Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

"You’ll be exhausted when you arrive," objected Beauty, struggling with tears. She wanted him to take the chauffeur.

"No," said Lanny. "We’ll take turns sleeping on the back seat, and all we’ll need when we get there is a bath, a shave for me and some make-up for Irma. If we drive ourselves we can talk freely, without fear of spies, and I wouldn’t want to trust any servant, whether German or French. That goes for all the time we’re in Naziland."

There was a phone call for Lanny: Jerry Pendleton calling from Paris, to report that a letter from Germany had arrived. It bore no sender’s name, but Jerry had guessed that it might have some bearing on the situation. Lanny told him to open and read it. It proved to be an unsigned letter from Freddi, who had reached Berlin. He wrote in English, telling the same news, but adding that he and his wife were in hiding; they were not free to give the address, and were not sure how long they could stay. If Lanny would come to the Adlon, they would hear of it and arrange to meet him.

To Jerry, Lanny said: "My family is coming to Paris at once. Do what you can to help them. I am telling them to trust you completely. You are to trust nobody but them."

"I get you."

"You are still Сontroleur-General, and your salary goes on. Whatever expenses you incur will be refunded. Has the chauffeur left?"

"He left at four this morning. He thinks he can make it by ten."

"All right, thanks."

Lanny reported all this to the family, and his mother said: "You ought to get some sleep before you start driving."

"I have too many things on my mind," he replied. "You go and sleep, Irma, and you can do the first spell of driving."

Irma liked this new husband who seemed to know exactly what to do and spoke with so much decisiveness. She had once had a father like that. Incidentally, she was extremely tired, and glad to get away from demonstrative Jewish grief. Lanny said "Sleep," and she was a healthy young animal, to whom it came easily. She had been half-hypnotized watching Parsifal Dingle, who would sit for a long time in a chair with his eyes closed; if you didn’t know him well you would think he was asleep, but he was meditating. Was he asking God to save Johannes Robin? Was he asking God to soften the hearts of the Nazis? God could do such things, no doubt; but it was hard to think out the problem, because, why had God made the Nazis in the beginning? If you said that the devil had made them, why had God made the devil?

There was no longer any reason for anyone’s remaining in Calais, so Feathers went to buy tickets for Paris and arrange to have the mountain of luggage transported. Meanwhile Hansi and Bess and Lanny discussed the best way of getting Papa’s misfortune made known to the outside world. That would be an important means of help—perhaps the most important of all. Lanny’s first impulse was to call up the office of Le Populaire; but he checked himself, realizing that if he was going to turn into a Nazi sympathizer, he oughtn’t to be furnishing explosive news items to a Socialist paper. Besides, this was not a Socialist or Communist story; it had to do with a leading financier and belonged in the bourgeois press; it ought to come from the victim’s son, a distinguished person in his own right. Hansi and his wife should go to the Hotel Crillon, and there summon the newspaper men, both French and foreign, and tell them the news, and appeal for world sympathy. Lanny had met several of the American correspondents in Paris, and now he gave Hansi their names.

"The Nazis lie freely," said the budding intriguer, "and they compel you to do the same. Don’t mention the rest of your family, and if the reporters ask, say that you have not heard from them and have no idea where they are. Say that you got your information by telephoning to the yacht and to the palace. Put the burden of responsibility off on Reichsbetriebszellenabteilung Gruppenführerllvertreter Pressmann, and let his Hauptgruppenführer take him down into the cellar and shoot him for it. Don’t ever drop a hint that you are getting information from your family, or from Irma or me. Make that clear to Jerry also. We must learn to watch our step from this moment on, because the Nazis want one thing and we want another, and if they win, we lose!"

Mr. and Mrs. Lanning Prescott Budd of Juan-les-Pins, France, registered themselves at the Hotel Adlon, on Unter den Linden. That is where the rich Americans stop, and this richest of young couples were installed in a suite appropriate to their state. Every luxury was put at their command. Attendants took their car and serviced it promptly and faithfully; a maid and a valet came to unpack their things and to carry off their clothes and press them; a bellboy brought iced drinks and copies of various morning newspapers. Lanny sat down at once and made certain that these contained no mention of a confiscated palace and yacht. There might be ever so much clamor in the outside world, but the German people would know only what their new masters considered proper for them. It was the seventeenth of May, and the headlines were devoted to the speech which the Führer was to deliver to the Reichstag at three o’clock that afternoon, dealing with the Geneva Conference on Arms Limitation and the attitude of the German government to its proposals.

The telephone rang: a reporter requesting the honor of an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Budd. Lanny had wondered how it was going to be in this new world. Would money still make one a personage? Apparently it would. Tourist traffic, so vital to the German economy, had fallen off to a mere trickle as a result of the Jew-baiting, and the insulting of foreigners who had failed to give the Nazi salute on the proper occasions. The papers must make the most of what few visitors came to them.

Every large newspaper has a "morgue," in Germany called the Archiv, from which one can ascertain without delay what has been published concerning any person. The reporter who receives an assignment of consequence consults this file before he sets out. So here was a smart young representative of the recently "co-ordinated" Zeitung am Mittag, fully informed as to the new arrivals, and asking the customary questions, beginning with: "What do you think of our country?"

Lanny said that they had motored to Berlin in twenty-four hours, so their impressions were fleeting. They had been struck by the order and neatness they had seen along the way. They were non-political persons, and had no opinions concerning National Socialism, but they were open-minded, and glad to be shown. Lanny winced as he spoke, thinking of his Socialist friends who would read this. When the reporter asked if the outside world believed the stories of atrocities and persecutions in Germany, Lanny said he supposed that some did and some did not, according to their predilections— ihre Gesinnung, he said. He and his wife had come to renew old friendships, and also to make purchases of old masters for American collectors.

All this would put him right with the Nazi world, and enable him to stay without exciting suspicion. Nothing was said about a Jewish brother-in-law or the brother-in-law’s Schieber father, either by this reporter or by others who followed. They were made welcome and treated to cigars and drinks by two friendly and informal darlings of fortune. Delightful people, the Americans, and the Germans admired them greatly, went to see their movies, adopted their slang, their sports, their drinks, their gadgets and fashions.

It was Lanny’s immediate duty to report himself to the Polizeiwache. He submitted the passports of himself and wife, and stated his business as art expert and his race as Aryan. Then he went back to the hotel, where he found a telegram from his mother in Paris: "Robbie reports grandfather died last night impossible Robbie come now he is cabling embassy concerning you advises you report there immediately."