V
Lanny got into his car; there was nothing more important that he could think of at the moment. He took the familiar drive across the great bridge over the Hudson, and in due course came to the comfortable home on the shore of the Sound. A Jewish maid opened the door and told him that Mr Robin had left for the city. She called Rahel, who was living in this home, along with her new husband and new family. Rahel said that Mamma was upstairs in her bedroom; she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t see a doctor, wouldn’t do anything but sob her heart out.
‘Maybe she will see you’, Rahel said, and Lanny replied, ‘I’ll go up and see her. Don’t say anything about it’.
He was an old friend of that family and went upstairs and didn’t even knock on the door, just opened it softly. He saw the old woman lying on the bed with her face down, making the sounds of an animal that has been stricken to death. She really wasn’t an old woman, not yet sixty, but she felt old and acted old, because she was a Jewish woman and was afraid of the Lord her God, whose name she would not pronounce; she knew He had stricken her, and it could only be because of her sins. She had dressed in black ever since Freddi’s death and had no thought of or interest in this world except to take care of the people she loved and save them from the afflictions that had cursed her own life.
She had known pogroms as a child and had fled first from Russia and then from Germany, and now—Oi! Oi!—her afflictions had followed her here! ‘Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind: and my welfare passeth away as a cloud. And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold upon me. My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest’.
Lanny closed the door and came quietly to the bedside; she had not heard him. He said in a low voice, ‘Mamma’.
The old woman raised her head and stared at him. He had never seen such a face of misery, of utter despair. He came at once to the point. ‘Mamma, I came to see you as soon as I heard the news. I’m going to tell you a secret. It is a important secret, and you must promise me, you must give me your solemn word, you will not speak a word about it to anybody on this earth’.
She went on staring, as if her thoughts were confused and she was not quite sure that he was there. ‘Yes, Lanny’, she managed to whisper.
‘Not to Johannes, not to Rahel, not to anybody—any body! You will make me that promise?’
‘Yes, Lanny’.
He sat on the bed beside her and lowered his voice, almost to a whisper. ‘Hansi is not a Communist’.
‘Aber—what? He is in jail!’
‘Hansi is working for the government, for the F.B.I. He is pretending to be a Communist and getting their secrets’.
The old woman’s eyes widened and her jaw fell; her voice was a faint murmur. ‘Ach, Gott der Gerechte! Aber—why is he in jail?”
‘They had to put him there with the others. If they had left him free it would have let the others know that he is against them’.
‘Um Gottes Willen, Lanny! You are gewiss?’
‘I know all about it. He has been pretending to agree with Bess, but he does not agree with her’.
‘Ach, that woman! She is your sister, Lanny—I must not say anything bad about her!’
‘You must be sorry for her, Mamma, as we are for all blundering human souls. She became a Communist because she believed they meant justice and freedom for the poor. She has been betrayed; the movement has fallen into the hands of evil men, but she cannot see it. She will suffer terribly for her blunders; but have no cause to worry about Hansi’.
‘How long will they keep him, Lanny?’
‘I have no doubt that the Communists will raise the bail and get them out in a day or two. Then they will make a hero out of Hansi; they will trust him with their secrets. It is very important work that he is doing’.
‘Oh, Lanny, he is such a good man!’
‘None better, Mamma. I was forbidden to tell you this, but I could not bear to see you suffer; and now you must keep the secret’.
‘Oh, I will keep it! Gott sei Lob!’
‘You will have to be a bit of an actress. You must not look happy. You do not have to weep so much, but you must look sad and worried. You must cry a little’.
‘Oh, I could cry for joy, Lanny—if you are sure, really sure!’
‘You can take my word for it, I am sure. Laurel knows it, but nobody else, not even my father. You must not tell Johannes’.
‘Oi, the poor man!’
‘He is a man, and he will be able to stand it. Hansi will not let him put up bail. He will not make any promises, he will have to play the game according to orders, and you must play your game. Just tell the family that I have assured you that it will be all right, that Hansi will be bailed out, and that they do not beat prisoners in jail in New York—at least not if they behave themselves and do what they are told. You can say that I have assured you, that I don’t believe Hansi has done any harm to anybody and has merely spoken what he believes. He is a good man and you are going to stand by him’.
VI
So the old Jewish grandmother got up and wiped the tears from her eyes and straightened her hair a little, and they went downstairs. Rahel and the servants were not too much surprised, for they knew that Lanny Budd was a magician and his power over Mamma was great. He could not quite call spirits from the vasty deep, but he had been able to go into Nazi Germany and buy the father of the family out of prison, and no doubt he would do the same thing for one of the world’s top violin virtuosos.
