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mounted gardes républicaines tried to drive them off the bridge, charging and striking with the

flat of their sabers, the mob countered with walking-sticks having razor-blades fastened to the

ends, to slash the bellies of the horses. In one attack after another they crippled so many of the

police and gardes that they came very near getting across the bridge and into the Chamber.

So at last shooting began. The street-lights were smashed, and the floodlights on the obelisk

were turned off, so you couldn't see much. An omnibus had been overturned and set afire near

the bridge, but that gave more smoke than light, and it soon burned out. The last sight that Lanny

saw was a troop of the Spahis, African cavalrymen in white desert robes looking like the Ku

Kluxers, galloping up the Champs Elysees and trampling the mob. There came screams directly

under where Irma and Lanny were standing; a chambermaid of the hotel had been shot and

killed on the balcony. So the guests scrambled in quickly, deciding that they had seen enough of

the class war in France.

"Do you think they will raid the hotel?" asked Irma; but Lanny assured her that this was a

respectable kind of mob, and was after the politicians only. So they went to bed.

X

"Bloody Tuesday," it was called, and the Fascist newspapers set out to make it into the

French "Beerhall Putsch." From that time on they would have only one name for Daladier:

"Assassin!" They clamored for his resignation, and before the end of the next day they got it;

there were whispers that he could no longer depend upon the police and the gardes. More

than two hundred of these were in the hospitals, and it looked like a revolution on the way.

There was wreckage all over Paris, and the Ministry of Marine partly burned. Charlot had got a

slash across the forehead, and for the rest of his life would wear a scar with pride. "La

Concorde" he would say, referring to the bridge; it would become a slogan, perhaps some day

a password to power.

On Wednesday night matters were worse, for the police were demoralized, and the hoodlums,

the apaches, went on the warpath. They smashed the windows of the shops in the Rue de

Rivoli and other fashionable streets and looted everything in sight. It wasn't a pleasant time for

visitors in Paris; Robbie was going to Amsterdam on business, so Irma and Lanny stepped into

their car and sped home.

But you couldn't get away from the class war in France. The various reactionary groups had

been organized all over the Midi, and they, too, had received their marching orders. They had

the sympathy of many in the various foreign colonies; anything to put down the Reds. Rick, after

hearing Lanny's story, said that la patrie was awaiting only one thing, a leader who would have

the shrewdness to win the "little man." So far, all the Fascist groups were avowedly reactionary,

and it would take a leftish program to win. Lanny expressed the opinion that the French man in

the street was much shrewder than the German; it wouldn't be so easy to hoodwink him.

Life was resumed at Bienvenu. Rick worked on his play and Lanny read the manuscript,

encouraged him, and supplied local color. In the privacy of their chamber Irma said: "Really,

you are a collaborator, and ought to be named." She wondered why Lanny never wrote a play of

his own. She decided that what he lacked was the impulse of self-assertion, the strong ego

which takes up the conviction that it has something necessary to the welfare of mankind.

Uncle Jesse had it, Kurt had it, Rick had it. Beauty had tried in vain to awaken it in her son,

and now Irma tried with no more success. "Rick can do it a lot better"—that was all she could

get.

Irma was becoming a little cross with this lame Englishman. She had got Lanny pretty well

cured of his Pinkness, but now Rick kept poking up the fires. There came a series of terrible

events in Austria—apparently Fascism was going to spread from country to country until it

had covered all Europe. Austria had got a Catholic Chancellor named Dollfuss, and a Catholic

army, the Heimwehr, composed mainly of peasant lads and led by a dissipated young prince.

This government was jailing or deporting Hitlerites, but with the help of Mussolini was getting

its own brand of Fascism, and now it set out to destroy the Socialist movement in the city of

Vienna. Those beautiful workers' homes, huge apartment blocks which Lanny had inspected

with such joy—the Heimwehr brought up its motorized artillery and blasted them to ruins,

killing about a thousand men, women, and children. Worse yet, they killed the workers'

movement, which had been two generations building.

A terrible time to be alive in. Lanny and Rick could hardly eat or sleep; they could only grieve

and brood over the tragedy of the time into which they had been born. Truly it seemed futile to

work for anything good; to dream of peace and order, justice or even mercy. This wholesale

slaughter of working people was committed in the name of the gentle and lowly Jesus, the

carpenter's son, the social rebel who had been executed because he stirred up the people! A

devout Catholic Premier ordering the crime, and devout Catholic officers attending mass

before and after committing it! And not for the first time or the last in unhappy Europe. Rick

reminded his friend of that cardinal in France who had ordered the St. Bartholomew massacre,

saying: "Kill them all; God will be able to pick out His Christians."

