Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

"Each business transaction shall be for the sum of one mark, and those marks will be his inalienable personal property. For the rest-naked came he into Germany, and naked will he go out."

"Pardon me if I correct you, sir. I happen to know that Johannes was a rich man when he came into Germany. He and my father had been business associates for several years, so I know pretty well what he had."

"He made his money trading with the German government, I am informed."

"In part, yes. He sold things which the government was glad to have in wartime; magnetos which you doubtless used in the planes in which you performed such astounding feats of gallantry."

"You are a shrewd young man, Mr. Budd, and after this deal is over, you and I may be good friends and perhaps do a profitable business. But for the moment you are the devil’s advocate, predestined to lose your case. I could never understand why our magnetos so often failed at the critical moment, but now I know that they were sold to us by filthy Jewish swine who probably sabotaged them so that we would have to buy more." The great man said this with a broad grin; he was a large and powerful cat playing with a lively but entirely helpless mouse. On the rug in front of his chair lay a half-grown lion-cub, which yawned and then licked his chops as he watched his master preparing for a kill. Lanny thought: "I am back among the Assyrians!"

The visitor had the feeling that he ought to put up some sort of fight for his friend’s fortune, but he couldn’t figure out how to set about it. He had never met a man like this in all his life, and he was completely intimidated—not for himself, but for Johannes. Your money or your life!

"Exzellenz," he ventured, "aren’t you being a trifle harsh on one unfortunate individual? There are many non-Jewish Schieber; and there are rich Jews in Germany who have so far managed to escape your displeasure."

"The Schweine have been careful not to break our laws. But this one has broken the eleventh commandment—he has been caught. Man muss sich nicht kriegen lassen! And moreover, we have use for his money."

Lanny was thinking: "It isn’t as bad as it might be, because so much of Johannes’s money is abroad." He decided not to risk a fight, but said: "I will transmit your message."

The head of the Prussian government continued: "I observe that you avoid mentioning the money which this Scbieber has already shipped out and hidden in other countries. If you know the history of Europe you know that every now and then some monarch in need of funds would send one of the richest of his Hebrews to a dungeon and have him tortured until he revealed the hiding-places of his gold and jewels."

"I have read history, Exzellenz."

"Fortunately nothing of the sort will be needed here. We have all this scoundrel’s bank statements, deposit slips, and what not. We have photostat copies of documents he thought were safe from all eyes. We will present checks for him to sign, so that those funds may be turned over to me; when my agents have collected the last dollar and pound and franc, then your Jew relative will have become to me a piece of rotten pork of which I dislike the smell. I will be glad to have you cart him away."

"And his family, Exzellenz?"

"They, too, will stink in our nostrils. We will take them to the border and give each of them a kick in the tail, to make certain they get across with no delay."

Lanny wanted to say: "That will be agreeable to them"; but he was afraid it might sound like irony, so he just kept smiling. The great man did the same, for he enjoyed the exercise of power; he had been fighting all his life to get it, and had succeeded beyond anything he could have dared expect. His lion-cub yawned and stretched his legs. It was time to go hunting.

"Finally," said Goring, "let me make plain what will happen to this Dreck-Jude if he ventures to defy my will. You know that German science has won high rank in the world. We have experts in every department of knowledge, and for years we have had them at work devising means of breaking the will of those who stand in our path. We know all about the human body, the human mind, and what you are pleased to call the human soul; we know how to handle each. We will put this pig-carcass in a specially constructed cell, of such size and shape that it will be impossible for him to stand or sit or lie without acute discomfort. A bright light will glare into his eyes day and night, and a guard will watch him and prod him if he falls asleep. The temperature of the cell will be at exactly the right degree of coldness, so that he will not die, but will become mentally a lump of putty in our hands. He will not be permitted to commit suicide. If he does not break quickly enough we will put camphor in his Harnrohre— you understand our medical terms?"

"I can guess, Exzellenz."

"He will writhe and scream in pain all day and night. He will wish a million times to die, but he will not even have a mark on him. There are many other methods which I will not reveal to you, because they are our secrets, gained during the past thirteen years while we were supposed to be lying helpless, having the blood drained out of our veins by filthy, stinking Jewish-Bolshevik vampires. The German people are going to get free, Mr. Budd, and the money of these parasites will help us. Are there any other questions you wish to ask me?"

"I just want to be sure that I understand you correctly. If Johannes accepts your terms and signs the papers which you put before him, you will permit me to take him and his family out of Germany without further delay?"

"That is the bargain. You, for your part agree that neither you nor the Jew nor any member of his family will say anything to anybody about this interview, or about the terms of his leaving."

"I understand, Exzellenz. I shall advise Johannes that in my opinion he has no alternative but to comply with your demands."

"Tell him this, as my last word: if you, or he, or any member of his family breaks the agreement, I shall compile a list of a hundred of his Jewish relatives and friends, seize them all and make them pay the price for him. Is that clear?"

"Quite so."

"My enemies in Germany are making the discovery that I am the master, and I break those who get in my way. When this affair has been settled and I have a little more leisure, come and see me again, and I will show you how you can make your fortune and have an amusing life."

"Thank you, sir. As it happens, what I like to do is to play the works of Beethoven on the piano."

"Come and play them for the Führer," said the second in command, with a loud laugh which somewhat startled his visitor. Lanny wondered: Did the eagle-man take a patronizing attitude toward his Führer’s fondness for music? Was he perchance watching for the time when he could take control of affairs out of the hands of a sentimentalist and Schwarmer, an orator with a gift for rabble-rousing but no capacity to govern? Had the Minister-Prasident’s Gestapo reported to him that Lanny had once had tea with the Führer? Or that he had spent part of the previous evening in the Führer’s favorite haunt?

When Lanny rose to leave, the lion-cub stretched himself and growled. The great man remarked: "He is getting too big, and everybody but me is afraid of him."

Four days and nights had passed since Johannes Robin had been taken captive; and Lanny wondered how he was standing it. Had they been giving him a taste of those scientific tortures which they had evolved? Or had they left him to the crude barbarities of the S.A. and S.S. such as Lanny had read about in the Manchester Guardian and the Pink weeklies? He hadn’t thought it wise to ask the General, and he didn’t ask the young Schutzstaffel Ober-leutnant who sat by his side on their way to visit the prisoner.