So there it was again; one of those mysterious hints out of the subconscious world. The word verstimmt can mean either "out of tune" or "out of humor." Beauty had known that "Clarinet" meant Freddi, and it was easy to imagine Tecumseh getting that out of her subconscious mind; but Beauty had no reason to imagine that Freddi was in trouble. Was it to be supposed that when Beauty sat in a "circle," her subconscious mind became merged with her son’s, and his worries passed over into hers? Or was it easier to believe that some Socialist had been kicked or beaten or shot into the spirit world by the Nazis and was now trying to bring help to his comrade?
Lanny sent a telegram to his mother: "Clarinet music interesting send more if possible." He decided that here was a way he could pass some time while waiting upon the convenience of Minister-Prasident Goring. Like Paris and London, Berlin was full of mediums and fortune tellers of all varieties; it was reported that the Führer himself consulted an astrologer—oddly enough, a Jew. Here was Lanny, obliged to sit around indefinitely, and with no heart for social life, for music or books. Why not take a chance, and see if he could get any further hints from that underworld which had surprised him so many times?
Irma was interested, and they agreed to go separately to different mediums, thus doubling their chances. Maybe not all the spirits had been Nazified, and the young couple could get ahead of Goring in that shadowy realm!
IX
So there was Lanny being ushered into the fashionable apartment of one of the most famous of Berlin’s clairvoyants, Madame Diseuse. (If she had been practicing in Paris she would have been Frau Wahrsagerin.) You had to be introduced by a friend, and sittings were by appointment, well in advance; but this was an emergency call, arranged by Frau Ritter von Fiebewitz, and was to cost a hundred marks. No Arabian costumes, or zodiacal charts, or other hocus-pocus, but a reception-room with the latest furniture of tubular light metal, and an elegant French lady with white hair and a St. Germain accent. She sometimes produced physical phenomena, and spoke with various voices in languages of which she claimed not to know a word. The seance was held in a tiny interior room which became utterly dark when a soft fluorescent light was turned off.
There Lanny sat in silence for perhaps twenty minutes, and had about concluded that his hundred marks had been wasted, when he heard a sort of cooing voice, like a child’s, saying in English: "What is it that you want, sir?" He replied: "I want news about a young friend who may or may not be in the spirit world." After another wait the voice said: "An old gentleman comes. He says you do not want him."
Lanny had learned that you must always be polite to any spirit. He said: "I am always glad to meet an old friend. Who is he?"
So came an experience which a young philosopher would retain as a subject of speculation for the rest of his life. A deep masculine voice seemed to burst the tiny room, declaring: "Men have forgotten the Word of God:" Lanny didn’t have to ask: "Who are you?" for it was just as if he were sitting in the study of a rather dreary New England mansion with hundred-year-old furniture, listening to his Grandfather Samuel expounding Holy Writ. Not the feeble old man with the quavering voice who had said that he would not be there when Lanny came again, but the grim gunmaker of the World War days who had talked about sin, knowing that Lanny was a child of sin—but all of us were that in the sight of the Lord God of Sabaoth.
"All the troubles in the world are caused by men ceasing to hear the Word of God," announced this surprising voice in the darkness. "They will continue to suffer until they hear and obey. So is it, world without end, amen."
"Yes, Grandfather," said Lanny, just as he had said many times in the ancestral study. Wishing to be especially polite, he asked: "Is this really you, Grandfather?"
"All flesh is grass, and my voice is vain, except that I speak the words which God has given to men. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."
Either that was the late president of Budd Gunmakers, or else a highly skilled actor! Lanny waited a respectful time, and then inquired: "What is it you wish of me, Grandfather?"
"You have not heeded the Word!" exploded the voice.
Lanny could think of many Words to which this statement might apply; so he waited, and after another pause the voice went on: "Swear now therefore unto me by the Lord, that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me."
Lanny knew only too well what that meant. The old man had objected strenuously to the practice known as birth control. He had wanted grandchildren, plenty of them, because that was the Lord’s command. Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. It had been one of Samuel Budd’s obsessions, and the first time Irma had been taken to see him he had quoted the words of old King Saul to David. But Irma had disregarded the injunction; she didn’t want a lot of babies, she wanted to have a good time while she was young. The price which nature exacts for babies is far too high for fashionable ladies to pay. So now the old man had come back from the grave!
Or was it just Lanny’s subconscious mind? His guilty conscience —plus that of Irma’s, since she was defying not merely Lanny’s grandfather in the spirit world, but her own mother in this world! A strange enough phenomenon in either case.
"I will bear your words in mind, Grandfather," said Lanny, with the tactfulness which had become his very soul. "How am I to know that this really is you?"
"I have already taken steps to make sure that you know," replied the voice. "But do not try to put me off with polite phrases."
That was convincing, and Lanny was really quite awestricken. But still, he wasn’t going to forget about Freddi. "Grandfather, do you remember Bess’s husband, and his young brother? Can you find out anything about him?"
But Grandfather could be just as stubborn as Grandson. "Remember the Word of the Lord," the voice commanded; and then no more. Lanny spoke two or three times, but got no answer. At last he heard a sigh in the darkness, and the soft fluorescent light was switched on, and there sat Madame Diseuse, asking in a dull, tired voice: "Did you get what you wanted?"
X
Lanny arrived at the hotel just a few minutes before Irma, who had consulted two other mediums, chosen from advertisements in the newspapers because they had English names. "Well, did you get anything?" she asked, and Lanny said: "Nothing about Clarinet. Did you?"
"I didn’t get anything at all. It was pure waste of time. One of the mediums was supposed to be a Hindu woman, and she said I would get a letter from a handsome dark lover. The other was a greasy old creature with false teeth that didn’t fit, and all she said was that an old man was trying to talk to me. She wouldn’t tell me his name, and all he wanted was for me to learn some words."
"Did you learn them?"