Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

As for Beauty, she wasn’t much good in this crisis; the sheer horridness of it seemed to paralyze her will. She knew her boy’s feeling for the Robin boys, and that it couldn’t be overcome. She knew also that he suspected her concern about Irma’s happiness as being not altogether disinterested. The mother dared not say what was in the deeps of her heart, her fear that Lanny might lose his ultra-precious wife if he neglected her and opposed her so recklessly. And of all places to leave her—on the doorstep of Lord Wickthorpe! Beauty developed a crise des nerfs, with a real headache, and this didn’t diminish the gossip and speculation.

Meanwhile, Lanny went ahead with his preparations. He wrote Rahel to have a photograph of Freddi reduced to that small size which is used on passports, and to airmail it to him at once; he had a reason for that, which she was at liberty to guess. He wrote Jerry Pendleton to hold himself in readiness for a call to bring a camion to Germany and return the Detaze paintings to their home. That would be no hardship, because the tourist season was over and Cerise could run the office.

Lanny gave his friend Zoltan a check covering a good part of the money he had in the Hellstein banks in Berlin and Munich; Zoltan would transfer the money to his own account, and thus the Nazis wouldn’t be able to confiscate it. In case Lanny needed the money, he could telegraph and Zoltan could airmail him a check. The ever discreet friend asked no questions, and thus would be able to say that he knew nothing about the matter. Lanny talked about a picture deal which he thought he could put through in Munich, and Zoltan gave him advice on this. Having been pondering all these matters for more than a year, Lanny was thoroughly prepared.

When it came to the parting, Lanny’s young wife and Lanny’s would-be-young mother both broke down. Both offered to go with him; but he said No. Neither approved his mission, and neither’s heart would be in the disagreeable task. He didn’t tell the plain truth, which was that he was sick of arguments and excitements; it is one of the painful facts about marital disputes that they cause each of the disputants to grow weary of the sound of the other’s voice, and to count quiet and the freedom to have one’s own way as the greatest of life’s blessings. Lanny believed that he could do this job himself, and could think better if he didn’t have opposition. He said: "No, dear," and "No, darling; I’m going to be very careful, and. it won’t take long."

So, bright and early one morning, Margy Petries’s servants deposited his bags in his car, and not without some moisture in his eyes and some sinkings in his inside, he set out for the ferry to Calais, whose name Queen Mary had said was written on her heart, and which surely existed as some sort of scar on Lanny’s. He went by way of Metz and Strasbourg, for the fewer countries one entered in unhappy Europe, the less bother with visas and customs declarations. How glorious the country seemed in the last days of June; and how pitiful by contrast that Missgeburt of nature which had developed the frontal lobes of its brain so enormously, in order to create new and more dreadful ways of destroying millions of other members of its own species! "Nature’s insurgent son" had cast off chain-mail and dropped lances and battle-axes, only to take up bombing-planes and Nazi propaganda.

The blood of millions of Frenchmen and Germans had fertilized this soil and made it so green and pleasant to Lanny’s eyes. He knew that in all these copses and valleys were hidden the direful secrets of the Maginot Line, that series of complicated and enormously expensive fortifications by which France was counting upon preventing another German invasion. Safe behind this barricade, Frenchmen could use their leisure to maim and mangle other Frenchmen with iron railings torn from a beautiful park. Where Lanny crossed the Rhine was where the child Marie Antoinette had come with her train of two or three hundred vehicles, on her long journey from Vienna to marry the Dauphin of France. All sorts of history around here, but the traveler had no time to think about it; his mind was occupied with the history he was going to make.

Skirting the edge of the Alps, with snow-dad peaks always in view, he came to the city of Munich on its little river Isar. He put up at a second-class hotel, for he didn’t want newspaper reporters after him, and wanted to be able to put on the suit of old clothes which he had brought, and be able to walk about the city, and perhaps the town of Dachau, without attracting any special attention. At the Polizeiwache he reported himself as coming for the purpose of purchasing works of art; his first act after that was to call upon a certain Baron von Zinszollern whom he had met at the Detaze show and who had many paintings in his home. This gentleman was an avowed Nazi sympathizer, and Lanny planned to use him as his "brown herring," so to speak. In case of exposure this might sow doubts and confusion in Nazi minds, which would be so much to the good.

Lanny went to this art patron’s fine home and looked at his collection, and brought up in his tactful way whether any of the works could be bought; he intimated that the prices asked were rather high, but promised to cable abroad and see what he could do. He did cable to Zoltan, and to a couple of customers in America, and these messages would be a part of his defense in case of trouble. All through his stay in Munich he would be stimulating the hopes of a somewhat impoverished German aristocrat, and diminishing the prices of his good paintings.

Upon entering Germany the conspirator had telephoned to Hugo Behr in Berlin, inviting that young Nazi to take the night train to Munich. Lanny was here on account of pictures, he said, and would show his friend some fine specimens. Hugo had understood, and it hadn’t been necessary to add, "expenses paid." The young sports director had doubtless found some use for the money which Lanny had paid him, and would be pleased to render further services.

He arrived next morning, going to a different hotel, as Lanny had directed. He telephoned, and Lanny drove and picked him up on the street. A handsome young Pomeranian, alert and with springy step, apple-cheeked and with wavy golden hair, Hugo was a walking advertisement of the pure Nordic ideal. In his trim Brownshirt uniform, with insignia indicating his important function, he received a salute from all other Nazis, and from many civilians wishing to keep on the safe side. It was extremely reassuring to be with such a man in Germany—although the "Heil Hitlers" became a bit monotonous after a while.

Lanny drove his guest out into the country, where they could be quiet and talk freely. He encouraged the guest to assume that the invitation was purely out of friendship; rich men can indulge their whims like that, and they do so. Lanny was deeply interested to know how Hugo’s movement for the reforming of the Nazi party was coming along, and as the reformer wanted to talk about nothing else, they drove for a long time through the valleys of the Alpine foothills. The trees were in full splendor, as yet untouched by any signs of wear. A beautiful land, and Lanny’s head was full of poetry about it. Die Fenster auf, die Herzen auf! Geschwinde, geschwinde!

But Hugo’s thoughts had no trace of poetic cheerfulness. His figure of a young Hermes was slumped in the car seat, and his tone was bitter as he said: "Our Nazi revolution is kaput. We haven’t accomplished a thing. The Führer has put himself completely into the hands of the reactionaries. They tell him what to do—it’s no longer certain that he could carry out his own program, even if he wanted to. He doesn’t see his old friends any more, he doesn’t trust them. The Reichswehr crowd are plotting to get rid of the Stormtroopers altogether."