He took a taxi to his customary hotel and deposited his belongings. He got his car out of the garage where it was stored, and drove to a spot three or four blocks from his wife’s humble lodgings. The concierge who opened the door for him knew him, and had received her proper tip now and then. “Mr. Harris” was the name he had given, so he was “Monsieur Arreece.” Now the woman looked at him with concern and shook her head. “Hélas, monsieur, mademoiselle est partie.”
“Partie!” exclaimed Lanny. “When?”
“I do not know, monsieur. She must have gone out, and she has not returned. It has been nearly a week now.”
“Her door is locked?”
“It was locked, monsieur; but yesterday I became alarmed and notified the police. They brought a locksmith and opened the door, but there is no sign of her. Apparently nothing has been disturbed.”
“They have no trace of her?”
“No, monsieur; they nor anyone.”
Lanny couldn’t say that he was surprised, for he had talked about this contingency many times with Trudi. She had said: “Go away. Do not involve yourself. If I am alive I will get word to you.” She had his mother’s address at Juan-les-Pins, his father’s address in Connecticut, his best friend’s address in England. He had no way to find her, but she could always find him.
“What did the police say?” he inquired.
“They asked many questions, monsieur. I told them there was an American gentleman who sometimes came to visit mademoiselle. They told me if you came again, I was to notify them.”
“It would do no good to do that. I have not heard from mademoiselle and there is nothing I could tell them.”
“Mais, Monsieur Arreece! It would be a serious matter for me not to obey the police.”
“No one will know that I have been here,” replied the visitor. He took out a hundred-franc note, which he judged the right size for the cure of such anxiety. “You say nothing and I’ll say nothing and it will be O.K.”—the French all knew those two letters.
“Mais sa propriété, monsieur; ses articles!”
Lanny knew that Trudi didn’t have many articles; a few sticks of furniture, a few pieces of clothing suitable to the poorest. She never kept a letter or any scrap of paper; when she wrote something for the underground, she took it away or mailed it at once. The only things she might have were a few sketches, and Lanny would have liked to have these, but he dared not take the risk. He would not trust the French police in any matter having to do with leftwing refugees; also, they had records of his own distant past which he wouldn’t care to have dug up.
He took out another note and handed it to the concierge. “Keep her property for a while,” he said. “If she comes back she will pay you. Merci et bonjour.” He turned away and got out of that neighborhood, never to return.
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About the Author
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, activist, and politician whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Born into an impoverished family in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair entered City College of New York five days before his fourteenth birthday. He wrote dime novels and articles for pulp magazines to pay for his tuition, and continued his writing career as a graduate student at Columbia University. To research The Jungle, he spent seven weeks working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. The book received great critical and commercial success, and Sinclair used the proceeds to start a utopian community in New Jersey. In 1915, he moved to California, where he founded the state’s ACLU chapter and became an influential political figure, running for governor as the Democratic nominee in 1934. Sinclair wrote close to one hundred books during his lifetime, including Oil! (1927), the inspiration for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood; Boston (1928), a documentary novel revolving around the Sacco and Vanzetti case; The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism, and the eleven novels in Pulitzer Prize–winning Lanny Budd series.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1943 by Upton Sinclair
Copyright renewed © 1971 by David Sinclair
Cover design by Kat JK Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2648-2
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 91