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shoulders and said: "Eh, Men? Do the Reds complain of illegality?"

Lanny ran up a large telephone bill calling his friends in Berlin. It was his one form of

dissipation, and Irma learned to share it; she would take the wire when he got through and

ask Rahel about the baby, or Mama about anything—for Mama's Yiddish-English was as

delightful as a vaudeville turn. Lanny was worried about the safety of his friends, but

Johannes said: "Nu, nu! Don't bother your head. I have assurances that I cannot tell you

about. I wear the Tarnhelm."

He would retail the latest smart trick of those Nazis, whose cleverness and efficiency he

couldn't help admiring. "No, they will not outlaw the Communist party, because if they did,

the vote would go to the Sozis, and there would be the same old deadlock in the Reichstag. But

if they let the Communist deputies be elected, and then exclude them from their seats, the

Nazis may have a majority of what is left! What is it that you say about skinning a cat? There

are nine ways of doing it?"

How long would a Jew, even the richest, be allowed to tell the inmost secrets of the Führer

over the telephone to Paris? Lanny wondered about that, and he wondered about the magic

cap which Johannes thought he was wearing. Might he not be fooling himself, like so many

other persons who put their trust in political adventurers? Who was there among the Nazi

powers who had any respect for a Jew, or would keep faith with one for a moment after it

suited his purpose? To go to a rich Schieber to beg money for a struggling outcast party was

one thing; but to pay the debt when you had got the powers of the state into your hands—that

was something else again, as the Jews said in New York.

Lanny worried especially about Hansi, who was not merely of the hated race, but of the hated

party, and had proclaimed it from public platforms. The Nazi press had made note of him;

they had called him a tenth-rate fiddler who couldn't even play in tune. Would they permit

him to go on playing out of tune at Red meetings? The Stormtroopers were now turned loose

to wreak their will upon the Reds, and how long would it be before some ardent young patriot

would take it into his head to stop this Jewish swine from profaning German music?

Lanny wrote, begging Hansi to come to Paris. He wrote to Bess, who admitted that she was

afraid; but she was a granddaughter of the Puritans, who hadn't run away from the Indians.

She pointed out that she and her husband had helped to make Communists in Berlin, and now

to desert them in the hour of trial wouldn't be exactly heroic, would it? Lanny argued that a

great artist was a special kind of being, different from a fighting man and not to be held to the

military code. Lanny wrote to Mama, telling her that it was her business to take charge of the

family in a time like this. But it wasn't so easy to manage Red children as it had been in the

days of Moses and the Ten Commandments.

However, there was still a Providence overseeing human affairs. At this moment it came

about that a certain Italian diva, popular in Paris, was struck by a taxicab. The kind

Providence didn't let her be seriously hurt, just a couple of ribs broken, enough to put her out

of the diva business for a while. The news appeared in the papers while Lanny and Irma were

at Bienvenu, having run down to see the baby and to attend one of Emily's social functions.

Lanny recalled that the diva was scheduled with one of the Paris symphony orchestras; she

would have to be replaced, and Lanny asked Emily to get busy on the long distance telephone.

She knew the conductor of this orchestra, and suggested Hansi Robin to replace the damaged

singer; Mrs. Chattersworth being a well-known patron of the arts, it was natural that she

should offer to contribute to the funds of the symphony society an amount equal to the fee

which Hansi Robin would expect to receive.

The bargain was struck, and Lanny got to work on Hansi at some twenty francs per minute,

to persuade him that German music ought to be promoted in France; that every such

performance was a service to world culture, also to the Jewish race, now so much in need of

international sympathy. After the Paris appearance, Emily would have a soiree at Sept Chênes,

and other engagements would help to make the trip worth while.

"All right," replied the violinist, anxious to cut short the expendi ture of francs. "I'm

scheduled to give a concert at Cologne, and that is half way."

Lanny said: "For God's sake, keep off the streets at night, and don't go out alone!"

VI

Lanny missed his inside news about Germany, because the government forbade the

publication of Vorwärts for three days, as a punishment for having published a campaign appeal

of the Social-Democratic Party. Communist meetings were forbidden throughout the whole

nation, and many Communist and Socialist papers were permanently suspended. "In ten years

there will be no Marxism in Germany," proclaimed the Führer. All over Prussia Goring was

replacing police chiefs with Nazis, and the Stormtroopers were now attending political

meetings in force, stopping those in which the government was criticized. Next, all meetings of

the Centrists, the Catholic party, were banned; the Catholic paper, Germania, of which

Papen was the principal stockholder, was suppressed, and then Rote Fahne, the Communist

paper of Berlin. These events were reported in L'Humanite under the biggest of headlines, and

Uncle Jesse denounced them furiously in the Chamber of Deputies; but that didn't appear to

have much effect upon Hitler.

