I
RIDING in a taxi to the Préfecture de Police, Lanny thought as hard as he had ever done in his life. Had these agents been following him because they had learned about his connections with a German spy? Or had they been following the notorious Jesse Blackless and seen him hand papers to Lanny? Everything seemed to indicate the latter; but doubtless at the Préfecture they would have Lanny listed in connection with Lincoln Steffens, and with Herron, and Alston — who could guess where these trails might lead? Lanny decided that he had talked enough and would take refuge in the fact that he was not yet of age. Even in wartime they could hardly shoot you for refusing to answer questions; and, besides, the war was coming to an end this very afternoon! Many, many times in five years he had heard Frenchmen exclaim: “C'est la guerre!” Now, for once, he would be able to answer: “C'est la paix!” The Préfecture is on the Île de la Cité, the oldest part of Paris, having as much history to the square meter as any other place in the world. Like most old buildings it had a vague musty odor. They booked him, and took away his billfold, his watch, his keys; then they put him in a small room with a barred window high up, and an odor of ammonia, the source of which was obvious. The younger of the two detectives sat and watched him, but did not speak. In half an hour or so he was escorted to an office, where he found no less than three officials waiting to question him. All three were polite, grave, and determined. The eldest, the commissaire, was dressed as if he were going to have tea at Mrs. Emily's. At a second desk sat a clerk, ready to begin writing vigorously — the so-called procès verbal.
“Messieurs,” said Lanny, “please believe that I intend no discourtesy; but I consider this arrest an indignity and I intend to stand upon my rights. I am a minor and it is my father who is legally responsible for me. I demand that he be summoned, and I refuse to answer any questions whatsoever until that has been done.”
You would have thought that the three officials had never before in their lives heard of anyone refusing to answer questions. They were shocked, they were hurt, they were everything they could think of that might make an impression upon a sensitive youth. They demanded to know: was it the natural course for an innocent man not to tell frankly what was necessary to secure his liberty? They wished him no harm; they were greatly embarrassed to have to detain him for a moment; the simple and obvious thing would be for him to tell them for what innocent reason he had come into possession of documents inciting to the overthrow of la république française, the murder of its citizens, the confiscation of their property, and the burning of their homes. The three officials had the incendiary documents spread out before them, and passed them from hand to hand with exclamations of dismay.
Was all that really in the documents? Lanny didn't know; but he knew that if he asked the question, he would be answering a very important one for the officials — he would be telling them that he didn't know, or at least claimed not to know, their contents. So he said again and again: “Messieurs, be so kind as to send word to my father.”
Never had courteous French officials had their patience put to a severer test. They took turns arguing and pleading. The oldest, the commissaire, was paternal; he pleaded with the young gentleman not to subject himself to being held behind bars like a common felon. It was really unkind of him to inflict upon them the necessity of inflicting this embarrassment upon a visitor from the land to which France owed such a debt of gratitude. In this the commissaire, for all his lifetime training, was letting slip something of importance. They took him for a tourist; they had not connected him with Juan-les-Pins, and probably not with Madame Detaze, veuve, and her German lover now traveling in Spain!
The second official was a man accustomed to dealing with evildoers, and his faith in human nature had been greatly weakened. He told Lanny that la patrie was at war, and that all men of right feeling were willing to aid the authorities in thwarting the murderous intrigues of the abominable Reds. It was difficult for anyone to understand how a man would have such documents in his pocket and not be eager to explain the reason. And what was the significance of the mysterious figures penciled upon each sheet? If a man refused to perform the obvious duty of clearing up such a mystery, could he blame the authorities for looking upon him as a suspicious character?
The third official was younger, wore glasses, and looked like a student. Apparently he was the one whose duty it was to read incendiary literature, classify it, and take its temperature. He said that he had never read anything worse in his life than this stuff which Lanny had had in his pocket. It was hard for him to believe that a youth of good manners and morals could have read such incitements without aversion. Was Lanny a student, investigating the doctrines of these Reds? Did he know any of them personally? Had he been associated with them in America? Lanny didn't answer, but listened attentively and asked questions in his own mind. Were they just avoiding giving him any clues? Or had the two flics really not known who it was that gave him the papers?
Certainly Lanny wasn't going to involve his uncle unnecessarily. To all attempts to trap him he replied, as courteously as ever: “Messieurs, I know it is tedious to hear me say this; but think how much trouble you could save yourselves if you would just call my father.”
“If you refuse to answer,” said the commissaire, at last, “we have no recourse but to hold you until you do.”
“You may try it,” said Lanny; “but I think my father will manage to find out where I am. Certainly if an American disappears from the Hotel Vendéme, the story will be in the American newspapers in a few hours.”
The official pressed a button and an attendant came and escorted Lanny down a corridor and into a room that was full of apparatus. In the old days it might have been a torture chamber, but in this advanced age it was the laboratory of a new science. Lanny, to complete his education, was going to learn about the Bertillon system for the identification of criminals. The operations were carried out by a young man who looked like a doctor, wearing a white duck jacket; they were supervised by a large elderly gentleman wearing a black morning coat and striped trousers, and with a black spade beard almost to his waist. They photographed their prisoner from several angles; they took his fingerprints; they measured with calipers his skull, his ears, his nose, his eyes, his fingers, his feet. They told him to strip, and searched him minutely for scars and spots, birthmarks, moles — and noted them all down on an elaborate chart. When they got through, Lanny Budd could be absolutely certain that the next time he committed a crime in France, they would know him for the same felon they had had in the Préfecture on the twenty-eighth of June 1919.
II
Lanny Budd sat on a wooden stool in a stone cell with a narrow slit for a window, and a cot which had obviously been occupied by many predecessors in misfortune. Perhaps the police were trying to frighten him, and again, perhaps they were just treating him impartially. For company he had his thoughts: a trooping procèssion, taking their tone-color from the dismal clang of an iron door. Impossible to imagine anything more final, or more crushing! So far, emotions such as this had been communicated to Lanny through the medium of art works. But the reality was far different. You could turn away from a picture, stop playing music, close a book; but in a jail cell you stayed.
Lanny had no idea how old this barracks was. Had it stood here in the days when Richelieu was breaking the proud French nobility, and had some of them paced the floor of this cell? Had it stood when the Sun King was issuing his lettres de cachet? Had the Cardinal de Rohan been brought here when he was accused of stealing the diamond necklace? It seemed a reasonable guess that some of the aristocrats had sojourned here on their way à la lanterne; and doubtless a long string of those poisoners and wife stranglers who provided the French populace with their daily doses of thrill. All through the Peace Conference Paris had been entertained by the exploits of a certain Landru, who had married, murdered, and buried some eight or nine women. Every now and then the authorities would dig up a new one, and the press would forget the problems of the peace. This happened whenever the situation became tense, and it was freely said at the Crillon that it was done to divert attention from what the delegates were doing.