So Lanny turned on the radio and got a station that was giving news. No war had broken out that day, no aeroplane had hit a mountain, no streamliner had gone off the track, so the broadcasters had plenty of time for the uncovering of a spy plot and the arrest of half-a-dozen Red conspirators, including a famous musician and the daughter of a millionaire industrialist. And now—Ach, Gott der Gerechte! what was this? The man was telling how the federal agents had been to the suburban residence of the notorious couple and had ransacked their home and carried off boxes full of papers; they had dug in the garden underneath a seckel pear tree and had come upon a large family washboiler, a metal cylinder three feet wide and almost as high, covered with a top and carefully sealed with tar. It had been there no one knew how long, and it was packed solid with papers and documents; the load was so heavy that it took three men to lift it into a truck. What was in those papers the F.B.I. wouldn’t tell, but they had carted it off and no doubt were studying all the secrets of the Communist party.
‘Oh, mein lieber Hansi!’ exclaimed Mamma and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. Lanny didn’t see any tears, but it was a proper gesture. It was such a serious matter he couldn’t think that a pious grandmother was exactly enjoying herself; but, he reflected, there must be a certain amount of actress in every woman. Such had been the testimony of that long-suffering ancient called Job: ‘They conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity, and their belly prepareth deceit!’
VII
Lanny drove back to New York in a more cheerful frame of mind. He was as excited as a boy over this spy story, the mystery of which had been building up in his mind for a long time. He drove through the city on purpose to pick up the afternoon papers, and when he had got an assortment of them he found a vacant space by a curb and parked his car and glanced through them.
The story made the front page in every case; it had everything the public wanted: crime and detection, high life and low life, glamour and wealth. Bessie Remsen Budd undoubtedly belonged in what the newspapers call ‘the highest social circles’. If she wasn’t beautiful any longer, she certainly had been, and the newspapers had her early pictures. Hansi Robin undoubtedly belonged high in the world of music, both in America and in countries abroad. The Jones Electrical Works had a most commonplace name, but it undoubtedly manufactured great quantities of proximity fuses for the Armed Forces and had made improvements in the device which were the very ultimate in secrecy.
All news
papers have what they call ‘the morgue’, a huge file of envelopes containing everything they or other papers have published about any individual. The larger and more well-to-do have the person’s story all written up to the moment, so that when he dies, marries, or gets arrested, all they have to do is to put the new developments at the top of the story and they are ready to go to press. So in these newspapers Lanny could read all about Hansi Robin’s career and the career of Bessie Remsen Budd. Nobody was quite sure whether her name was really Bess or Bessie; her friends called her whichever happened to be easier in the sentence.
The papers told who her father was and who her half-brother was and gave something about the careers of both. They told how she had accompanied Hansi at his concerts, and now he was accompanying her as secret Red agent. They told about the obscure accountant in the office of a fuse factory who had managed to get access to confidential papers, correspondence, orders, blueprints, and technical specifications. He had taken them on Saturday night and turned them over to Bessie Budd, who had taken them to New York, where a photographic studio disguised as a stationery store had photographed them, and then they had been taken back to the accountant on Sunday. The F.B.I. had gathered in both the Robins, the accountant, the two operatives of the photographic studio, and the two Russians who had been delivering the material to ships in the harbour. It was a cleansweep and a perfect job, and the F.B.I. was sure it had the goods on all the parties who had been caught.
Lanny read these accounts, and by that time there were new editions on the stands, with new headlines. He bought those and learned about the family washboiler which had been dug up from under the seckel pear tree in the garden of a sumptuous villa in a fashionable Connecticut shore town. Such are the adjectives upon which newspapers thrive; and it was inevitable that some bright lad in the office of a tabloid, seeking for the alliteration which makes for picturesqueness, should dub the find the ‘boilerplate papers’.
‘Boilerplate’ to a newspaper means the material which is sent out from some syndicate or central agency to hundreds of newspapers all over the country. It is put into type and papiermâché ‘mats’ made of it. For the fast rotary presses on which big newspapers are printed this material is curved exactly in the shape of boilerplate—and when in the newspaper office the metal stereotype is made it looks still more like its name. So inevitably a mass of documents buried in a family washboiler became ‘boilerplate papers’—and the name would stick. The Federal Bureau of Investigation would say no more than this: they had come into possession of highly secret papers of the Communist underground, and these might be the means of landing some conspicuous persons in a federal penitentiary.
VIII
Lanny drove home and told Laurel what he had done. She was startled to hear that he had revealed the secret, and he told her, ‘If Post had given me the secret I would have felt bound; but I got it myself, and so I felt free to use my own judgment. I am sure Mamma will keep it.’
The telephone had been ringing all day. It had become a nuisance, but they had to answer, because there might be something important. Robbie called to report on his visit. He and Johannes had obtained permission from the U.S. Marshal to interview the prisoners, who were in the Federal Detention Headquarters. Bess was alone, with a matron in charge. At first she hadn’t wanted to see her father but had consented when he insisted.
She was quiet and apparently serene; she was sorry to hurt him and especially sorry to hurt her mother, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had her convictions and was standing by them. She was not interested in being bailed out; of course if the comrades arranged it she would be pleased, but she certainly didn’t want to be bailed out with Budd-Erling money or on Budd-Erling terms. She was a Red and meant to live and die a Red.
