Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

It was the sort of answer a man would make if he wished to raise his price; and how was a would-be employer to know? "My dear Budd," said the General, in the same cautious style, "the last thing in the world I desired was to put you under any sense of obligation, or to interfere with your enjoyments. It is just because of that way of life that you could be of help to me."

"It would be pleasant indeed, Exzellenz, to discover that my weaknesses have become my virtues."

The great man smiled, but went on trying to get what he wanted.

"Suppose you were to render me such services as happened to amuse you, and which required no greater sacrifice on your part than to motor to Berlin two or three times a year; and suppose that some day, purely out of friendship, I should be moved to present you with a shooting preserve such as this, a matter of one or two hundred square kilometers—surely that wouldn’t have to be taken as a humiliation or indignity."

"Gott behüte!" exclaimed the playboy. "If I owned such a property, I would have to pay taxes and upkeep, and right away I should be under moral pressure to get some use out of it."

"Can you think of nothing I might do for you?"

Lanny perceived that he was being handled with masterly diplomacy. The General wasn’t saying: "You know I have a hold on you, and this is the way you might induce me to release it!" He wasn’t compelling Lanny to say: "You know that you are holding out on me and not keeping your promise!" He was making things easy for both of them; and Lanny was surely not going to miss his chance! "Yes, Göring," he said, quickly, "there is one thing—to have your wonderful governmental machine make some special effort and find that young son of Johannes Robin."

"You are still worried about that Yiddisher?"

"How can I help it? He is a sort of relative—my half-sister is married to his brother, and naturally the family is distressed. When I started out for Berlin to show my Detaze paintings, I had to promise to do everything in my power to find him. I have hesitated to trouble you again, knowing the enormous responsibilities you are carrying—"

"But I have already told you, my dear Budd, that I have tried to find the man without success."

"Yes, but I know how great the confusion of the past few months has been; I know of cases where individuals and groups have assumed authority which they did not legally possess. If you want to do me a favor I shall never forget, have one of your staff make a thorough investigation, not merely in Berlin but throughout the Reich, and enable me to get this utterly harmless young fellow off my conscience."

"All right," said the Minister-Prasident; "if that is your heart’s desire, I will try to grant it. But remember, it may be beyond my power. I cannot bring back the dead."

Back in Berlin, Lanny and his wife went for a drive and talked out this new development. "Either he doesn’t trust me," said Lanny, "or else I ought to hear from him very soon."

"He must pretend to make an investigation," put in Irma.

"It needn’t take long to discover a blunder. He can say: I am embarrassed to discover that my supposed-to-be-efficient organization has slipped up. Your friend was in Dachau all along and I have ordered him brought to Berlin. If he doesn’t do that, it’s because he’s not satisfied with my promises."

"Maybe he knows too much about you, Lanny."

"That is possible; but he hasn’t given any hint of it."

"Would he, unless it suited his convenience? Freddi is his only hold on you, and he knows that. Probably he thinks you’d go straight out of Germany and spill the story of Johannes."

"That story is pretty old stuff by now. Johannes is a poor down-and-out, and I doubt if anybody could be got to take much interest in him. The Brown Book is published and he isn’t in it."

"Listen," said the wife; "this is a question which has been troubling my mind. Can it be that Freddi has been doing something serious, and that Göring knows it, and assumes that you know it?"

"That depends on what you mean by serious. Freddi helped to finance and run a Socialist school; he tried to teach the workers a set of theories which are democratic and liberal. That’s a crime to this Regierung, and people who are guilty of it are luckier if they are dead."

"I don’t mean that, Lanny. I mean some sort of plot or conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow the government."

"You know that Freddi didn’t believe in anything of the sort. I’ve heard him say a thousand times that he believed in government by popular consent, such as we have in America, and such as the Weimar Republic tried to be—or anyhow, was supposed to be."

"But isn’t it conceivable that Freddi might have changed after the Reichstag fire, and after seeing what was done to his comrades? It wouldn’t have been the Weimar Republic he was trying to overthrow, but Hitler. Isn’t it likely that he and many of his friends changed their minds?"

"Many did, no doubt; but hardly Freddi. What good would he have been? He shuts his eyes when he aims a gun!"

"There are plenty of others who would do the shooting. What Freddi had was money—scads of it that he could have got from his father. There were the months of March and April—and how do you know what he was doing, or what his comrades were planning and drawing him into?"

"I think he would have told us about it, Irma. He would have felt in honor, bound."

"He might have been in honor bound the other way, he couldn’t talk about those comrades. It might even be that he didn’t know what was going on, but that others were using him. Some of those fellows I met at the school—they were men who would have fought back, I know. Ludi Schultz, for example—do you imagine he’d lie down and let the Nazi machine roll over him? Wouldn’t he have tried to arouse the workers to what they call mass action ? And wouldn’t his wife have helped him? Then again, suppose there was some Nazi agent among them, trying to lure them into a trap, to catch them in some act of violence so that they could be arrested?"

"The Nazis don’t have to have any excuses, Irma; they arrest people wholesale."

"I’m talking about the possibility that there might be some real guilt, or at any rate a charge against Freddi. Some reason why Göring would consider him dangerous and hold onto him."

"The people who are in the concentration camps aren’t those against whom they have criminal charges. The latter are in the prisons, and the Nazis torture them to make them betray their associates; then they shoot them in the back of the neck and cremate them. The men who are in Dachau are Socialist politicians and editors and labor leaders—intellectuals of all the groups that stand for freedom and justice and peace."

"You mean they’re there without any charge against them?" "Exactly that. They’ve had no trial, and they don’t know what they’re there for or how long they’re going to stay. Two or three thousand of the finest persons in Bavaria—and my guess is that Freddi has done no more than any of the others."

Irma didn’t say any more, and her husband knew the reason—she couldn’t believe what he said. It was too terrible to be true. All over the world people were saying that, and would go on saying it, to Lanny’s great exasperation.

The days passed, and it was time for the Munich opening, and still nobody had called to admit a blunder on the part of an infallible governmental machine. Lanny brooded over the problem continually. Did the fat General expect him to go ahead delivering the goods on credit, and without ever presenting any bill? Lanny thought: "He can go to hell! And let it be soon!"