Huddled into one corner of the car, Lanny listened to the conversation of one of the most powerful men in the world. The youth was intensely curious about this soft-voiced and kind-faced little person. What was it that had lifted him from obscurity in a region of vast lonely plains inhabited by long-horned cattle which one saw in the movies? Lanny gathered that the Texas colonel's leading characteristic was a desire for information; he went right to work to pump Alston's mind, asking him about all the problems on which he had been specializing. Sooner or later the little white mouse might have to settle them. He had a way of shutting his eyes for a few moments when he wanted to impress something upon his memory. Presently he was asking questions about Georgia — not the state in America, whose problems had been settled long ago, but the portion of Russia in the Caucasus mountains, famed for its lovely women.
“Those people have one great misfortune, Colonel House,” remarked the professor. “They are sitting on one of the world's great oil deposits.”
“I know,” said the other. “It may explode and blow us all to kingdom come.” He asked many more questions, and then said: “Do you suppose it would be possible for you to look into this matter and let me have a report?”
“Why, I suppose so,” said the professor, both surprised and pleased, “They've got me loaded up with work already, though.”
“I know; but we all have to do more and more. This Georgian business complicates the Russian problem, and we'll have to find a way to settle it. What do you say?”
“I am honored, of course.”
“Perhaps we'll have a committee and put you on it. I'll have to put it up to the President.”
So fate gave another turn to Lanny Budd's destiny. He was going to meet the mountaineers of the Caucasus and learn about their manners and customs — but not their lovely women, alas, for they hadn't brought any of these to Paris.
IV
There were three Russians in the tenement room when the Americans entered; at least Lanny supposed they were Russians, but he discovered that one was a Frenchman and another a Lett. He had been sure they would be big, bewhiskered, and fierce; but he found that only the Frenchman had hair on his face, the black beard trimmed to a point of which you could see thousands on this Butte Montmartre; he wore glasses on a black cord and his face was abnormally pale — he was a journalist who had served a term in prison for opposition to the war. The Lett appeared to be some sort of workingman, and was smooth-shaven, blond, and quiet. The Russian was a scientist, not much bigger than the colonel from Texas; he had spent several years in Siberia and his fingers trembled as he lighted the cigarettes which he smoked with great rapidity.
Only the Frenchman knew English, so the conversation was carried on largely by him. The Russian knew French, and the Lett knew Russian; there was a good deal of whispering back and forth, and when the conversation in English was going on, the other two Bolsheviks listened with a strained expression, as if they could understand by trying harder. They were obviously anxious. They, too, knew that they were in the presence of one of the most powerful men in the world.
Lanny helped the Frenchman with a word now and then, and sometimes asked him in French just what he was trying to say. The Russian, who was apparently their “big man,” became impatient at the English conversation, and moved his chair behind Jesse Blackless and whispered for him to repeat in French what was being said. So Lanny, who sat next to his uncle, would hear English with one ear and French with the other, which kept his mind on the jump. However, he got his impressions, and the first was that these seemed like decent fellows in serious trouble; it was hard for him to believe that they had been committing the crimes that his mother's fashionable friends had told about. Afterwards, when he talked over his impressions with his chief, the idea was suggested to him that in civil wars it is often the most earnest and conscientious persons who do the killing.
One thing was certain: the Bolsheviks weren't going to make any of what Professor Alston called “stump speeches.” Presumably they had talked it over in advance and decided to lay their cards on the table. They had no authority to speak for their government, and no way to communicate with it quickly; but they were certain that it wanted peace, and would be willing to pay any price short of giving up their “workers' state.” Just as they had gone to Brest-Litovsk nearly a year ago and given in to the power of the German armies, so now they would do so for the Allies. The Whites might keep what they held; there was land enough in the interior of Russia, and the workers would build their state and show the world what they could do; only they must have freedom to trade with the outside, so that they could get goods and repair their shattered industry.
They spoke without emotion of the sufferings of the Russian peasants and workers under the lash of the Tsar, and in the civil war now raging. They reported that Petrograd was starving; a hundred thousand persons had died in the past month, and not a baby under two was left alive. The Soviets wanted peace; they would meet the Whites anywhere, and accept any reasonable terms. They had again and again declared their willingness to pay off their debts to the capitalist nations, including the monstrous debt which the Tsar had incurred to arm their country in the interest of French militarists and munitions makers. Poor as they were now, they would pay the interest in raw materials. Lanny was surprised by this, for the French newspapers were incessantly repeating that the debt had been repudiated; this was the reason for the French clamor for the overthrow of the Soviets. “You know what our newspapers are,” said the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders; “our reptile press — I worked for it until my soul was poisoned.”
V
“Well, Alston, what do you think?” asked the colonel, when they were in their car again.
“If you want my opinion,” said the professor, “I think the civil war should be stopped at any cost.”
“Even if it means letting these people have a chance to establish their regime?”
“If their ideas are not sound, they will fail in the end.”
“Perhaps. But won't that mean another war?”
“That's a long way in the future, Colonel.”
The other turned to the young translator, whose eager competence he had observed. “What do you think, Budd?”
This gave Lanny a start, and he flushed. He had sense enough to know that the great man was being kind and that it would be the part of wisdom for a youth to be brief. “What struck me was that those fellows have all suffered a lot.”
“No doubt about that,” replied the gentleman from Texas. “We who live under an orderly democratic government find it hard to realize what men endured under the Tsar.”
Colonel House didn't tell them what he himself thought. They learned the reason later on — that he disapproved of the proposed conference and didn't think it could succeed. But the President wanted it, and he was the boss; Colonel House never gave his opinion unless and until it was asked for. He said now that he would report what the Bolsheviks had said, and they would await the decision.
What happened was soon known to all the world. The President of the United States sat down before his well-worn typewriter-it being one of his peculiarities that when he had something important in his mind he liked to type it with his own fingers. He wrote as follows: