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"For the sum of two thousand marks I will cause the publication of an excellent critical

account of Detaze, with reproductions of a couple of his works, in any daily newspaper of Berlin

which you may select. This, you understand, will be a test, and you do not have to pay until

the article appears. But it must be part of the understanding that if I produce such an

article, you agree to go ahead on one of the larger projects I have suggested. I am not a cheap

person, and am not interested in what you Americans call kleine Kartoffeln. You may write the

article yourself, but it would be wiser for you to provide me with the material and let me

prepare it, for, knowing the Berlin public, I can produce something which will serve your

purposes more surely."

So it came about that the morning on which Zoltan Kertezsi arrived at the hotel, Lanny put

into his hands a fresh newspaper containing an account of Detaze at once critically competent

and journalistically lively. Zoltan ran his eyes over it and exclaimed: "How on earth did you

do that?"

"Oh, I found a competent press agent," said the other. He knew that Zoltan had scruples,

whereas Zoltan's partner had left his in the Austrian town whence he had crossed into

Naziland.

Later that morning the Herr Privatdozent called and took Lanny for a drive. The stepson of

Detaze said that he wanted his stepfather to become the initiator of a new era in

representational painting, and offered to pay the sum of ten thousand marks per week for one

week preceding the show and two weeks during it, conditioned upon the producing of publicity

in abundant quantities and of a standard up to that of the sample. The Herr Privatdozent

accepted, and they came back to the hotel, where Zoltan, possibly not so innocent as he

appeared, sat down with them to map out a plan of campaign.

VIII

Suitable showrooms were engaged, and the ever dependable Jerry Pendleton saw to the

packing of the pictures at Bienvenu. He hired a camion, and took turns with the driver,

sleeping inside and coming straight through with that precious cargo. Beauty and her husband

came by train—there could have been no keeping her away, and anyhow, she was worth the

expenses of the journey as an auxiliary show. She was in her middle fifties, and with Lanny at

her side couldn't deny it, but she was still a blooming rose, and if you questioned what she had

once been, there were two most beautiful paintings to prove it. Nothing intrigued the crowd

more than to have her standing near so that they could make comparisons. The widow of this

initiator of a new era, and her son—but not the painter's son —no, these Negroid races run to

promiscuity, and as for the Americans, their divorces are a joke, they have a special town in

the wild and woolly West where the broken-hearted ladies of fashion stay for a few weeks in

order to get them, and meantime are consoled by cowboys and Indians.

For the "professional beauty" it was a sort of public reception, afternoons and evenings for

two weeks, and she did not miss a minute of it. A delightfully distinguished thing to be able to

invite your friends to an exhibition of which you were so unique a part: hostess, biographer,

and historian, counselor and guide—and in case of need assistant saleslady! Always she was

genial and gracious, an intimate of the great, yet not spurning one lowly lover of die schonen

Kunste. Zoltan paid her a memorable compliment, saying: "My dear Beauty Budd, I should

have asked you to marry me and travel about the world promoting pictures." Beauty, with her

best dimpled smile, replied: "Why didn't you?" (Mr. Dingle was off visiting one of his

mediums, trying to get something about Freddi, but instead getting long messages from his

father, who was so happy in the spirit world, and morally much improved over what he had

been—so he assured his son.)

There were still rich men in Germany. The steelmasters of the Ruhr, the makers of electrical

power, the owners of plants which could turn out the means of defense—all these were sitting

on the top of the Fatherland. Having wiped out the labor unions, they could pay low wages

without fear of strikes, and thus count upon profits in ever-increasing floods. They looked about

them for sound investments, and had learned ten years ago that one inflation-proof material was

diamonds and another was old masters. As a rule the moneylords didn't possess much culture,

but they knew how to read, and when they saw in one newspaper after another that a new

school of representational art had come to the front, they decided that they ought to have at

least one sample of this style in their collections. If they were elderly and retired they came to

the show; if they were middle-aged and busy they sent their wives or daugh ters. Twenty or

thirty thousand marks for a landscape did not shock them, on the contrary it made a Detaze

something to brag about. So it was that the profits of Lanny, his mother, and his half-sister —less

the ten per cent commission of Zoltan—covered twenty times over what they had paid to the

efficient Herr Privatdozent, and Zoltan suggested that they should pay this able promoter and

continue the splurge of glory for another week. Even Irma was impressed, and began to look at

the familiar paintings with a new eye. She wondered if it mightn't be better to save them all for

the palace with modern plumbing which she meant some day to have in England or France. To

her husband she remarked: "You see how much better everything goes when you settle down

and stop talking like a Red!"

