Lanny did this, and in a flash the man was gone in the darkness. Lanny drove to the hotel, saying to himself that it wouldn’t be many hours now before he knew whether or not Jose was a spy. But then he thought: “Maybe they will lead me on; or maybe they will use me to trap somebody else.” The role of secret agent is stimulating to the imagination; at any rate to Lanny’s.
IX
Next morning when Jose brought the breakfast of coffee with hot milk, orange juice, eggs, and rolls, he whispered: “I think it can be arranged, Senor; but it will take time.”
Lanny replied: “I will try to keep busy in the meantime.”
The sausage-manufacturer owned a painting of the Blessed Virgin, showing her bosom cut open and revealing a bleeding heart with a dove sitting on it. It looked like a Spanish “primitive,” and was a real primitive in the sense that it was rather crudely painted; nobody had ever heard of the artist, but the manufacturer insisted that he was famous, and wanted a thousand pesetas. The work had genuine feeling of a sort, and Lanny thought that the Mother Superior of some convent in South Bend, Indiana, might accept it as a genuine primitive and pay a thousand dollars for it. He wouldn’t have to bother with it personally, for there are dealers who specialize in Catholic art; even if he dropped the painting overboard on the way to New York, it would be worth the price to him now.
He made the purchase, and offered a check on his bank in Cannes, thereby causing great anxiety in the soul of a maker of chorizos. Lanny agreed in writing that the painting would not become his property until the check had been cleared; which, of course, gave him a perfect excuse for remaining in Caceres for a while. Everybody knew about the transaction in a few hours, and it caused a stir in the bosoms of other collectors of Blessed Virgins. As a favor and a proof of friendship, the sausage gentleman permitted Lanny to hang the painting in his hotel room in the interim, and this had an excellent effect upon the chambermaid who was pious. Every morning before she made Lanny’s bed she crossed herself before the holy image. By this diplomatic stroke Lanny appealed to both the religious and the worldly elements of the Spanish character, and disproved once for all the saying that one cannot serve God and Mammon.
X
On the third morning Jose whispered: “I have news, Senor. Your friend is there.”
“Is he well?”
“As well as you could expect, and he has your message. I will meet you at the place appointed.”
It was a rainy night, and apparently the lame waiter had been doing some traveling about town, for he was wet and shivered a little; Lanny had a robe in the car and wrapped him in it, for it would surely be inconvenient to have him laid up with pneumonia just now.
His story was quickly told. In the years before the coming of the republic he had worked as a shipping-clerk for one of the wool merchants of the town and had boarded with a working-class family; the daughter of this family was married to a man who delivered supplies to the barracks where the prisoners were confined. Jose had been to see her and recited a well-invented tale about a cousin of his who had gone to England and become a servant in a wealthy household, and had just managed to get a cipher message to Jose, telling him that the son of this family, an aviator, was a prisoner in Caceres, and that generous sums of money could be earned by someone in the town who was willing to aid this unfortunate young man.
“I told her,” said Jose, “that this message had been hidden in the box of a safety razor which my cousin had sent me from England. It happens that I have a razor marked ‘Sheffield’; I bought it on a trip to Salamanca some time ago, and so nobody can disprove my story. You will see that it protects you, as I promised to do.”
“Yes,” said Lanny; “it is well devised. Tell me, is this woman pious?”
“If she had been that I should not have gone to her. She likes money, and hoards it, so it is reasonably safe to give it to her. Her husband paid a part of it to one of the guards.”
“But how are we to know that the woman is not lying, or that the guard is not lying to the woman?”
“I know the woman, Senor; in the old days we were somewhat as you might say intimate, and that makes a certain bond of understanding in future years. I think she is telling me the truth, and she has every reason to do it, because she has the hope that there may be more money coming. You understand, Senor, in a time like this a woman who has children and sees the cost of food rising and does not know what calamities may befall her town, is made happy by having something under a brick in her hearth, even though it is only paper and the course of the war may make it worthless.”
“How about the guard?” inquired the American.
“The guard, also, will be hoping for more money; and what he had to do was very simple. It involved no great risk to stand outside a cell door and whisper the word ‘Romney’ into the ear of a prisoner. If the Senor wishes to pay a little more money we can perhaps get a note from your friend. I suppose you would know his handwriting. It would be a great risk for him to sign his name.”
“There is no need of that. He will know things to write which will satisfy me. How much money will that take?”
“Another handful of change, Senor.”
“I wish that you would keep a share for yourself.”
“Senor, I am no saint, but this is a terrible time, and we Spaniards have to choose sides. A lame man cannot fight for his cause, but when a chance like this comes, he can feel that he is as good as any soldier. I have my pride, you see. I could not live in this land and be without it.”
“You mean there is nothing I can do for you?”
“Senor, you have a home, and it must be that you have people to serve you there. How much more I would like to serve you and your friends than the sort of people who come to a small-town hotel either in war or in peace. What I have thought is that if I should prove myself an honest man, some day you might give me work, and I could live in a place where I do not have to cringe with fear every time an independent idea crosses my mind. I could not travel with you, of course, but some day I might manage to make the trip, if I only knew that some kind person would receive a crippled man and give him work that he could do. I know enough French to serve meals and I could easily learn more.”
