution were on again. Tetzel kept repeating, “Didn’t I tell you in a little time our efforts would pay? Now, when does Barrista begin?”

  Cabot explained it would be early spring before all preparations could be made, and that Barrista would first make the gesture of opposing Carranza as a political candidate. “Of course, he’ll never get his name on the ballot. Carranza has the race tied up fine and dandy. The appearance of the single name on the ballot will be the signal for the call to arms. We can figure on at least between one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and fifty thousand troops.

  “Barrista believes he can persuade Zapata, Villa, and Diaz to join him. But I’m wondering whether Villa will tell him who’s been footing his bills. Can you see to it that doesn’t happen? It might just ruin—”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll never admit to that in front of Barrista. Anyway, even if he should, he won’t be mentioning my name. He has no way of knowing I am connected with the Germans who are supplying his arms. And, his aim is to win for his country. You can be sure he takes our money and laughs at us behind our backs. I’m wondering, though, if you couldn’t be ready a little sooner? Time is at a premium now, with von Eckhardt pressing—”

  “Hell, you can’t prepare a revolution over night. People have to be contacted; currency has to be printed—more than we planned initially because we’ll have more troops to pay. Munitions have to be transferred down there and stockpiled in the central points.”

  “Have you drawn up battle plans?”

  “Yes. I’m going down in January, carrying them with me. I’m a little worried about his brother Carlos. I’m going to hold off telling him the strategy until closer to the end. I don’t want him to have time to think about how to scuttle it.”

  “Ah, there is always a weak point somewhere, eh?”

  “Otherwise, everything is set.”

  “The grand finale, as they say.”

  “Yes, just before the new beginning, I hope.”

  “Perhaps a new era on both sides of the ocean.”

  “Things are getting rougher in Europe, aren’t they?”

  “Crucial better describes it. War is expensive both in human lives and materials. Yet it seems we are powerless to end what has begun. Italy and Greece have now fallen in line with the Allies. More and more sympathy in this country goes toward them. Right here, more than fifty per cent of the war materials being used by the Allies is manufactured, yet the United States claims no favoritism.

  “There is talk of a separate peace … in time, Russia may be sympathetic … in the meantime our people are starving for the failure to get raw materials. I think surely some kind of terms of peace must be negotiated soon.”

  There followed a brief pause, then Cabot said, “Just how far are you into this?”

  “Frustratingly distant … how much can I offer? A few tons of copper because of my association with you and with neutrals in Scandinavia.”

  “And an ace up your sleeve—Barrista. He could do much for you that would wind up this mess—embargo British fuel in Tampico, pump out more raw materials.”

  “It is fair exchange, and once the war is over, debts will have been paid.”

  “I just hope Barrista sees it that way.”

  “What choice will he have?”

  “You know when he finds out German money put him into office, it is I who will be blamed.”

&n
bsp; “You will be around to reassure him, help him put things into perspective, as they say.”

  Following that conversation I told Edwin it was the closest the two men had ever come to discussing enough so that I could tell how much each of them knew. “I think Cabot has figured out a lot more than Tetzel has told him, but he doesn’t care now so long as he profits in the end. It’s a vicious circle—Cabot uses Tetzel, Tetzel uses Cabot, and they both use Barrista. I got the feeling there were certain things Cabot didn’t want to have said. Tacit agreements, if you get what I mean. I still don’t believe Cabot knows his copper—or at least part of it—went into explosives in this country. I think his feeling is that he doesn’t care one way or another what happens in Europe as long as his investments in Mexico are looked after. But I don’t think he knows of his complicity in sabotage over here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Tetzel always stays clear of discussing it.”

  “That isn’t going to help Cabot very much, when the truth comes out.… Anything else new?”

  “Not exactly … just a feeling. But I guess you’re not interested in my instincts.”

  “Of course I am!”

  “It isn’t so much what I heard in that conversation, but a difference in Mr. Tetzel lately. He’s spending more time inside his office, with the door closed. Seems preoccupied, tense.”

  “Any other changes in his habits?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to give the Stuttgart Printing Company one more check tonight,” Edwin said. “I suggest you keep your eyes on the mails again—Tetzel may be keeping in touch more often now with his friends overseas. Check his safe again, too.”

  “All right. I can’t help wondering what’s going to happen next.”

  “A lot depends on the outcome of the election here. With a mandate and four years ahead of him, Wilson may become more decisive than he has been so far.”