‘So that’s that,’ said Robbie. ‘When someone is bent on martyrdom there is nothing you can do but oblige them’.
Lanny asked, ‘How is Esther taking it?’ and the answer was, ‘Esther is the quiet sort. She sheds her tears inside. We can’t change that either’.
Robbie went on to add that Johannes had had no better success than he. Hansi wouldn’t listen to any compromise and didn’t want to talk about it.
A little while later the elderly Jew was on the telephone, asking, ‘Lanny, what on earth have you done to my wife?’
‘No harm, I hope’.
‘You have made her all over. What magic pills do you carry?’
It was the Johannes of old, a shrewd, experienced man of affairs, hard-driving but generous outside business hours, and always with a touch of humour. Nothing was ever going to get him down—not old age, not the Communist movement.
Lanny answered, ‘I told her that Hansi loved her and he was doing what he thought was right. Also, that the U.S. Marshal doesn’t torture his prisoners and that Hansi would soon be out on bail’.
‘I told her all that, but it did no good’.
Lanny was about to add, ‘I told her that I had been arrested several times, and it wasn’t fatal’. But he realised that Johannes had been arrested too, so that was no argument. He said, ‘How did you find Hansi?’ And the reply was, ‘Stubborn as a mule. He says he knows what he’s doing, and we are not to worry about him’.
‘How are they treating him?’
‘He has no complaint. They’ve put him in the room with that accountant, the fellow who stole the documents, so they say. Hansi says he is a good comrade and they are friends, so it’s all right’.
‘Maybe they will let Hansi play the violin for him’, suggested Lanny, and they chuckled.
When Lanny told his wife about this he said, ‘You see, the government people have put Hansi in with that other fellow, and in the night they will whisper secrets’.
‘Too bad they can’t find a woman friend for Bess!’ remarked Laurel. She had a bit more of acid in her make-up than her husband.
IX
Next morning the telephone began to ring early; Lanny was shaving and hurriedly wiped his chin. A voice asked, ‘Is this Mr Lanning Prescott Budd?’ When he answered that it was, ‘I wonder’, said the voice, ‘if the name Virgil Smathers means anything to you?’
‘The name sounds familiar, but you must excuse me—’
‘It was more than thirty years ago. Don’t you remember when you were a student at St. Thomas’s Academy you met a young Methodist minister who told you about how badly Budd Gunmakers had treated their strikers?’
‘Oh yes!’ Lanny exclaimed. ‘I remember well. You were the first one who opened my eyes to what was going on in America’.
‘I hope your eyes are still open, Mr Budd. I am now the minister of the Wesley Methodist Church of Brooklyn. I called up because I want very much to come to see you’.
‘A good many people are asking to see me just now, Mr Smathers, and I don’t want to be disobliging but I must ask one question. Are you going to ask me to put up any bail?’
The voice smiled audibly. ‘No, Mr Budd, I promise; and I won’t take but a few minutes of your time. If you cut me off and tell me you’re not interested I’ll not have my feelings hurt’.
‘All right’, Lanny said. ‘I’ll be in Edgemere all day. Come to the office of the Peace Programme’.
Toward noon the visitor showed up and presented his card. Lanny had recalled a slender blonde young man of ascetic appearance, wearing spectacles. He still had the spectacles but the hair had turned grey. Evidently his salary had not been large enough to permit him to accumulate that comfortable rotundity which comes with middle age in America. He was still the earnest ascetic, the professional man of good will.
‘It is a pleasure to meet you after all these years,’ said Lanny. ‘What can I do for you?’
The visitor came to the point at once, as he had promised. ‘Mr Budd, I wish to tell you first that I am not a Communist; I am a servant of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. But I am one in peace and good will and try to practice what I preach’.
‘I appreciate the distinction, Mr Smath
ers. What is it you want to tell me?’
‘Last night I was called to a conference of half-a-dozen persons to discuss the situation which has arisen involving your sister and brother-in-law. I never met Mrs Robin in Newcastle, she was only a child when I was there, but I have met her more recently. I have never met Mr Robin, but I have heard him play, of course. At the conference last night it was agreed that Mrs Robin is a class-conscious and thoroughly disciplined Communist and will know how to take what comes; there is no need to worry about her. But so far as Mr Robin is concerned there was general agreement that he is not really a Communist; he came into the movement because of his love for his wife and his inability to live without her. He is a great artist, and therefore an especially sensitive man. We are quite sure that he knows nothing about espionage and has no idea that such activities are possible; He is an idealist and an entirely nonpolitical person; he surely does not belong in the arena of political strife. I hope you agree with that’.
‘Assuming that I do, Mr Smathers, what is your idea?’
‘Our idea is that this should be pointed out to the government authorities. A man is not legally responsible for what his wife does; it cannot be legally assumed that he knows what she is doing. It is our idea that an arrangement be worked out whereby charges against Mr Robin would be dropped upon the agreement that he will give up every form of Communist activity. You surely know that he is a man who would keep his word’.
The Return of Lanny Budd Page 38