“That is well said, Jose, and it’s a bargain. I will give you another name to learn, the place where I live—Juan-les-Pins, on the French Riviera. It is neither a Spanish Juan nor a French, but Provencal, which is akin to your Catalan. You had better not have it written, but fix it well in your memory.” Lanny taught him both the spelling and the pronunciation, which were puzzling to foreigners: Jou-ahn-lay-pan, with the first letter soft, as in French, and the “n’s” as nasal as possible. “All you have to do is to get to Marseille and then travel eastward on the autobus.” That is a word known in both Spanish and French.
XI
So it came about that on the following evening, when Lanny ordered a bottle of mineral water so as to receive a visit from his friend, there was placed in his hand a tiny pellet of paper which, on being spread out, proved to contain three words of Latin: “Bella gerant alii.” Only fifteen letters, but they served as well as a whole code-book for the grandson of Budd Gunmakers. They are part of a verse from the poet Ovid, and had constituted a sort of underground jest concerning the Budd family ever since the World War days, before Alfy had been born. They had been quoted to Lanny by an elderly Swiss diplomat, long since gone to his fathers. “Let others make war!” The words had been apropos of a letter from Robbie Budd in Connecticut to his son in Juan, urging the son to keep neutral in the war, and explaining that it had been the role of the Budds throughout the generations to make weapons and sell them, but not to use them.
“Let others make war, you make love”—so the ancient Roman poet had written. A century or two ago some wit in Europe had paraphrased the verse, apropos of the success of the Empress Maria Theresa in enlarging her dominion by marrying off her sons and daughters. “Let others make war, you, happy Austria, marry.” Lanny, the smar
t Aleck, only sixteen at the time, had thought it fun to write: “Let others make war, you, happy Budds, make money.” His father hadn’t appreciated the jest, but Sir Alfred and Rick had, and through the years the verse had been quoted as a sally against the unpopular munitioneers, the “merchants of death” as they were called. Alfy had taken his turn as the smart Aleck, and so now the verse served well as code. Did it contain a trace of double meaning? Was the young aviator saying to his father’s best friend: “Help me out of this mess and I’ll go back and settle down in Magdalen College”?
XII
The conspirators had agreed upon a place of meeting; and seated in the car as before, Lanny whispered: “That was a message from my friend. And now, what we must do is to find some way to get him out of Spain.”
He felt the other start. “But, Senor, that is madness!”
“It may seem so at first, Jose; but it is what I came here for, and I hope to have your help.”
“But it is out of all reason. The walls of the tower are several meters thick. There are guards inside and out, all the time, and they are armed.”
“But they are human beings, and each of them has his weaknesses. We must find one of them that we can deal with. Prisoners do sometimes escape.”
“But, Senor, even if you could get your friend out of the tower, how could you get him out of Spain? All the roads are guarded, and once the alarm was given, they would telephone to every town and every car on the roads would be searched.”
“It is necessary that we get him out at night, and in some way so that he will not be missed until morning. That will be time enough for me, and I will assume the rest of the task.”
“But you ask things that are impossible! Prisons are not so carelessly run.”
“Listen, my friend, and put your wits to work. Remember that those who guard the prison are men like yourself; they sometimes sleep, they are sometimes lazy, they like to get drunk, and they will follow a pretty woman who smiles at them. They know that all comforts and pleasures depend upon money, and that it is a good thing to have, in youth, in old age, and all the times between. Do not waste your time calculating the thickness of the walls, for we do not mean to dig through them or to blow them up. We are going to find somebody who will unlock the doors for us.”
“Such a man would be shot in a few hours, Senor, and he would know it.”
“Let me tell you that I have been thinking about this problem most of my time for a month, and I have in my head a hundred different plans which would take me all night to outline. You say that the husband of your one-time novia delivers goods to the barracks. Does he drive into the courtyard?”
“Yes, Senor, but always by day, never by night.”
“Does he take anything away from the barracks—say, empty boxes, or loads of trash, or of garbage?”
“I do not know, Senor.”
“Then you can see there are a lot of questions you might have been asking. Do you know whether the laundry is done on the place, or whether it is sent out?”
“I doubt if there is any, Senor; surely not very much.”
“One big basketful at the month’s end might be enough. I am not proposing to rescue all the prisoners in the tower.”
“Senor, speak more carefully, I beg you!”
“All right; but do not mind if I make jokes now and then, for that is our American way. Deep in my heart I may be greatly frightened, but since I am resolved to do the job, I do not admit my fear even to myself. You understand how that is?”
“Si, Senor; los americanos son una gente milagrosa.” Lanny didn’t know that last word, but guessed it was “miraculous,” and that was what in his secret heart he wanted right now; a plain old-fashioned miracle—Joshua with his trumpet to blow down granite walls several meters thick, or an angel with a flaming sword to command jailers to unlock a series of doors.
