Lanny mentioned how his Uncle Jesse likewise had been questioned by the police, and had threatened them with publicity. Jesse had been sure they wouldn't jail an American just for making speeches.
“This was a special kind of speech,” answered Stef. “Bob advised the railway men how to stop the invasion of the Black Sea by calling a strike on the railroads to Marseille.”
“Yes, I suppose that's different,” the youth agreed.
The muckraker asked whether Lanny hadn't been spied on himself. Lanny was surprised, and said he hadn't thought about it. Stef replied: “Better think!” He imparted a piece of news — that two of those members of the Crillon staff who had tried to resign had had dictographs put in their rooms — presumably by the Army Intelligence. This news worried Lanny more than he cared to let his friend know.
“How do you know a spy when you meet him?” he asked, and the other answered that often you didn't until it was too late. It was generally somebody who agreed with your pinkest ideas and went you one or two better. Lanny said he hadn't met anyone like that as yet — unless it was Stef himself!
This world observer, whose ideas were so hard to puzzle out, told some of his own experiences since his return from Russia. The Intelligence had thought it necessary to dog his footsteps continually. “There is a Captain Stratton — ”
“Oh, yes!” broke in the youth. “I saw a lot of him at the Crillon.”
“Well, he and another officer took the trouble to get the next table in a restaurant where I was dining with a friend. I saw that they were listening to our talk so I invited them over, and told them all about what I had learned in Russia, and had reported to Colonel House. I tried my best to convert them.”
“Did you succeed?” asked Lanny, delighted.
“Well, they stopped following me. Maybe the reason was what President Wilson did a day or two later. I suppose he had heard that I was being shadowed, and he chose a tactful way to stop it. You understand, he has refused to see me and hear what I have to report on Russia; having made up his 'one-track mind' that he's not going to stop the war on the Soviets, he doesn't want to be upset by my facts. But he knows how I came to go to Russia, and he has no right to discredit me. I was one of a crowd of newspapermen waiting in the lobby of the hotel, when he passed through and saw me, and he came and bent over me and pretended to whisper something into my ear. He didn't say a word that I could make out; he just made murmurs. Of course his purpose was to tell everybody that I still had his confidence.”
“So now you can be as pink as you please!” chuckled the other.
V
The German delegation arrived, and the much-postponed signing was set for the twenty-eighth of June. The signers were two subordinates, but the Allies were determined to make a ceremony of it. The setting was the great Hall of Mirrors of the Versailles palace, where the victorious Germans had established their empire forty-eight years earlier, and had forced the French to sign the humiliating peace surrendering Alsace-Lorraine. Now the tables were turned, and with all pomp and circumstance the two distressed German envoys would put their signatures to the statement that their country alone had been to blame for the World War.
Every tourist in France visits the Versailles palace, and wanders through the magnificent apartment where once the Sun King ate his meals and the population had the hereditary right to enter and stare at the greatest of all monarchs gulping his potage and at his queen and princesses nibbling their entremets. Lanny had been there with his mother and Kurt, motored by Harry Murchison, nearly six years back; that lovely October day stood out in his memory, and as he recalled it he had many strange thoughts. Suppose that on that day he had been able by some psychic feat to peer into the future and know that his German friend, adoring his mother, was to become her lover! Suppose that Beauty had been able to perform the feat and foresee what was going to happen to Marcel — would she have married Harry Murchison instead? Or suppose that the Germans, at the signing of the first Peace of Versailles, had been able to foresee the second!
Only about a thousand persons could be admitted to witness the ceremony, and Lanny Budd was not among the chosen ones. If he had cared very much he might have been able to wangle a ticket from his Crillon friends, whom he still met at Mrs. Emily's and other places. But he told himself that he had witnessed a sufficiency of ceremonies to last the rest of his days. No longer had he the least pleasure in gazing upon important elderly gentlemen, each brushed and polished by his valet from the tips of his shoes to the roof of his topper. The colonel from Texas wore this symbol of honorificabilitudinitas on occasions where etiquette required it, but he carried along his comfortable Texas sombrero in a paper bag, and exchanged head-coverings as soon as the ceremony was completed. Nothing so amusing had happened in Paris since Dr. Franklin had gone about town without a wig.
The important thing now was that the much-debated document would be signed and peace returned to the world. Or would it? On the table in his hotel room lay newspapers in which he could read that the treaty to be signed that day left France helpless before the invading foe; and others which insisted that it was a document of class repression, designed to prepare the exploitation of the workers of both Germany and France. Lanny had read both, and wished there was some authority that would really tell a young fellow what to believe!
VI
The telephone rang: the office of the hotel announcing “Monsieur Zhessie Bloc-less” — accent on the last syllable. Lanny didn't want to have his uncle come up, because that would look like intimacy, so displeasing to Robbie if he should happen to return. “I'll be down at once,” he said.
In the lobby of the marble-walled Hotel Vendéme he sat and exchanged family news with his relative who didn't fit the surroundings, but looked like a down-at-heels artist lacking the excuse of youth. Uncle Jesse wanted to know, first, what the devil was Beauty doing in Spain? When Lanny answered vaguely, he said: “You don't have to hide things from me. I can guess it's a man.”
But Lanny said: “She will tell you when she gets ready,” and that was that.
More urgently the painter was interested to know what had become of that mysterious personage who had paid him three silent midnight visits. At the risk of seeming uncordial, Lanny could only say again that his lips were sealed. “But I fear he won't visit you any more,” he said. “You know about the public event which is to happen today.”
“Yes, but that isn't going to make any difference,” insisted the other. “It doesn't mean a thing.” They were speaking with caution,
and the painter kept glancing about to be sure no one was overhearing. “Your friends are still going to be in trouble. They are going to have to struggle — for a long, long time.”
“Maybe so,” said Lanny; “and it may be they'll call on you again. But as matters stand, I'm not in a position to inquire about it, and that's all I can say.”
The uncle was disappointed and a trifle vexed. He said that when the owners of hunting forests put out fodder for the deer in winter, the creatures got the habit of coming to the place and thereafter didn't scuffle so hard for themselves. Lanny smiled and said he had observed it in the forests of Silesia; but when it was a question of scuffling or starving, doubtless they would resume scuffling.
“Well,” said the painter, “if you happen to meet your friend, give him these.” He took a little roll of papers from the breast pocket of his coat. “These are samples of the leaflets we have printed. I've marked on each one the number of copies distributed, so he can see that none of his fodder has been wasted.”