IX

The Detaze show coincided in time with one of the strangest public spectacles ever staged in

history. The Nazis had laid the attempt to burn the Reichstag upon the Communists, while the

enemies of Nazism were charging that the fire had been a plot of the Hitlerites to enable them

to seize power. The controversy was brought to a head by the publication in London of the

Brown Book of the Hitler Terror, which charged that the Nazi Chief of Police of Breslau, one

of the worst of their terrorists, had led a group of S.A. men through the tunnel from Göring's

residence into the Reichstag building; they had scattered loads of incendiary materials all over

the place, while another group had brought a half-witted Dutch tramp into the building by a

window and put him to work starting fires with a domestic gas-lighter. This was what the whole

world was coming to believe, and the Nazis couldn't very well dodge the issue. For six or seven

months they had been preparing evidence, and in September they began a great public trial. They

charged the Dutchman with the crime, and three Bulgarian Communists and a German with

being his accessories. The issue thus became a three-months' propaganda battle, not merely in

Germany but wherever news was read and public questions discussed. Ten thousand pages of

testimony were taken, and seven thousand electrical transcriptions made of portions of the

testimony for broadcasting.

The trial body was the Fourth Criminal Senate of the German Supreme Court in Leipzig;

oddly enough, the same tribunal before which, three years previously, Adolf Hitler had

proclaimed that "heads will roll in the sand." Now he was going to make good his threat.

Unfortunately he had neglected to "co-ordinate" all five of the court judges; perhaps he didn't

dare, because of world opinion. There was some conformity to established legal procedure, and

the result was such a fiasco that the Nazis learned a lesson, and never again would political

suspects have a chance to appear in public and cross-question their accusers.

In October and November the court came to Berlin, and it was a free show for persons who

had leisure; particularly for those who in their secret hearts were pleased to see the Nazis

humiliated. The five defendants had been kept in chains for seven months and wore chains in the

courtroom during the entire trial. The tragedy of the show was provided by the Dutchman, van

der Lubbe, half-blind as well as half-witted; mucus drooled from his mouth and nose, he giggled

and grinned, made vague answers, sat in a stupor when let alone. The melodrama was supplied by

the Bulgarian Dimitroff, who "stole the show"; a scholar as well as a man of the world, witty,

alert, and with the courage of a lion, he turned the trial into anti-Nazi propaganda; defying his

persecutors, mocking them, driving them into frenzies of rage. Three times they put him out

of the room, but they had to bring him back, and again there was sarcasm, defiance, and

exposition of revolutionary aims.

It soon became clear that neither Dimitroff nor the other defendants had ever known van der

Lubbe or had anything to do with the Reichstag fire. The mistake had arisen because there was a

parliamentary archivist in the Reichstag building who happened to resemble the half-witted

Dutchman, and it was with him that the Communist Torgler had been seen in conversation. The

proceedings gradually turned into a trial of the Brown Book, with the unseen British

committee as prosecutors and the Nazis as defendants.

Goebbels appeared and denounced the volume, and Dimitroff mocked him and made him

into a spectacle. Then came the corpulent head of the Prussian state; it was a serious matter

for him, because the incendiaries had operated from his residence and it was difficult indeed to

imagine that he hadn't known what was going on. Under the Bulgarian's stinging accusations

Göring lost his temper completely and had to be saved by the presiding judge, who ordered

Dimitroff dragged out, while Göring screamed after him: "I am not afraid of you, you

scoundrel. I am not here to be questioned by you . . . You crook, you belong to the gallows!

You'll be sorry yet, if I catch you when you come out of prison!" Not very dignified conduct

for a Minister-Präsident of Prussia and Reichsminister of all Germany!

X

During these entertaining events two communications came to Lanny Budd at his hotel. The

first was painful indeed; a cablegram from his father, saying that the newly elected directors of

Budd Gunmakers had met, and that both Robbie and his brother had been cheated of their

hopes. Seeing the younger on the verge of victory, Lawford had gone over to a Wall Street

group which had unexpectedly appeared on the scene, backed by the insurance company which

held the Budd bonds. The thing which Grandfather Samuel had dreaded and warned against all

his life—Budd's had been taken out of the hands of the family!

"Oh, Lanny, how terrible!" exclaimed Irma. "We should have been there to attend to it."

"I doubt if we could have done anything," he replied. "If Robbie had thought so, he would

surely have cabled us."

"What Uncle Lawford did was an act of treason to the family!"

"He is that kind of man; one of those dark souls who commit crimes. I have often had the

thought that he might shoot Robbie rather than let him get the prize which both have been

craving all their lives."

"What does he get out of the present arrangement?"

"The satisfaction of keeping Robbie out; and, of course, the Wall Street crowd may have paid

him. Anyhow, Robbie has his contract, so they can't fire him."