XIII
With care and tact Lanny lured the anxious cripple into discussing and analyzing some of the different plans for getting Alfy out of the barracks tower. The American was especially interested in what happened to a prisoner who died; did they provide a coffin for him, or did they simply dump him into a cart and carry him off to the cemetery? And did they do this by day or only by night? Did they have a doctor to examine the dead man, or did they make sure with a bullet? Did they have a special funeral cart, or did they press into service whatever came along? All these were important questions; and it didn’t help Jose to insist that it would take a long time to collect the answers. Lanny said: “It may be just a problem of finding some one of the guards who has a girl that wants money.”
He asked about the executions; and on this point the waiter was better informed. The Spanish people are fascinated by the idea of death, with thich they have been kept familiar through the centuries; the horror story of the prison tower had been told in whispers in every kitchen and every posada of the town. New prisoners were constantly being brought, and apparently it was the practice to keep down the total, so some were weeded out. No one knew the basis on which the choice was made; but at midnight you heard the night-bell ring, and it was the priest coming to perform his duties. You heard footsteps in the corridors, and then the ringing of the sanctus bell. It was the ceremony of saving the soul of any condemned man who might chance to be a believer; it could not be performed wholesale, but had to be repeated separately for each and every such soul. You heard doors unlocking and being closed again; this might go on for quite a while, depending upon how many of the doomed happened to be of the faith. You heard cries and moans; sometimes men became hysterical; others were defiant, and cried: “Viva la Republica!” A terrible story, not to be dwelt upon too long by one who contemplated putting his head into that trap.
Lanny had the idea that it might be possible for Alfy to be warned in advance and given a chance to slip into the condemned group, and then slip out again, either at the cemetery or while the carts were being loaded. The trembling Jose, who already saw himself in a cart, insisted that it was unthinkable, because there were always many soldiers in the firing-squad, and so many could not be bought. “One will betray us, Senor, and he will aid in the shooting of the rest.”
“Take it easy,” Lanny said; “we are going to use our brains and prove them better than those of the soldiers.” He waited a few moments, and then began:
“Let me tell you about my home, Jose. It is a beautiful estate on the Cap d’Antibes. From the loggia you look out across bright blue water and see the sun go down behind red mountains. I have lived there ever since I can remember, and we have never known any trouble or danger—unless you count the fact that I saw a submarine put a spy ashore during the World War. Ever since I can remember, our home has been managed by a Provencal woman named Leese. She began as a cook, and because she was capable and devoted gradually came to be a sort of steward. Now she is very old, and someone will have to take her place. You might serve as butler, and when you proved your capacity you would have charge. My mother does a great deal of entertaining, but there are plenty of servants and no one is overworked; also, it is interesting, because many famous people come there. Do you think you would like to have such a position?”
“I think of nothing in the world that I would like better, Senor.”
“It is important to get clear that France is a free country. In your off-hours you can go into Cannes and attend a public meeting on any subject that interests you. If you have an opinion, you may express it, and there is very little chance of a police agent spying upon you and reporting you.”
“That is something worth taking many risks for, I admit, Senor.”
“We all have to take risks now, Jose, for that is the only way such freedoms can survive. If you should help a noble young man to escape with his life, you would not only have earned the gratitude of two families, but you would also have done something to gratify that Spanish pride of yours. You would enjoy a good conscience, which is a rarer luxury than it ought to be.”
“Senor,”
said the lame waiter, “I mean to help you and your noble young friend. But you must know that that wonderful position which you hold out to me also has a part in my decision.”
Lanny chuckled. “Amigo mio,” he said, “the human soul is complicated, and may have more than one motive. Reflect that in some off-hour, when you sit in the bistro and sip your glass of wine and read the news, it will be pleasant to remember that you were once a hero. You may enjoy telling the fellow at the next table how you saved the life of the grandson of an English baronet, and how the baronet gave you this gold watch with your name in it. Furthermore, among the full-bosomed Provencal girls who come to work in my mother’s home you will find one to be your wife; and your story will please her—especially when I certify that it is true.”
“Si, si, Senor,” said the man, tempted in so many ways.
31
PUT IT TO THE TOUCH
I
Lanny had by now brought the well-to-do elements of the population of Caceres to a state of no slight agitation. Five different persons among them possessed what they declared were old masters, and were negotiating with the art expert on that basis. Each had named a high price and was now undergoing the painful process of deflation. Each knew about the others, and was green with envy at the thought of their possible success; but all told their hopes and fears to one another, because the ways of an American multimillionaire were past understanding, and each hoped to gain some news in return for that which he imparted.
In between negotiations, Lanny locked himself in his room and put his ear to the radio whispers. The war of the air was continuing with undiminished ferocity. Every night General Queipo de Llano in Seville poured ridicule upon the Madrid leaders and told obscene anecdotes about them; every night the government stations answered by calling upon the people to save themselves from the horrors of medieval reaction. Both sides told the news, in so far as it could be made to favor them; both sides claimed all they dared, hoping to fill the hearts of the enemy with discouragement and fear. Lanny, who had learned to know the different stations and the voices and personalities of their announcers, balanced the claims of one side against the admissions of the other; he followed his plan of marking on a map the places where the fighting was reported to be taking place.
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 77