Пользователь - WORLD'S END

At any rate, that was the way Stef described matters to Lanny Budd; and Lanny found this credible, because Stef had been there and the others hadn't. The youth had gone to call on this strange little man, whose point of view was so stimulating to the mind. Lanny didn't tell his father about this visit, and quieted his conscience by saying, what use making Robbie unhappy to no purpose? Lanny wasn't ever going to become a Red - he just wanted to hear all sides and understand them. Robbie seemed to have the idea that the only way to avoid falling into the snares of the Reds was to refuse to have anything to do with them, or even to know about them. The moment you started to "understand" them - at that moment you were becoming tainted with their hateful infection?

II

There came a letter from Beauty, now viewing the art galleries and cabarets of Madrid. She was so, so happy; but her conscience was troubling her because of Baby Marceline, left motherless on the Riviera for so many months. To be sure, the servants adored her, and Beauty had asked friends to go and look her over; but still the mother worried, and wanted Lanny to run down and take her place. "You know my position," she pleaded. "I dare not leave our friend alone." Always she used the tactful phrase, "our" friend. If a woman wrote топ ami, that had a special meaning; but notre ami was chaste, even Christian, and took Lanny into the affaire.

There was much to be done at their home, Beauty informed him. The house needed very much to be redecorated, and it was fortunate that Lanny had such good taste; his mother would leave it to him, and be interested to see what new ideas he had acquired in two years of journeying about. Lanny decided that he would surprise her by building that extra studio. The many relatives of Leese would be summoned en masse; they were slow, but Lanny knew them and liked them, and they would work well for him.

This was something the youth could present to his father as a plausible substitute for a job in the oil industry. Robbie believed in buildings, as something you could see, and if need be could sell; he said to do the studio right, and he would pay for it. He added that Baby Marceline would probably be better off if Beauty would stay in Spain, or go back to Germany with Kurt; all she could do with a child was to spoil it. She would have done that with Lanny if Robbie hadn't put his foot down many times. Lanny said maybe she had anyhow.

The youth wanted to remain in Paris until his father was through. He was seeing the Crillon and all its affairs through a new pair of eyes. The men with whom Robbie was dealing were not the statesmen, but those who told the statesmen what to do. Yes, even the stiff-souled Presbyterian, the reformer to whom big business had been anathema - even he had become dependent upon the masters of money. A whole procиssion of them had been called over to Paris: prominent among them Lamont of the House of Morgan, whom Wilson had refused even to receive at the White House before the war. A score of such men had now become the President's confidential advisers on questions of reparations and the restoring of trade and finance.

Of course these businessmen were telling him to do the things which would enable them to go on making money, as they had been doing so happily before the war. The railroads were to be handed back to private management, and government controls over industry were to be abandoned. The Supreme Economic Council was to be scrapped, so that the scramble for raw materials could be resumed and Wall Street speculators could buy up everything in sight. To Robbie Budd all this was proof that the world naturally belonged to vigorous, acquisitive persons like himself. He was here to consult with others of his sort, and make certain that American diplomatic and naval authorities would co-operate with American oil men endeavoring to obtain their share of a product for which there was no substitute.

III

Johannes Robin came to Paris to consult his business associate. He brought with him a suitcase full of letters, contracts, and financial statements, and Lanny had lunch with the two, and listened while the Jewish enterpriser explained the various affairs in which he had been using Robbie's money. Things hadn't gone so well as he had hoped, because the delays in the peace settlement had held up transportation and credit. Meanwhile storage charges were eating up a share of the profits; but still, there would be goodly sums left, and Robbie professed himself as satisfied with what had been done.

They went upstairs to their suite, and Robbie settled down to look over the documents, with his associate explaining them. Lanny went along, because Mr. Robin said he had brought more snapshots of his family, also a present, a copy of Hansi's "Opus I," a violin etude; the copy made by the fifteen-year-old composer's own hands. Lanny sat down to study it and became absorbed; he had heard so much about that talented and hard-working lad who wanted to be his friend and adorer. He could see right away what had happened: Hansi had learned to perform a number of difficult technical feats on the violin, and in his composition he had been concerned to give himself an opportunity to do them all. But then, most performers' compositions are like that; you take it for granted, as you do the make-up and mannerisms of a "professional beauty."

Mr. Robin was so interested in Lanny's interest that he could hardly keep his mind on the business documents. When Lanny said: "That's a lovely theme just after the cadenza," the fond father turned pink with pleasure. "Can you really get it without hearing it?" he exclaimed; and of course Lanny was pleased to have his musical accomplishments admired. Perhaps the Jewish businessman knew that Lanny would be pleased - thus human relationships are complicated by the profit motive! Anyhow, Lanny promised to take the composition home with him and master the piano part, in preparation for the day when he and the young composer would play their first duet.

Robbie told his new associate about his plans to break into the oil game, and the latter said he would like to put his profits into that venture. Living in the land of Henri Deterding, he knew quite a lot about the oil business, and the two of them talked as equals in the fascinating game of profit-hunting. To Lanny they resembled two sleek and capable panthers which have met in the jungle and decided to work together for the quicker finding and bringing down of their prey. One had been born in a mud hut in Poland and the other in an aristocratic mansion in New England, but modern standardization had brought them to a point where they talked in shorthand, as it were - they understood each other without the need of completing a sentence. Lanny had a lot of fun teasing his father about it afterward, and trying to decide whether the new firm was to be known as Robbie and Robin, or Robin and Robbie. A delicate point in verbal aesthetics - or was it in social precedence? Of course, said the youth, when they had conquered the world and possessed its oil, they would be known as "R. & R." The Dutch partner in this combination said that as soon as peace was certain he was planning to move his office and family to Berlin. Hansi had learned about all he could in Rotterdam; and for the father there would be extraordinary opportunities of profit in Germany in the next few years. He would keep his Rotterdam office, and turn all his money into guilders and dollars. With the reparations settlement as it was, the mark was bound to lose value; the only way, short of repudiation, for Germany to reduce her internal debts. Incidentally, by inflation, she could collect large sums from foreigners, who believed in the mark and were buying it now. Johannes Robin said there was much argument among Dutch traders on this point, and of course fortunes would be made or lost on the guess. Robbie was inclined to agree with his new partner, but advised him that it would be safer to buy properties and goods, which would be thrown on the market for almost nothing in a collapse of the German money system.