XI

Hot weather came to the Riviera, and the people whom Irma considered important went

away. Those who were poor, like the Dingles and the Robins, would stick it out and learn to

take a siesta. But Nina and Rick went back to England, and Emily Chattersworth moved her

servants to Les Forêts and invited Irma and Lanny to visit her and see the spring Salon and

the new plays. It was Irma's idea, to keep her husband's mind off the troubles of the world.

They went, and after they had played around for a couple of weeks, Irma had a letter from her

mother, begging them to come to Shore Acres and bring Baby Frances for the summer. Really

it was a crime to have that magnificent place and never use it; also it was grossly unfair that

one grandmother should have her heart's desire all the time and the other not at all. "I don't

believe that Beauty cares for the child anything like as much as I do," wrote the Queen Mother;

a sentence which Irma skipped when she read the letter aloud.

The couple talked over the problem. Irma was reluctant to take her precious darling on board

a steamer; she hadn't got over her memories of the Lindbergh kidnaping, and thought that an

ocean liner was an ideal place for a band of criminals to study a twenty-three-million-dollar

baby, her habits and entourage. No, it would be better to spend the summer in England's

green and pleasant land, where kidnapers were unknown. Let Mother be the one to brave the

ocean waves! Irma hadn't spent any money to speak of during the past year, and now interest

on bonds was being paid and dividends were hoped for. She said: "Let's drive about England,

the way we did on our honeymoon, and see if we can find some suitable place to rent."

Nothing is more fun than doing over again what you did on your honeymoon; that is, if

you have managed to keep any of the honeymoon feeling alive after five years. "There are so

many nice people there," argued the young wife. Lanny agreed, even though he might not have

named the same persons.

He knew that Rick's play was nearly done, and he wanted to make suggestions for the last

act. Then there would be the job of submitting it to managers, and Lanny would want to hear

the news. Perhaps it might be necessary to raise the money, and that wouldn't be so easy, for it

was a grim and violent play, bitter as gall, and would shock the fashionable ladies. But Lanny

meant to put up the money which he had earned in Germany—all of it, if necessary, and he

didn't want Irma to be upset about it. They were following their plan of keeping the peace by

making concessions, each to the other and in equal proportions.

They crossed the Channel and put up at the Dorchester. When their arrival was announced in

the papers, as it always would be, one of the first persons who telephoned was Wickthorpe,

saying: "Won't you come out and spend the week end?"

Lanny replied: "Sure thing. We're looking for a little place to rent this summer. Maybe you

can give us some advice." He said "little" because he knew that was good form; but of course it

wouldn't really be little.

"I have a place near by," responded his lordship. "I'll show it to you, if you don't mind."

"Righto!" said Lanny, who knew how to talk English to Englishmen.

When he told Irma about it, she talked American. "Oh, heck! Do you suppose it'll have tin

bathtubs?"

XII

But it didn't. It was a modern villa with three baths, plenty of light and air, and one of those

English lawns, smooth as a billiard table, used for playing games. There was a high hedge

around the place, and everything lovely. It was occupied by Wickthorpe's aunt, who was

leaving for a summer cruise with some friends. There was a staff of well-trained servants who

would stay on if requested. "Oh, I think it will be ducky!" exclaimed the heiress. She paid the price

to his lordship's agent that very day, and the aunt agreed to move out and have everything in

order by the next week end. Irma cabled her mother, and wrote Bub Smith and Feathers to get

everything ready and bring Baby and Miss Severne and the maid on a specified date. Jerry

Pendleton would see to the tickets, and Bub would be in charge of the traveling, Feathers being

such a featherbrain.

So there was a new menage, with everything comfortable, and no trouble but the writing of a

few checks and the giving of a few orders. A delightful climate and many delightful people; a

tennis court and somebody always to play; a good piano and people who loved music; only a few

minutes' drive to the old castle, where Lanny and his wife were treated as members of the

family, called up and urged to meet this one and that. Again Lanny heard statesmen discussing

the problems of the world; again they listened to what he had to tell about the strange and

terrifying new movement in Germany, and its efforts to spread itself in all the neighboring

countries. Englishmen of rank and authority talked freely of their empire's affairs, telling what

they would do in this or that contingency; now and then Lanny would find himself thinking:

"What wouldn't Göring pay for this!"

Zoltan had been in Paris, and now came to London. It was the "season," and there were

exhibitions, and chances to make sales. An art expert, like the member of any other profession,

has to hear the gossip of his monde; new men are coming in and old ones going out, and prices

fluctuating exactly as on the stock market. Lanny and his partner still had money in Naziland,

and lists of pictures available in that country, by means of which they expected to get their

money out. Also, there was the London stage, and Rick to go with them to plays and tell the

news of that world. There was the fashion rout, with no end of dances and parties.