II
The conspirator for charity expected every day to have a note from Kurt, but none came. He spent some time trying to figure out what Kurt would be doing, and wondering if it would be possible for a German spy in Paris to be apprehended and shot without anything getting into the papers. There were great numbers of persons of German descent living in Switzerland, in Holland and the Scandinavian countries, so it was possible for Germans to pass as citizens of these countries. All through the war German spies had been doing this, and there was no reason to imagine that they had all gone home when the armistice was signed. Kurt must be a member of such a group; and being young, he would have a superior who told him what to do.
When the weather was decent and Lanny had time, he liked to walk, to get the air of the overheated conference rooms out of his lungs. One of his walks took him to Montmartre, and he climbed the musty stairs of the old tenement, and found his uncle covered up on his cot to keep warm, absorbed in the reading of a workers' newspaper. The first thing the uncle said was: “Well, by God, from now on I believe in Santa Claus!”
It really had happened: the knock on his door, the exchange of passwords, the package placed in his hands! He chuckled as if it was the funniest thing that had occurred to a Red agitator since the birth of Karl Marx. “Every sou has been honestly spent, so tell your friend to come again — the sooner the better!
“Did you notice the affiches?” continued the painter; and Lanny said he hadn't seen any referring to the lifting of the blockade against Germany, but on the kiosks he had noticed in big red letters a call for a réunion that evening, to demand government action against the rise in food prices. “That is ours,” said the uncle. “We couldn't post anything on behalf of Germany — the flics would be down on us before we got started. But they can't prevent our defending the rights of French workers and returned soldiers.”
“As a matter of fact, Uncle Jesse,” asked the youth, “if they allow food to be exported into Germany, won't that make it scarcer in France?”
“The Germans don't want any food from France,” replied the other. “They can buy it from America. What we want the French government to do is to get after the middlemen and speculators who are holding food in warehouses and letting it spoil because they can make more when prices are high.”
Jesse Blackless launched upon an exposition of his political views. He had been a “syndicalist,” which meant that he supported the left-wing labor unions, whose aim was to take over industry for the workers. But recent events in Russia had convinced him that the Bolshevik program represented the way to victory, even though it might mean the surrender of some liberties for a time. “You have to have discipline if you expect to win any sort of war,” said the rebel painter. It was practically the opposite of what Herron had said.
Lanny really wanted to oblige his father; but how could he hold his present job without giving thought to the ideas of these Bolsheviks? In the Crillon people talked about them all the time. You couldn't discuss the problems of any state or province of Central Europe without their being brought up. “If you don't lend us money, if you don't give us food, our people will go over to the Bolsheviks… If you don't give us guns, how can we put down the Bolsheviks?… If you take our territory away from us, we will throw ourselves into the arms of the Bolsheviks.” Such were the utterances in every conference room. Often it was a form of blackmail, and the French would resent it with fury. The ruling classes of Germany, Austria, and Hungary were playing up this fear in order to get out of paying for the ruin they had wrought in Europe. “All right!” the French would answer. “Go to Moscow or go to hell, it makes no difference to us.”
But this was a bluff. As soon as they had said it, the French would look at one another in fear. What if the Red wave were to spread in Poland, as it had spread in Hungary and Bavaria? If the Reds got the upper hand in Berlin, with whom would the Allies sign a treaty of peace? The Americans would ask this, and French and British diplomats didn't know what to answer, and took out their irritation on the persons who asked the questions. They must be Reds, too!
III
“Would you like to come to the réunion tonight?” asked Uncle Jesse; and Lanny said he would if his duties left him a chance. “I won't offer to take you,” said the other. “It'll be better for the Crillon if you're not seen with me.”
It happened that the staff at the Majestic was giving a dance that evening, and Lanny had a date with a fair-haired English secretary who reminded him of Rosemary. He thought she might find it romantic to take in a Red meeting, and do the dancing later. Lanny could call it a matter of duty, for he had told his chief about it and Alston had said: “Let me have a report on it.”
The salle was in a teeming working-class quarter, and apparently not large enough for the thousand or two who wanted to get in. Lanny and his young lady were among the fortunate ones, because they were recognized as foreigners, and people made way for them. The place was hazy with tobacco smoke, and up on the platform, among a dozen other men and women, Lanny saw his uncle. He saw no one else whom he knew, for these were not the sort of persons one met at Mrs. Emily's teas. There was a sprinkling of intellecttuals, art students, and others whom you could recognize by their garb, but for the most part those present were workers and returned soldiers, their faces haggard from long years of strain.
Lanny would be in a position to report to his chief that the workers of Paris were bitterly discontented with their lot. Hardly had the speakers got started before the shouting began, and he was a poor speaker indeed who could not cause some auditor to rise and shake his clenched right hand in the air and shout “à bas!” somebody or something. There were no poor speakers, by that standard; they all knew their audience and how to work it into a fury, how to bring first murmurs and then hoots and jeers against bureaucrats and bemedaled militarists who feasted and danced while food was rotting in the warehouses and the poor in their dens were perishing of slow starvation.
Especial object of their hatred appeared to be Georges Clemenceau. Traitor, rat, Judas, were the mildest names they called him; for the “tiger of France” had been in his youth a communard, one of themselves, and had served a term in prison for his revolutionary activities. Now, like the other politicians, he had sold out to the capitalists, now he was a gang leader for the rich. Lanny was interested to discover that these workers knew most of the facts about Clemenceau which his father had been telling him. One of the speakers mentioned Zaharoff — and there was booing that might have brought a shudder to the Grand Officer. They knew about Clemenceau's control of the press; when the speaker said that journalists were bought and sold in Paris like rotten fish the crowd showed neither surprise nor displeasure.
Lanny was surprised to discover that his uncle was an effective orator. The sardonic, crooked smile became a furious sneer, his irony a corroding acid that destroyed whatever it touched. The painter was there to see to it that the real theme of the evening was adequately covered; he pointed out that the workers of France were not the only ones who were being starved, the same fate was being deliberately dealt to the workers of Germany, Austria, Hungary. All the workers of Europe were learning that their fate was the same and their cause the same; all were resolving that never again would they fight one another, but turn their guns against the capitalist class, the author of their sufferings, the agent of their suppression, the one real enemy of the people throughout the world. The English girl, of course, didn't know he was Lanny's uncle, and after she had listened to his tirade for a while, she exclaimed: “Oh, what a vicious person!”