What the Nazis were determined to do was to win those elections on the fifth of March. If

they could get a majority in the Reichstag, they would be masters of the country; the

Nationalists and aristocrats would be expelled from the cabinet and the revolution would be

complete. Papen, Hugenberg, and their backers knew it well, and were in a state of distress,

according to Johannes's reports. A curious state of affairs—the gentlemen of the Herren Klub

defending the Reds, because they knew that Hitler was using the Red bogy to frighten the

people into voting for him! Goebbels was demanding the head of the Berlin police chief

because he wouldn't produce evidence of treasonable actions on the part of the Communists.

"The history of Germany is becoming a melodrama," wrote the Jewish financier. "In times to

come people will refuse to believe it."

He was now beginning to be worried about the possibility of attacks upon his boys; those

gentle, idealistic boys who had been playing with fire without realizing how hot it could get.

Being now twenty-eight and twenty-six respectively, they ought to have had some sense.

Johannes didn't say it was Lanny's half-sister who led them into the worst extremes, but

Lanny knew the father thought this, and not without reason. Anyhow, he had got a trusted

bodyguard in the palace—a well-established and indubitable Aryan bodyguard. Freddi's school

had been closed; such a simple operation—a group of Stormtroopers appeared one evening

and ordered the people out. Nothing you could do, for they had arms and appeared eager to

use them. Everybody went, not even being allowed to get their hats and coats in February. The

building was closed, and all the papers had been carted away in a truck.

The Nazis wouldn't find any treason in those documents; only receipted bills, and examination

papers in Marxist theory. But maybe that was treason now! Or maybe the Nazis would prepare

other documents and put them into the files. Orders to the students to blow up Nazi

headquarters, or perhaps the Chancellery? Such forgeries had been prepared more than once,

and not alone in Germany. Hadn't an election been won in Britain on the basis of an alleged

"Zinoviev letter"?

The headquarters of the Communist Party of Germany was in Karl Liebknecht Haus, and

that was the place where treason was to be sought. The police had seized the documents, and

two days later Herr Goebbels's press service gave details about "catacombs" and "underground

vaults," a secret and illegal organization functioning in the basement of the building, and so

on. Johannes reported an embittered conflict in the Cabinet over these too obvious forgeries;

they were considered beneath the dignity of the German government—but perhaps the

German government wasn't going to be so dignified from now on! The Jewish financier

couldn't conceal his amusement over the discomfiture of the "gentleman jockey," the "silver

fox," and the rest of the Junker crew. They had made this bed of roses, and discovered too

late how full of thorns it was.

The thing that worried Lanny was the possibility that some Nazi agent might produce

letters proving that Hansi Robin had been carrying dynamite in his violin case, or Freddi in his

clarinet case. They must have had spies in the school, and known everything that both boys

had been doing and saying. Lanny said; "Johannes, why don't you and the whole family come

visit us for a while?"

"Maybe we'll all take a yachting trip," replied the man of money, with a chuckle. "When the

weather gets a little better."

"The weather is going to get worse," insisted the Paris end of the line.

VII

Lanny talked this problem over with his wife. She couldn't very well refuse hospitality to

Johannes, from whom she had accepted so much. But she didn't like the atmosphere which

the young Robins brought with them, and she thought them a bad influence for her husband.

She argued that the danger couldn't really be so great as Lanny feared. "If the Nazis are

anxious to get votes, they won't do anything to important persons, especially those known

abroad."

Lanny replied: "The party is full of criminals and degenerates, and they, are drunk with the

sense of power."

He couldn't stop worrying about it, and when the day for Hansi's coming drew near, he said

to Irma: "How would you like to motor to Cologne and bring them out with us?"

"What could we do, Lanny?"

"There's safety in numbers; and then, too, Americans have a certain amount of prestige in

Germany."

It wasn't a pleasant time for motoring, the end of February, but they had heat in their car,

and with fur coats they would be all right unless there happened to be a heavy storm. Irma

liked adventure; one of the reasons she and Lanny got along so well was that whenever one

suggested hopping into a car the other always said: "O.K." No important engagement stood in

the way of this trip, and they allowed themselves an extra day on chance of bad weather.

Old Boreas was kind, and they rolled down the valley of the Meuse, by which the Germans

had made their entry into France some eighteen and a half years ago. Lanny told his wife the

story of Sophie Timmons, Baroness de la Tourette, who had been caught in the rush of the

armies and had got away in a peasant's cart pulled by a spavined old horse.

They reached Cologne late that evening, and spent the next day looking at a grand cathedral,

and at paintings in a near-by Gothic museum. Hansi and Bess arrived on the afternoon train,

and thereafter they stayed in their hotel suite, doing nothing to attract attention to a member